Black Adam Review (Opens Oct 19)

Here’s my Black Adam review which stars Dwayne Johnson, Pierce Brosnan, Aldis Hodge and more. It’s directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and opens October 19 from Warner Bros Pictures.

The film follows the character Teth-Adam as he gets revived in the present by Adriana (Sarah Shahi) who was looking for a way to find their country of Kahndaq’s liberator who mysteriously vanished 5000 years ago.

Dwayne Johnson as Black Adam was fun. We see him grow and evolve as a character through the movie although it’s very unconvincing. But in terms of muscles and physicality, The Rock definitely knows what’s cooking. He definitely embodies the classic superhero, made of muscle and brawn, always with the smolder and looks really good in a fight. I guess you can say that he fits perfectly for the role.

We’re also lucky that the movie didn’t just surround the corrupted champion as it’s also a jumping on point for the new DC Comics super team known as the Justice Society or Justice Society of America in the books. The Justice Society is a very promising concept for this new era of the DCEU. I love how they stuck with the idea that the team is composed of new and old heroes.

While we could see things from a mile away aka predictable, it’s still nice to know that Black Adam has one big surprise around the climax; that ties in to another point I want to make in this Black Adam review. Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Fate / Kent Nelson.

The former James Bond is the scene stealer and the MVP for this movie both from an acting standpoint and from a narrative point of view. Doctor Fate balances the team and plays as a catalyst to bring out some more good stuff from the team and even from the angsty anti-hero.

There movie has a ton of film homages from other genres whether its classic western to modern action flicks like Terminator 2. Some are overt like that Clint Eastwood movie while some aren’t as obvious.

Also liked the cohesion of the story by bringing back Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller while at the same time kind of burning away the Justice League for the mean time. I guess the film is a big “status quo changer” for the DCEU, reflecting the current state of DC’s parent company WB and the merger.

Black Adam – Gripes

I have a number of gripes for the movie like first and foremost bouts of crappy CG. Its 2022 already and there are still moments where bad CG happens.

The musical moments they chose can be off putting. I know that they want to hammer the trope-y cool moment with a cool classic song. Pero it kind of ruins the moment. Plus, that music run was inconsistent. We barely hear anything by the time we reach the third act just the same tired and generic musical scoring.

I would have wanted to see more of the Justice Society and even hear bits of the how and the why and alas we don’t get that. I wished they could have expanded more of this team and why they are working for a devious individual we all know and love.

You can see how the plot will unfold for a mile away with most of the character beats like how the main villain would appear and how he’s going to affect the character.

Campy dialogue is cringe here. There’s just no excuse or getting around cliche dialogue but I got to cut them some slack because this is a comic book movie after all.

Annoying kid is annoying, and that skateboard shouldn’t have been his main memorable thing. It’s a good thing he did a bit of Terminator / John Connor too here but that wasn’t enough. I seriously hated the moments he’s doing skateboard for some reason.

DC and Warner continues the trend of starting a mildly amusing pairing with zero chemistry in this case it’s Atom Smasher and Cyclone.

Black Adam Review – Verdict

8/10

Promising and visually appealing but at the same time it kind of flounders around as it set off to do A LOT of things. But at the very least its not scattered all over the place like the Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie. It did feel like one chase after another and suffers from repetitive fights. Dwayne Johnson is the typical muscle man and he just thrives in the role. But don’t expect too much for the former WWE Champion.

Black Adam opens today on regular and also on SM IMAX screens nationwide.

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