Black Adam

Our Review

Dwayne Johnson spent roughly a decade promising that the hierarchy of power in the DC universe would change, then delivered a movie where nothing changes at all. Black Adam is a museum of Johnson brand management: he floats, he glowers, he growls his catchphrases, and the script sands the character’s antihero edge down to safe, bloodless heroism. The man awakens in the fictional nation of Kahndaq after five thousand years, zaps some mercenaries, and spends the rest of the runtime being lectured about restraint by a team of American heroes nobody in the film can name a reason to root against.

That team, the Justice Society, has real potential and gets about fifteen minutes of development between them. Pierce Brosnan’s charming, weary Doctor Fate is the sole keeper of interest here, Aldis Hodge plays Hawkman with sturdy conviction, and Noah Centineo’s Atom Smasher is pure comic relief. The action is a drumbeat of slow motion punches and rubble with little spatial sense, the villain amounts to a paper mercenary, and the finale is the same glowing city rescue the studio shipped six times already.

The end credits cameo that dragged audiences into seats was the entire business plan, and the character has not been seen since. There are pleasures here, Brosnan chief among them, but they are scraps. Our score: 4/10. Watch Brosnan’s scenes online and keep the rest of your evening.