Solo: A Star Wars Story                  4 stars

By now everyone has seen the origin story of Han Solo titles Solo: A Star Wars Story, part of the Disney expansion of the Star Wars universe.  So I won’t go into any great detail about the story, other than to say it was an interesting departure from the other Star Ward movies.  Here story is that of an outlaw, Han Solo, joining with other outlaws to put together a colossal interstellar heist to steal some valuable treasure from some very sinister folks.  There is little mention of the empire or the force and we only see a couple of the characters that are so familiar from the other movies.  There is no shortage of action be it high speed chases, shootouts or space dog fights.  It looks like the critics were split on this one and I come on the side of those who thoroughly enjoyed the film.  Woody Harrelson does his usual bad guy impression as Beckett, the outlaw that Solo teams up with.  Paul Bettany is a convincing evil villain who you better not cross and we even get to see how Chewbacca and Han got together.  Also, Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge make a well matched and very mouthy pair.  I could see there being a follow up film starring Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han.  If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for?