Mark Reviews Movies: SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 24, 2018

We're watching Han Solo, the galactic criminal and archetypical scoundrel who became an icon through Harrison Ford's portrayal in four of the Star Wars films, but it's not quite the Han we know and love in Solo: A Star Wars Story. This is, apparently, intentional, because this is a younger Han—before he became a war hero, before he begrudgingly helped out the rebellion against the Empire, before he got himself in financial debt with a slug-like gangster on a desert planet.

This Han, played by Alden Ehrenreich, still has some open optimism to him. The reason we liked Han in his first appearance was because we could tell that, deep down, he was a good guy. He just hid it well.

In this origin story, Han either is still learning to hide his good nature or hasn't yet become jaded by life in this galaxy far, far away. He's a romantic who meets the promise of adventure with a giddy smile, wants money so he can fly away with the woman he loves, and is quicker to join the good fight when it comes calling. He's still a wise-ass, facing down danger with a quick rejoinder and a devil-may-care attitude. We never learn how he developed that characteristic, but would we even want a story about Han Solo before he started cracking wise about anyone and anything?

Of course, we wouldn't. In that same vein, the big challenge of this spin-off is convincing us that we need a story about Han before he became the fully formed scoundrel with a secret heart of gold in the first Star Wars. In ways, it does convince us, because we can see enough difference in this younger Han to merit the idea that the character still has some significant changes to endure.

In other ways, it doesn't quite convince, because the story is more about a series of introductions and adventures. Here, Han meets his faithful sidekick, obtains his signature blaster, and flies the Millennium Falcon for the first time. He participates in a great train robbery and finds a shortcut through a notorious patch of space in record distance.

The screenplay by the father-son team of Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan sees props, supporting characters, and incidents as the primary ways to define the central character. As for actually understanding and seeing how Han turns from this still cheery and openly hopeful young man into the character we already know, these are, apparently, matters for later.

This story begins with an orphaned Han as the thieving ward of a water-dwelling, serpent-like crime lord in a grimy city. He and his girlfriend Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) are looking to escape this life of crime for the sake of survival, but the two are separated just before reaching freedom. Han joins the Imperial Army in the hopes of becoming a pilot and finding an easy way to save Qi'ra.

Instead, he's sent to the frontlines, where he meets a group of professional thieves. Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), Val (Thandie Newton), and the stocky, four-armed alien Rio (voice of Jon Favreau) are stealing equipment for a job, and Han and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), who's supposed to be our hero's means of execution for desertion, join the band of thieves.

The rest of the plot involves a pair of robberies, as Han and Beckett try to appease Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany), the leader of the crime syndicate Crimson Dawn. Along the way, they get help from Qi'ra, who is now a lieutenant in Dryden's organization, and the infamous smuggler Lando Calrissian (a pitch-perfect Donald Glover, doing an admirable impression of Billy Dee Williams' portrayal of the character, while making the character his own).

The first job is a train robbery on a snowy planet, where the elevated tracks wind and curve around and through mountains like a slow-motion roller coaster. Director Ron Howard juggles the three elements of the robbery—sabotaging the tracks ahead of the train, hooking up a car to a hovering ship, and flying that ship—with considerable skill. The second involves a run through a maelstrom in space and the infiltration of a mining colony, where Lando's co-pilot L3 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), a droid with a desire for robot civil rights, accidentally starts and intentionally encourages a revolt. Han's hastily improvised plans within these jobs still have a low percentage of success.

On the surface, the movie is a spirited adventure tale, but it comes with some tricky baggage—all of it having to do with the main character. Ehrenreich's performance is less about doing an impression and more about capturing the still-burgeoning essence of Han. The performance works on an almost self-referential level: We're seeing an actor trying to find his footing in the portrayal of a character who is, himself, trying to find his footing.

By the end, Han has done a lot and gained most of his trademark stuff, but we're left hanging in regards to seeing the known entity of the character form (There's a major change, involving a brief standoff near the conclusion, that seems too extreme for this version of Han). It's clear that Solo: A Star Wars Story won't be the last Han Solo story in this spin-off franchise. This movie provides some decent groundwork for that next tale—or those additional tales.

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