‘Black Adam’ Review: Dwayne Johnson Plays an All-Powerful DC Villain Who Can Be Talked Into Heroism
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic SPOILER ALERT: The following review contains mild spoilers for “Black Adam.” It’s kind of a cheat, casting someone as massive as Dwayne Johnson to play a DC superhero — or antihero, in the case of “Black Adam,” an action-packed, adolescent-skewing standalone that presents the swole Samoan star as a nearly invincible global threat.
Black Adam is basically an A-bomb in human form, whose emergence from a 5,000-year lockdown calls for emergency intervention by the Justice Society of America, or “JSA,” which dispatches four glorified bench-warmers to contain the situation: Hawkman (Aldis Hodge, gruff), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo, doofy), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell, colorful) and Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan, the standout, even if his character reads like a second-rate Doctor Strange).
Ex-wrestler “The Rock” is built on an altogether different scale from everyone else in the DC universe (the next-closest hulk would be “Aquaman” star Jason Momoa), suggesting by body type alone that he could beat anyone “from this planet.” Wink wink.
Was it an accident or shrewd marketing strategy that leaked an end-credits scene — spoiler-sensitive readers should skip the next paragraph — featuring Black Adam confronted by DC’s most iconic character?
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