Black Adam

A mostly intolerable DC comics adaptation, Black Adam follows the title figure (Dwayne Johnson) as he’s awoken from a centuries-long slumber and unleashed on the villains menacing his Middle Eastern hometown. Filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra, working from a script by Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines, and Sohrab Noshirvani, kicks Black Adam off with an almost unreasonably exposition-heavy opening stretch that establishes a tone of pervasive self-seriousness, and it’s clear, certainly, that the off-putting vibe is perpetuated by a midsection overflowing with some of the superhero genre’s most generic, run-of-the-mill tropes and conventions – with Collet-Serra’s reliance on computer-generated effects doing little to alleviate the predominantly uninvolving atmosphere. And although there is some novelty in the central character’s less-than-altruistic behavior, at least initially, Black Adam, with its assortment of hopelessly one-note periphery characters, remains entirely unable to grab the viewer’s interest and attention for much of its wildly overlong (and often interminable) 124 minute running time – although, to be fair, the picture does boast a small handful of compelling set-pieces and Johnson’s predictably charming work as the fish-out-of-water protagonist. (Pierce Brosnan, cast as a superhero named Doctor Fate, undoubtedly walks away with the title of MVP, however.) By the time the loud, wildly over-the-top finale rolls around, Black Adam has cemented its place as one of the least impressive comic-book movies to come around in quite some time – which is a shame, ultimately, given the talent both in front of and behind the camera.

* out of ****