'Black Adam' movie review: A passable effort, but could be better

Black Adam

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Shahi

Score: 2.5/5

It's been years in the making for Dwayne Johnson, but it's finally here - and Black Adam may not entirely be what fans of the character want it to be. That's not to say it's a bad movie, no. As a whole, Black Adam is a reasonably decent entry in DC's slate, but when you compare it to something like The Batman, it does leave a few things to desire.

Much like its direct predecessor in terms of release, The Batman, Black Adam is a darker story than Shazam!, of which it is a spin-off, and also relies on dry humour to break the tension. Unlike most previous Dwayne Johnson films, however, it has a noticable lack of "Dwayne Johnson-ness," with the actor adopting a markedly more serious persona in line with the source material.

Fans of the character will know the nature of Teth Adam - a firm-headed protecter and leader of the nation of Kandhaq, though with a remarkably violent streak. His form of protection runs counter in many ways to the Justice League in that it is incredibly brutal and his brand of justice is final. The film does this element justice - from the first moment Adam shows up on screen, he brutally kills any and all who stand opposed to him, a fact that leads him to literally bash heads with the Justice Society of America.

In terms of plot, it's quite barebones. Unlike Shazam! or The Batman, the film has no lessons for anyone, much less its own main character who generally wants nothing to do with the modern world, but for some exceptions. It starts off with a voiceover exposition of Kandhaq in the past with a mystery boy wishing for freedom in the face of a tyrant who wants to release Hell on Earth, before skipping off to the modern day. In this place, the film relies on misdirection to tell the truth of what happened in the past as events progress, but it ultimately ends up being a teensy bit confusing. What follows is set piece after set piece, a tedium of have-seen Hollywood CGI fests with faceless enemies and monsters, and unlike Shazam, it's not necessarily fun watching these faceless monsters either.

The biggest winner of the film is Teth Adam himself, who gets a fair bit of characterisation and justification for his hyper-violent brand of justice and vengeance, with slow additions of more light-hearted elements as the film goes on. For all its heavy reliance on CGI, however, the fights between him and the regular people do have a sense of scale which is strangely missing in the fights between him and other superpowered individuals.

The film also leans heavily on criticising foreign invasions and systemic oppression of the native people of a land, but the message is somewhat lost in the cacophony of CGI slugfests. The only character, other than Adam, who remains consistent throughout the film is Doctor Fate of the Justice Society, who serves as something of a semi-philosophical anchor for both sides of the board - the normal and the superpowered.

There is also an element of restoration in the film. It's not a concept it explores only internally within the context of its own characters, but rather also in the world at large. Fans of the DCEU who have held hopes for the franchise's return in the truest sense will probably walk out very happy with the film. On the whole, Black Adam is an alright entry. It's not something you need to go out of your way to watch like The Batman, but it won't hurt to do so either.