Black Adam 4K 2022 Ultra HD 2160p

Before heading into our time, "Black Adam" gives the exposition in short order: many years ago, before Ancient Egypt and even before Mesopotamia, there was a kingdom called Kandak. The tyrant ruler An-Kot (Marwan Kenzari) wanted to create a Sabbak crown, a demonic artifact that endows the wearer with enormous power. To do this, a great deal of the rare mineral etherium is needed--the population of Kandak went to slave in the quarries. But one kid started a riot. An-Kot wanted to kill the troublemaker, but he got the powers of the wizards of the land, became the "champion" of the gods and stopped the tyrant.

Years later, in the twenty-first century, Kandak is enslaved again, this time by the international mercenary company Intergang. They siphon off resources from the country and look for Sabbak's crown. Except that the first to find it is an oppositionist and archaeologist, Adrianna (Sarah Shahi). She also, fleeing from the mercenaries, awakens Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson), seemingly the same champion who has been asleep for 5,000 years. The girl and her son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) hope that the hero will save Kandak. But he is not much interested in the liberation of the oppressed. And, says the giant, he is no hero.

Black Adam 4K Review
Before heading into our time, "Black Adam" gives the exposition in short order: many years ago, before Ancient Egypt and even before Mesopotamia, there was a kingdom called Kandak. The tyrant ruler An-Kot (Marwan Kenzari) wanted to create a Sabbak crown, a demonic artifact that endows the wearer with enormous power. To do this, a great deal of the rare mineral etherium is needed--the population of Kandak went to slave in the quarries. But one kid started a riot. An-Kot wanted to kill the troublemaker, but he got the powers of the wizards of the land, became the "champion" of the gods and stopped the tyrant.

Years later, in the twenty-first century, Kandak is enslaved again, this time by the international mercenary company Intergang. They siphon off resources from the country and look for Sabbak's crown. Except that the first to find it is an oppositionist and archaeologist, Adrianna (Sarah Shahi). She also, fleeing from the mercenaries, awakens Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson), seemingly the same champion who has been asleep for 5,000 years. The girl and her son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) hope that the hero will save Kandak. But he is not much interested in the liberation of the oppressed. And, says the giant, he is no hero.

If you think it is too much for the plot twist, just wait, everything is yet to come. Very quickly the waking Adam is followed by a superhero team, the Justice Society, led by the irascible Hawkman (Eldis Hodge) and the wizard Dr. Feith (Pierce Brosnan) as the voice of reason. There are also a couple of young heroes, Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) and Atom Crasher (Noah Sentineo), who will both act as comic reliefs and sponsor the main romantic suspense. There is also Ishmael (Marwan Kenzari), Adrianna's buddy, who turns out to be a traitor and leader of the Intergang, on the side of the conventional evil. All in all, the story lines here are not for a superhero origine, but at least for a compact mini-series.

While Black Adam is over two hours long, the movie looks like it was cut in half. And it's not just the suspicious saturation of secondary lines, but also simple editing inconsistencies. From time to time characters in action scenes suspiciously teleport (and those who have no such skills), and many episodes are noticeably out of rhythm - the picture is always rushing somewhere, stumbling, not giving a second to rest or somehow reflect on what happened. Dwayne Johnson claimed that the film would "change the hierarchy in DC," be a new word in the genre, correct the course of the Gulf Stream, and most likely end famine across the land. It's pretty clear why "Black Adam" is agonizing under the weight of its own ambitions.

The film tries to piece together the long-defunct DC movie universe. Not so much plot-wise (in that sense, only a cameo after the credits is significant, which more people will probably watch than the movie itself), but stylistically. The DCEU was at one point noticeably divided into two very different aesthetic camps: the first was Zack Snyder and his monumental, pathetic blockbuster epics, the second was the ironic post-superhero "Shazam!" and James Gunn with his "Suicide Squad" and "Peacekeeper." "Black Adam," on the other hand, tries to be both at the same time. On the one hand, Jaume Collet-Serra's film is a mythological pathological action film with an overabundance of aesthetic slo-mo and very "snider" colors: there is only yellow against brown or blue against dark blue. The other is a sardonic action-comedy about an alien from another world who doesn't understand modern morality and learns to utter his catchphrase before, not after, killing the next villain.

The second thing the movie does much better: "Black Adam" can joke pretty good and sometimes skillfully exploits the dashing cynicism - Scala Johnson grinningly rips his enemies apart and hands out van liners like a real action hero. Attempts to be a more "serious" blockbuster only hinder the picture and look out of place. Strange to watch as Tet-Adam in one episode portrays an unassailable tragedian, and the next laughs like the most common Johnson character from the conditional "Jumanji. The existential quest of the hero, a man who never wanted to acquire superpowers, is also absurdly perceived against the backdrop of an excessive plot, where there is absolutely no time for drama.

"Black Adam" looks like a collection of half-measures. Dwayne Johnson clearly plans to make the character one of the main faces of the movie universe--with anyone more interesting than Tet-Adam in his own solo film. Director Jaume Collet-Serra has enough skill to make a competent action film, but not enough to make even one scene worth remembering a day after watching. The film touches on the really curious theme of superhero west-centricity: despite the presence of Superman in the world, no one rushes to help the inhabitants of occupied Kandak until Tet-Adam shows up there. But like everything else, the picture doesn't have time to develop a thought. Trying to derive some kind of general equation from DC's disparate style is a curious idea, maybe. Except that it's hard to put together a puzzle when you have parts from completely different sets.