The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
A Star Wars Story
(Cert 12A, 135 mins)
If Ryan Johnson’s tour of duty with Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi propelled George Lucas’ saga into a galaxy far, far away from the old-fashioned charm of the original trilogy, Solo: A Star Wars Story slingshots at lightspeed in the opposite direction.
Scripted by Jonathan Kasdan and father Lawrence, co-writer of The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi, the second standalone anthology film after Rogue One sketches the formative years of the charismatic scoundrel Han Solo in comforting, broad strokes.
Ron Howard captains the ship after director duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were tossed into a pit over ‘creative differences’ a few months into production.
Behind-the-scenes turmoil hasn’t manifested noticeably on screen.
Howard’s gung-ho romp of doublecrossing criminals is clinical, bookmarked by impressively staged set-pieces laden with special effects.
Solo’s name is emboldened in the title but he’s the least interesting element and Alden Ehrenreich’s performance falls short of the smouldering, rascally delights of Harrison Ford.
Instead, London-born actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge shines brightest through the digitally rendered gloom as a rebellious droid.
A nifty prologue set on the shipbuilding planet Corellia illustrates the doomed romance of Han (Ehrenreich) and sweetheart Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke).
Three years later, after a cute meeting with Wookiee sidekick Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), Han seeks a route back to Corellia by hijacking a consignment of crystal fuel coaxium with Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and his accomplices Val (Thandie Newton) and Rio (voiced by Jon Favreau).
The heist doesn’t unfold as planned and the deflated reprobates become indebted to Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany), leader of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate.
Thus, Han and Beckett reluctantly undertake a more dangerous assignment: to steal canisters of unrefined coaxium from Kessel.
Solo: A Star Wars Story looks and feels like a throwback to the original canon. A lean script provides a smattering of one-liners to underscore Han and Chewie’s jocular banter and Glover has fun with his flirtatious chancer, who always deals himself a winning hand.
“I’ve got a good feeling about this,” grins Han as he sits in the captain’s chair for the first time, a neat reversal of Luke Skywalker’s famous line in Episode IV: A New Hope.
I harboured similar feelings of quiet optimism for Howard’s picture but like the mighty Millennium Falcon, when she emerges from the Kessel run, my expectations were badly dented.