While there are fewer and fewer actors nowadays who can be said to have the draw of a classic “movie star”, undeniably one of those few has to be Dwayne Johnson (“Moana,” “Red Notice”). The man has spent the last two decades or so cultivating a brand of four-quadrant general audience entertainment that, with films like the “Jumanji” sequels, “Hobbs and Shaw,” “Jungle Cruise,” and “Skyscraper,” promises at the very least some pleasant popcorn action flick escapades.
Which is why his fervent desire to play Black Adam, the title character of this new DC superhero film, is so baffling. For a man who’s built his career on pleasing audiences and making everyone from a ten-year-old kid to your grandmother smile, why on earth was he so dead set on playing such a dower, deadly character who seems chemically concocted to be against his own skills?
The film follows the titular character, played by Johnson, who is awoken from a five thousand year long slumber by Adrianna Tomaz, played by Sarah Shahi (“The L Word,” “Fairly Legal”), who asks him for help in handling the militaristic invaders to her country of Kahndaq. After dealing with some soldiers, Adam attracts the attention of the Justice Society: Hawkman, played by Aldis Hodge (“Hidden Figures,” “One Night in Miami…”), Doctor Fate, played by Pierce Brosnan (“Goldeneye,” “Mamma Mia!”), Atom Smasher, played by Noah Centineo (“The Fosters,” “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before”), and Cyclone, played by Quintessa Swindell (“Voyagers,” “Trinkets”), who arrive in Kahndaq to bring Adam to justice. Meanwhile, there’s also a plot surrounding the mythical Crown of Sabbac, which is said to give its wearer great powers in conjunction with the powers of demons.
It's a lot of plot for one movie, but the film itself seems to know that since it essentially drops the storyline it seems to be setting up for the first half in favor of a much less interesting and routine story for the latter half. Initially, it looks like the film is going to be digging into the idea of heroism and who gets to determine who’s a hero. When the Justice Society arrives in Kahndaq, they’re in no uncertain terms chastised for not involving themselves in the countries issues before and for coming in to try and tell the people who they can and cannot have as their leader.
It's an interesting idea for a superhero movie, a genre where so often it feels as though the idea of power and who gets to lord over others is often pushed to the wayside. However, as interesting of an idea as this is, halfway through the film its sidelined. It’s as if the moment writers Adam Sztykiel (“Due Date,” “Rampage”), Sohrab Noshirvani (“The Mauritanian,” “Informer”), and Rory Haines (“The Mauritanian,” “Informer”) realized they’d have to actually start deconstructing these ideas, ideas that sound shockingly similar to some of the US’s past military strategies, it’s dropped in favor of a generic antagonist who’s so evil everyone has to make nice and fight together.
Johnson seems miscast, plain and simple. It’s the kind of role that is easy to see him take on early in his career, when he was still acting as a side project to his wrestling. But now that he’s crafted his skills to best play everyone’s big brother, he just comes across in a role like this as bland and uninteresting. Keeping a dower face isn’t the same as being a badass, and it can very easily simply turn into a boring and rote performance. It’s somewhat baffling given this is his second film with director Jaume Collet-Serra (“Orphan,” “The Commuter”) and their previous outing together, 2021’s “Jungle Cruise”, at the very least played to Johnson’s wiseass charms.
The rest of the cast fares a bit better, with Hodge and Brosnan being the highlights. Both have easy chemistry with the other and make it easy to believe in the longstanding friendship the pair apparently have. Swindell is also a cheery bright spot, with a big smile and brain that’s easy to be charmed by, even as they’re woefully underutilized. Centineo continues his trend of playing the doofy smiley guy, this time on the big screen instead of in the next batch of homogenized Netflix teen rom com flicks. Shahi doesn’t feel wasted, but the script certainly doesn’t do her any favors. What starts as an interesting character who’s dealing with a lot of political and emotional conflicts at once quickly devolves into a mom yelling about her son. Her brother Karim, played by Mohammed Amer (“Ramy,” “Mo”), fares much better, and his cherub like smile and sense of humor help him earn a surefire spot as the standout of the film.
While we’ve seen plenty of heroes mow down plenty of bad guys before, the film’s tone is so wildly uneven that it becomes hard to take enjoyment in most of it. One moment we see Black Adam floating through the air in slow motion, setting up brutal kills while Paint it Black thumps in the background and merely moments later, Hawkman is chastising Black Adam for his brutal killings of the soldiers. The film wants to, for at least a bit, address how ruthless Adam is, but it also wants the audience to point in awe at his skills. It’s trying to have its cake and eat it too, but beyond that, its not doing the work to even bake a good cake to begin with.
Because even when its all working at its best, what’s on display simply isn’t that interesting. It’s visually bland, save for the costumes of some of the characters, and simply feels like going through the motions. The handful of weirder moments, like a direct homage to John Wayne, feel disconnected from the rest of the film. Given that this was apparently somewhat of a passion project for Johnson, it’s remarkable how little weight or enjoyment seems to have been put in. It’s worth noting that it is refreshing to see a big budget studio blockbuster where only two of the main cast of characters are white, but that doesn’t matter for much when the film itself is too bland to resonate in any way.
“Black Adam” is the cinematic equivalent of water off a duck’s back. There’s nothing terrible about it, no glaring editing issues, ungodly awful performances or visual effects, and no massively fumbled plot elements. Instead, its simply too bland to leave any lasting impact. The film’s most interesting elements are abandoned halfway through the film and replaced by the most generic form of generic plot contrivances, hoisted on the shoulders of a miscast Dwayne Johnson and the likeable but not memorable supporting cast. For a movie with a main star as passionate about it as Johnson, something this lifeless simply shouldn’t have been the result. 2/5
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