Powerful music and sound effects, and a top class lead cast, make this movie emotive and enjoyable from start to finish, and easily rewatchable. There aren’t really any boring bits. It’s let down somewhat by a pair of immature, low-IQ supporting superheroes (Cyclone and Atom Smasher) but the rest of the supporting cast range from decent to excellent.
Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) is made for this role as Teth Adam / Black Adam – he performs outstandingly in this movie. Pierce Brosnan was also a great fit for his role as Doctor Fate – he also gives a very strong performance.
Aldis Hodge does quite a good job as Hawkman.
America-born ethnic-Iranian actress Sarah Shahi (real name Aahoo Jahansouzshahi) does great in her role as Isis, the benevolent researcher who found the Crown of Sabbac and set free Teth Adam.
Bodhi Sabongui does a decent job as Amon Tomaz, the son of Isis, who befriended Teth Adam.
Mohammed Amer does a decent job as Karim – he’s a bit of a camp comedian playing a semi-serious role as Isis’s brother / Amon’s uncle.
Marwan Kenzari does a good job as the research team member who was hiding his true intentions to become Sabbac – the demon tasked with delivering hell on earth.
ps, What does Sabbac mean? Wikipedia claims it’s an acronym for a bunch of demonic names, but based on its pronunciation, I suspect may be first & foremost a play on Sobaka (Собака in Cyrillic) – the Russian word for Dog, since the word Dog itself is backwards for the word God and some people believe that too is wordplay intended to be insulting to God.
As mentioned, I thought Quintessa Swindell (Cyclone) and Noah Centineo (Atom Smasher) gave immature, low-IQ performances, which kind of let the movie down. I think they’re both capable of better performances – they were probably just doing what they were directed to do – nevertheless, Quintessa pulls off that nonchalant-come-braindead-flirt Rihanna vibe perfectly, and Noah kind of follows suit. This stuff is clearly dumbing down and messing up the minds of our kids – probably intentionally.
Having said that, the visual effects of Cyclone in action are very impressive, as are the visual effects of Doctor Fate – this is a big part of what makes this movie great.
It’s good to see the people of Kahndaq (an Eqypt-inspired fictional place, not to be confused with the real Khandaq village in Iran) responding realistically to the military occupation of their country by American forces.
By contrast, it’s disgusting to see the pushing of the idea that the forced injection of biology-changing nanobots into the bloodstream of kidnapped children is a medically beneficial and ‘cool’ thing to have happened (as was implied by the scene between Cyclone and Atom Smasher about half way through the movie). Obviously this was a nod towards global events that were taking place in & around the year of this movie’s release, and some of the controversial theories linked to them – as was the zombie theme later in the movie.
All in all, it’s a very impressive movie, let down by the few negative features mentioned above. It’s also bit thinner on plot than it could have been, and the main hero has a bit of a dark side, but I guess that’s the theme of the movie so we’ll give that a pass especially since we’re constantly exposed to the nicer side of Black Adam too. There’s also some good humour from time to time, as should probably be expected from any recent movie starring The Rock.
I don’t rate this movie among the best of all time (Bloodsport, The Matrix, etc) or even the next best tier of movies (The Foreigner, Crocodile Dundee, etc) since it’s a bit too cartoony and childish to generate a vibe of that level. But it probably deserves a place in the third best tier of movies, alongside The Equalizer and The Transporter which carry equally impressive vibes and have equally proportioned flaws albeit of a slightly different nature. This means I rate The Rundown on a similar level to this one. They’ve the joint best movies starring Dwayne Johnson. I guess that’s fair considering the consistent high comedy value of that movie, with two great stars and purely human interactions from start to finish, but with none of DC’s incredible special effects. This also means I rate Black Adam by DC Studios (owned by Warner Bros) higher than the Black Panther movies by Marvel Studios (owned by Disney) including Wakanda Forever which came out in 2022 – the same year as Black Adam. That’s a solid win for DC! Although Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street are the main investors of both companies, so it’s hardly competitive really.