#54: BLACK ADAM

 

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, Sarah Shahi, Marwan Kenzari, Quintessa Swindell, Bhodhi Sabongui and Pierce Brosnan. Written by Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Budget $195 million. Running time 124 minutes.

This is the role of Dwayne Johnson's life, he's been campaigning for it for the past 15 years, he's perhaps the second most charismatic person on the planet and he's built like a brick shit house. It's had 195 million dollar thrown at it, it's got Jimmy Bond (Pierce Brosnan) in it too and it's being hailed at the film to put DC movies back on the map! What could possibly go wrong?

How about the following 124 minutes? From the minute this starts to the second it finally drags its tedious, boring carcass across the finishing line. 

The plot to this has been plucked from the generic super hero playbook and offers nothing new, the characters are all, every single one of them shit, super, human and villain alike. The plot holes are so numerous that you could use this film to sieve rice. It steals from far better super hero films, and indeed during the film, the X-Men rang and asked for the Lockheed jet back, and Professor X asked for his mansion. The Ant Man called in to get his growth doo-hickey back, Storm her wind control powers and Spartacus his origin. 

And through it all smashes Black Adam, Dwayne Johnson showing all the range of a rock. Normally a throughly likeable actor in this he's reduced to acting only through his eyebrows and biceps. His character emerges from 5000 years of sleep speaking perfect English, it's never explained why, and embarks on a campaign of destruction, we learn his backstory, sorry typo, we guess his back story right from the get go and you can spend some time playing plot/dialogue bingo.  

Often in these sort of films you're left wondering where all the other heroes are, the ones who could deal with Black Adam with one hand tied behind their backs, you know Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, or Fishman, or even Cyborg, but apparently they were all out when Amanda Wallis from the Suicidal Squad called up to ask for their help, so instead we get Atom Smasher and some girl who has super wind. Although sadly it's not the bum kind of wind. It's a question that comes back repeatedly throughout this crushingly boring film, and where as Dr Fate (Brosnan) and Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) are fine they really do seem stupidly under powered to deal with Captain Egghead. Come to think about it, where the hell is Shazam himself, Captain Marvel?

The generic baddies cum cannon fodder in this film called Intergang are so inept it's staggering, luckily they all  speak in broad cockney accents, that is when they're not whizzing about on flying bikes. They are legion in number and die in their hundreds, while the inhabitants of the fictitious country of Kahndaq die in their thousands, mostly through collateral damage during the utterly generic final boss level showdown, which features our old friend from DC movies, the Spinning Vortex of Doom (soon to get his own comic). 

It's not just the story that's shit. The effects are pretty box standard too, the lack of gravity niggling, the repetitive overly violent action nasty, the endless debates about justice and good versus evil are crushingly amateurish, although it's the soundtrack that deserves a special mention. It's never lets up, not for a single second, when it's not mawkish full orchestra, with strings, it's dropping snippets of classic rock songs into the mix or the latest from Canyard West. It's intrusive, bland and oh so generic.

Apparently this steaming pile of cinematic feces heralds a new beginning for the DCU and if this is the case god help us all. Recently Warner Bros who were purchased by Discovery, cancelled the Batgirl movie days from complication because it wasn't good enough. Having seen this piece of crap the mind boggles at how bad it must have been.

You'll come for Dwayne Johnson and you'll leave muttering about how you've just lost 124 minutes of your precious life you're never getting back and how that's it for you and super hero movies, you're not going to see another one. Well, first off I don't want to depress you further, but it's actually more like 180 minutes when you factor in the ads and trailers, and secondly all that shit about you not going to see another one of these terrible films is just bunkum. You'll all be out in force for next month's Wanker Forever movie, cos that one's Marvel and they're always good!
Well don't say I didn't warn you.

So, m'lord in summing up, this was boring, generic, stuffed full of plot holes, stupid inane dialogue, tedious action and featuring a pantheon of second tier heroes you've never heard of but who all remind you of Marvel characters. 

God, it's taken me almost as long to write this as watch it so I'm stopping now.

3/10 This is for the first fight Black Adam has with the Intergang out in the desert, which despite 'borrowing' from Quicksilver and The Flash, still manages to be exciting. Plus it name checks C.C. Beck and Bill Parker, the creators of Shazam and Black Adam. 

It seems some folks are excited by the prospect of the post credit teaser, well it's not worth sitting through 124 minutes to get to, mostly because it makes all of what's gone before seem like nothing more than a boring prologue.