Solo: A Star Wars Story

Set years before the events of A New Hope, Solo: A Star Wars Story follows a young Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) as he embarks upon a potentially lucrative quest alongside, among others, Woody Harrelson’s Beckett and Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra – with the narrative also detailing Solo’s initial encounters with future compatriots Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) and Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover). Filmmaker Ron Howard delivers a narrative that doesn’t, at the outset, hold a lot of promise, as Solo: A Star Wars Story kicks off with about as uninvolving and unexciting an opening as one could possibly imagine – with Howard, working from a script by Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan, dropping the viewer into a disastrously underwhelming action sequence that’s compounded by Bradford Young’s dimly-lit, often incoherent cinematography. And while the movie subsequently never quite becomes the engrossing blockbuster one might’ve expected, Solo: A Star Wars Story, at least, eventually manages to morph into a decent, mostly watchable adventure flick that’s elevated by a series of strong supporting performances – with, especially, Glover’s ridiculously charismatic turn as the original trilogy’s fan-favorite figure standing as a highlight. (Ehrenreich is fine here, though he’s never entirely convincing as a younger version of Harrison Ford’s iconic title character.) The ongoing inclusion of admittedly engaging set-pieces (eg Han and his cohorts pull off an elaborate heist) ensures that one’s interest never entirely flags, and although the film never entirely adds up to anything terribly memorable or distinctive, Solo: A Star Wars Story is nevertheless a decent origin narrative that answers a handful of legitimate questions from George Lucas’ saga (and even firmly ends the did-Han-or-Greedo-shoot-first debate).

**1/2 out of ****