Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Joonas Suotamo, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover
Directed by: Ron Howard (mostly)
Written by: Jonathan Kasdan & Lawrence Kasdan from characters created by George Lucas
Lucasfilm/Disney, 2018
PG-13; 135 minutes
3.5 stars (out of 5)
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I wasn't enthusiastic about this going in. I've never once when watching any Star Wars movie (and I watched them often in my youth, especially Empire) looked at Han Solo and said to myself, "I'd like to know his story." Because honestly, I think a character like his is fine with an undefined past. More fun that way. Someone who wanders in and out of a scene, hot-footed. You don't know where he came from or where he's going, but he's great to have around when he is around.
Also, the trailers had not inspired confidence. Alden Ehrenreich as a young Harrison Ford didn't scan. And nothing of what I saw him saying or doing felt right either.
So I went in with a list of detriments already tallied against the movie. Probably not fair, but I want to be honest.
The first part of the film confirmed my fears. Ehrenreich is too earnest to be the Han Solo we all know and love. Not that Ford's Solo didn't have an earnest streak from time to time, but that was never his foremost characteristic. Here, it is. And it doesn't work.
I know, I know—the point is to show how Solo went from earnest to jaded, right? Yeah, well they failed on that front, too. By the end of the film he still comes off as more sincere than cynical.
That said, I didn't dislike the movie as much as I expected to. Yes, the first part is a trudge, but once Woody Harrelson shows up, the story picks up steam. The supporting cast does most of the heavy lifting in this movie; they're far more interesting than the titular Solo. In particular, Paul Bettany as villain Dryden Vos is classic. But Phoebe Waller-Bridge voicing the droid L3 and Jon Favreau likewise voicing Rio are also great.
The story itself is heist upon heist and double-cross upon double-cross. Nothing you wouldn't expect when dealing with Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, really. And none of the twists surprised me. If anything, things that were clearly meant to "land" fell flat. Though there are a lot of easter eggs in this film. A lot.
End result is a so-so movie, at least for me. The first part nearly tanked it, but it got better by degrees as it went on. I guess that's all anyone can hope for: to end up better than where and how you started.
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