Brief Story Line (warning possible spoiler)
In the city of Kahndaq, the people were oppressed by a group of military personnel called Intergang who were digging for rare materials. Adrianna (Sarah Shahi - Sex/Life TV series, Bullet to the Head etc) who was trying to locate the Crown of Sabbac somehow unleashed Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson - Red Notice, Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw etc) who had been asleep for 5000 years. Teth-Adam was known to be the hero of Kahndaq and Adrianna's son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) along with other people were hopeful he would free the city from Intergang.
However, the Justice Society who found out about the appearance of Adam were assigned to pacify him because of his enormous power and his characteristics of killing at will. Carter Hall aka Hawkman (Aldis Hodge - The Invisible Man, City on a Hill TV series etc) formed up a team that included Kent/Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan - The Foreigner, Mrs. Doubtfire etc), Maxine/Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell - Trinkets TV series etc) and Al/Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo - To All the Boys trilogy etc) to try and capture Adam.
So how would the story conclude? You can find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well to be honest, my wife and I did not know anything about Black Adam. I only knew a bit that he was the opponent of Shazam and he is antihero. My wife did not even know that it was a superhero movie from DC comics until I gave her a bit info before we saw the movie. But she was just excited because I was (love you for that!). Anyway, when we start seeing the movie, the first few minutes felt a bit too detail and overly long for me. Not until Teth-Adam appeared that it kind of exploded (literally) supported by the awesome action sequence.
Subsequently when the Justice Society team were introduced, it was a bit challenging because suddenly we were shown few people who were unfamiliar (at least I knew of Hawkman from Arrowverse series in the past) and we have to immediately get to know them. Luckily though, the movie focused a lot on the action which was just amazing and so frequent that the story (as light as it might be), became a bit irrelevant for me. My wife was so captivated because of the action that she did not even glance to her handphone because of boredom. So yeah, it was that enjoyable.
Another thing that both of us liked was the surprising little twist which made us view the early part of the movie in a different way. This made us more appreciative of the director Jaume Collet-serra who was experienced in directing action movies such as Jungle Cruise, The Commuter and even horror movies like Orphan and few others). Oh, the visual effects were really great and despite plenty of CGI used, I thought they were done nicely (no wonder with such hefty budget of USD 200 million). And obviously my wife and I were entertained by the wonderful Dolby Atmos effect in the theater giving us the fantastic explosion sound and also background music.
In term of cast, Dwayne Johnson truly rocked as Adam and I especially liked the character of Dr. Fate by Pierce Brosnan and the most surprising for me would be Hawkman who was totally powerful and has great ability. Atom Smasher only provided comical relief (my wife's least favorite) while Cyclone was also a nice surprise in here. The rest of them were generally decent. In addition to those, there were also other support cast such as Marwan Kenzari (Aladdin live version, Murder on the Orient Express etc) as Ishmael, Mohammed Amer (Ramy TV series) as Adrianna's brother Karim and other brief appearances as DC characters whom we have seen in the past.
As I mentioned above, the story was a bit light (people were saying repetitive and formulaic), but for us seeking exciting adventure movie with plenty of action to keep us entertained, this was not the main attraction. It was enough for me and my wife to enjoy the action and there were even few comedic scenes too, especially the interaction between Adam and the Justice Society (JSA). However, because of the rather brief knowledge and time with JSA team, we did not have enough time to be emotionally attached with them, although to be fair this is a Black Adam movie and not JSA film.
Overall for me and my wife, we enjoyed this film a lot. We like the action & major fights, the light nature and the not complicated plot. Plus that mid-end credit scene was just brilliant and brought an even more excitement towards the future of DCEU. So you really do not want to miss this and do not worry, there is no post end credit scene and you can leave for the bath room after after that scene. In the end, if you are a fan of super (anti) hero movie with lots of action and cool visual effects, then likely you would be entertained by this. But if you must have a great plot or prefer character driven type, then this one is not for you. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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