Black Adam Movie Review: An Entertaining Action Film

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Black Adam is an entertaining action movie that sees the Rock, Dwayne Johnson himself, star as the antihero, Teth Adam. 

The movie kicks off with the legend of the champion of Kahndaq, who was transformed into a demigod after the Egyptian gods give him their powers. But when Black Adam uses his powers for vengeance, the same gods capture and imprison him as punishment. Now, 5000 years later, Adam is free and ready to unleash his unique form of justice on the modern world.

Asides from the flashback, the first 20 mins of Black Adam is probably the weakest part of the entire film. At this point, most of the film’s characters were cartoonish and unrealistic, and the entire sequence of events felt like a rush towards introducing the main character. But as soon as Black Adam steps in on screen, the movie takes a different turn. 

As expected, Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam was a force to be reckon with. Armed with super strength, speed, and of course lightning, the man in black shows little mercy to those who stand in his way. All the movie’s action scenes were good and well thought out, and every time Black Adam went into a fight, I was amazed by the action and the attention to detail.

But while the movie’s fight scenes was outstanding, where Black Adam becomes a solid superhero movie is when it unveils more of its story. 

The movie plot plays with the old saying “They are three sides to every story”. But instead of the traditional my side, their side, and the truth, the movie gives us, the story everyone knows, the story only a few know, and then the truth. And so over the course of the film, we slowly learn the real origin of Black Adam and why he was imprisoned. 

With Black Adam back and out for vengeance, it doesn’t take long for outside parties to get involved, and this is where the JSA Come in. 

As we had seen from all the trailers, the Justice Society of America also feature in this movie. Though I still don’t understand why they would ever work for Amanda Waller, under her orders, the team moves in and do their best to capture Black Adam. 

First, we meet the group’s leader, Hawkman (played by Aldis Hodge), whose suit design and weapons I adore. But it took me awhile to get used to his character flaw of painting everyone into heroes and villains. This version of the JSA comes with two new additions to the team, Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo) and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell). And I enjoyed seeing both characters in action, especially Atom Smasher who was still learning to use his powers in combat.

However, the standout character of the group (and maybe the entire film), was Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan).  

Although Dr. Fate came first, I was worried that the movie might portray him like a Dr Strange copy. But I was happy to see the movie goes through the pain of showing off the uniqueness of the good doctor.  

The Black Adam movie does a fantastic job of depicting Dr Fate’s powers, and every time the character came on screen he stole it. This man brought everything, from power to history, humour, and of course the mystic arts.

I loved how the movie teased the shared past between Hawkman and Dr fate, and I hope someday we get to see the old team in some JSA spinoff.

I particularly enjoyed Dr. Fate’s final face-off against Sabbac, the movie’s main villain. Unlike Adam (and Shazam) who draw power from the gods, Sabbac channels the powers of the six demons of hell. Seeing fate fight him while freeing Adam from his prison was amazing, and the entire scene looked like a beautiful ad for the WWE.

But all this was just a setup for the main fight.

Black Adam and Hawkman vs Sabbac was something to behold and it featured so many amazing combos and tricks you would only see in a comic book. And like any good comic book fight, it ended with an amazing finisher.

The cherry on top of this entertaining comic book movie came with the long awaited return of Henry Cavill’s Superman. And like all DC fans, my hope is that this is only a hint of many more movies to come.

Verdict