DC’s Black Adam fails to muscle up a good film

Dwayne Johnson gets to play a role his physique was made for in Black Adam: a superhero. Unfortunately he doesn’t get to use his other biggest strength (besides his muscles), and that’s his charisma. To put it bluntly, his character is a big sourpuss, and that’s not even the worst part of the movie; it lacks a cohesive plot, jumps around far too much with wild twists and turns, and none of the characters outside of Black Adam have any development.

After a (rather long) introduction in the beginning of the film, detailing the history of the Kahndaq kingdom 5000 years ago and its epic good vs evil fight, we get caught up to present day. The area has never been free, and is currently being held by an organized crime group known as the Intergang. Adrianna wants to put a stop to their rule by finding the ancient artifact the Crown of Sabbac. When they find it though, the Intergang swoops in to grab it for their own use, and in the ensuing chaos, Adrianna ends up freeing Black Adam (called Teth Adam at the time) from his long sleep. Black Adam, seemingly indestructible and with Superman-like powers, kills all the Intergang members in the area and flies away. Adrianna and her little brother Karim follow him and try to get him to agree to help modern Kahndaq against its oppressors, but Black Adam doesn’t seem interested in helping.

At the same time, the Justice League, 4 “good guy” heroes, are sent to the area to imprison Black Adam before he can use his powers to do more harm. Lots of epic battles follow, with no real conclusion, and a few wild twists where we learn Black Adam isn’t exactly what everyone thinks (and then learn later that maybe he is!). Then another crazy twist where a bad guy uses the crown artifact to open the gates of hell to take over the world. Black Adam has to save the day.

I really wanted to like this movie, and despite the rough critic reviews, audience scores were high, so I had elevated expectations. They crashed to earth by the 30 minute mark. There’s absolutely no character development, you might as well call them player # 1, player # 2, etc. And the Justice League members? Two of them are just there to give the film more superhero stunts in the fights. You can sub them out for any other superhero or leave them out entirely, because they add nothing to the story. And you know how these movies generally have some humor to break up the action? I laughed exactly twice, and both of those chuckles came in the last 30 minutes of this 2 hour film. I could continue to rag on this movie, because there’s plenty of holes to punch through, but you get the idea. The action sequences are OK for the most part, though even each hero’s moves get stale by the end. Just not a whole lot to go on here. But it is making tons of money, and The Rock has all but guaranteed more films in the future. I just hope they get a better director and story next time. ★½