Director Ruben Fleischer tries to make this Tom Hardy, Riz Ahmed starrer thrilling and funny but the screenplay has little that is inventive or original

Thank deity of choice then for Tom Hardy. His Eddie Brock/Venom and their pitch-perfect ‘best frenemy’ dynamic is the only reason this film doesn’t have a mere one-star rating. Hardy, who’s made something of a career out of breathing life and personality into faceless/masked characters is in his element here (he also does Venom’s gravelly voice). And since the actor has signed off on two more Venom films, we can only hope the (different) makers of those films give Hardy more face(less) time.

Tom Hardy film dissapoints…The good-looking and talented Tom Hardy, who should be a walk-in for this role, inhabits it half-heartedly as an unshaven, unwashed reporter who botches the one investigation any newsman with half his credentials would know how to approach.

Tom Hardy is the antidote poisonously dull Marvel rip-off…Tom Hardy delivers a bravura one-man show in this poisonously drab Spider-Man spin-off which pales in comparison to its Marvel counterparts.

Venom volumes up its darker tone, but it ends up being bizarre and lazy than smart and gritty.

Venom deserves a sequel and hopefully the producers will redeem themselves with that film.

Venom tries hard to make sure you come back for its sequels.

An anti-hero from the Marvel comic-book universe gets a Superhero makeover in this spanking new origin story with a cliched plot, blobby effects and messy action

Tom Hardy’s charisma can’t make up for predictable narrative, unimpressive action sequences…

By the time Venom battles another Symbiote at the film’s climax, in an incoherent cloud of computer-graphics, you wouldn’t care less what you’re watching or what the stakes are.

But definitely lookout for the sequel, it seems promising.