Black Adam (PG13)

125 minutes, now showing

2 stars

The story: A superhuman, Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson), is released from a spell that has kept him bound for 5,000 years. His once-mighty nation, Kahndaq, has fallen into chaos, its resources plundered by foreign mercenaries known as the Intergang. Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), a professor who belongs to an anti-Intergang resistance force, begs the indifferent super-being to join her side in the fight. He refuses. Meanwhile, members of the superhero team Justice Society of America, including Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), are sent to Kahndaq to capture the menacing new being.

This DC movie starts by delivering enough political subtext to sink a boat.

A weak desert nation with a brown-skinned population has been colonised by warmongering European-looking foreigners. Its citizens form a ragtag militia, but their cause is hopeless.

A resurrected hero who looks just like one of them appears. He is prophecy fulfilled, a saviour who will galvanise the people and rid the land of invaders.

Well, that idea holds true for the first act at least, because by the middle section, it is all forgotten once the booms, crashes and gentle wisecracking start.

Not only is this a waste of a good unifying theme, but the vacuum it leaves behind is never filled by anything else.

There is a brief nod to the idea of Teth-Adam as the people’s saviour in the latter section, but like so much in this movie, the gesture feels lost in a plot stuffed with magic spells and charmed objects.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra (Jungle Cruise, 2021, also starring Johnson) hopes to heighten suspense by teasing Teth-Adam’s origins in ancient Kahndaq piecemeal, through flashbacks. The storytelling trick only makes the final reveal feel more underwhelming.

Motivations are never clear.

If Teth-Adam does not want to fight for anyone, then what does he want? Float in the sky and sulk for another millennia? Why is the America-based Justice Society so militantly opposed to the idea of a sovereign nation having its own superhero that it would level a city (again, pity the poor Kahndaqis) to bring him to heel?

The final nail in the coffin must be the bait-and-switch. Johnson’s Black Adam was supposed to have been a superhero for those who were tired of superheroes – he was going to be an angry god, a seething misanthropic antihero who dispensed death sentences with the flick of a finger.

What moviegoers get with the Hollywood star’s interpretation is an enormous, flying sullen teen.

Hot take: A rage-filled antihero was promised, but a generic superhero was delivered.