What goes up, comes down. That may not be something worth repeating, but not when it comes to Black Adam. Its flying men – and there are just too many of them – love to go zooming up and then either chucking people down or each other. It’s not even funny the first time round. By the end, it’s just painful.
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A bad plan is better than no plan at all – that is another nugget the film is fond of. But, not really. Sometimes a bad plan is just that, bad.
The thing is, Black Adam isn’t all bad though. It’s fairly entertaining, despite all the smashing and bashing; surprisingly cohesive, in spite of its 5,000-year span; and pretty faithful about sticking to its somewhere-in-the-Middle East milieu given that the setting is the “world’s oldest self-governing” civilisation. So the characters are a good mix, with people of different religions, races and colours arrayed on both sides.
Black Adam also has just the right amount of fun and games going to lighten the mood of this story from the DC Extended Universe comic franchise, with the Justice League that rushes in to “contain” Black Adam comprising a likable foursome of Hawkman (Hodge), Dr Fate (Brosnan), Cyclone (Swindell) and Atom Smasher (Centineo). They seem like a team that could hang together amiably, which is a comforting thought if the future of the world lies in their hands.
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The civilians, that is those without the superpowers (and there are a very few of those here), are a family of a young boy (Sabongui, suitably perky), his mother (Shahi) and uncle (Amer), who again are people you would mind coming to harm. Amer is the cliched, overweight, funny sidekick, but somehow he makes it work.
As the titular character Black Adam, all Johnson really has to do is thrust his chest out, stare long and hard, and yet look light enough to stand floating in air (which he does a lot, when he is not zooming around, per se). It’s unfair to expect anyone to go up against a bareboned ‘The Rock’, and with him stacked with powers of lightning, flying, fighting, speed, strength, not to mention invincibility to any kind of weapon known to mankind, no one of course stands a chance.
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So what is Black Adam, helmed by Collet-Serra, trying to do exactly, apart from reiterating the above? So we have a number of clear enemies, and supposed enemies, taking Adam on, only to meet the fate we know is coming. The filmmakers clearly didn’t trust the basic storyline enough, and draw the Justice Leaguers in under a pretext that frays very thin, very fast. Something about heroes and real heroes, which loses impact by repetition. There is another parallel storyline about a land and its people, who have been suppressed by “neo-imperialist enforcers”. It’s clear who their “liberator” is going to be, but the film also wants to be politically correct and have it about the people taking matters in their own hands, which happens sporadically and very sputteringly.
Since Black Adam is an origin story, this instalment is clearly just a trailer into all the fighting and smashing that is yet to come. That’s an exhausting thought.
Black Adam movie director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Black Adam movie cast: Dwayne Johnson, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Shahi, Bodhi Sabongui, Mohammad Amer, Aldis Hodge, Quintessa Swindell, Noah Centineo
Black Adam movie rating: 2.5 stars
