Film review: ‘Solo’

‘Solo’ not so cocky; upstaged by Lando’s cape collection...|

As we already knew, Han Solo drives it like he stole it. In Ron Howard’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” Alden Ehrenreich plays the petty thief from the ship-building planet Corellia with the brashness of a hot-rodding American teen. He hotwires an M-68 landspeeder, puts his lucky dice over the rearview mirror and jets off with his main squeeze, Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke).

Their plans to start a new life in a galaxy far, far away are thwarted by some stormtroopers who stop them at the space port. Han gets off Corellia (and is conscripted into the Empire’s pilot school) but Qi’ra must stay behind. You’ll be surprised to learn that Han is too mouthy to be a military man for long and falls in with a couple of thieves: Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and Val (Thandie Newton).

When they parted, Han promised to find Qi’ra again in that crazy mixed-up universe, and he does. But, three years later, there’s a distance in her eyes that wasn’t there before - nothing is different but everything is different.

She’s been branded by the ring of Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany), a crime lord whose face and mannerisms are informed by that most influential villain - Scar in “The Lion King.” He says stuff like, “I never ask for anything twice,” and strokes things in a most menacing fashion. Han doesn’t have the courage to ask how Qi’ra survived the intervening years and found herself at Dryden’s side - and, even though she joins Beckett’s crew, her interstellar chemistry with Han turns tentative.

“Solo” is mostly a Western, with train robberies, shootouts, double crosses, tough dames, and spaceships standing in for horses. Instead of gold bars, our heroes are chasing coaxium, a hyperfuel that fetches a pretty penny from the Empire (or unnamed rebel alliances).

While Han steals ships, Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) steals scenes. Glover is permanently charming and, as the notorious pilot/trader/card sharp, he revels in Billy Dee Williamsing it up - “Everything you’ve heard about me is true.” Lando is the proud owner of the Millennium Falcon and is reluctant to loan it out for the exploits of Han and company. His only trusted companion is the droid L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), a fitfully entertaining robot rights suffragette.

When Lando finally acquiesces, we’re gifted one of the most glorious scenes in the “Star Wars” canon. Solo and Qi’ra fawn over the awesome array of capes in Lando’s closet - the display is enough to make James Brown get on up from the grave. Later, when Lando is hilariously interrupted from writing his memoirs while a battle rages outside, you realize - as is true with his characters in “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and “Magic Mike XXL” - Glover deserves spinoff films.

Harder core Star Warriors might find themselves disappointed in “Solo,” as it has relatively few Easter eggs and tie-ins to the original series - not to mention the inexplicable but real nostalgia some fans have for the bad acting in Episodes 4-6. We do discover the grimy manner in which Han meets Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) - it results in the pair sharing a (non-erotic) shower and Han teasing: “You’re 190 years old? You look great!”

Ehrenreich’s Han is sharper than the cowpoke he played so memorably in “Hail, Caesar!” but would that it were a juicer script for him to latch onto. Old time “Star Wars” scribe Lawrence Kasdan co-wrote this one with his son Jonathan and the results are fairly flat.

While we see the braggart in Han when he crows stuff like, “I just did the Kessel run in 12 parsecs!” we’re left wondering what it is that turns him into the ironist later played by Harrison Ford. Perhaps his world-weariness is merely the inevitable march of time, and sequels?

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