Viewers still love that story, and Johnson has updated it many times during his career, most recently in “ Jungle Cruise,” in which he played a character modeled on Bogart's riverboat captain in 'The African Queen.' He channels vintage primordial acting by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger but also poet-brute performances like Anthony Quinn's strongman in ' La Strada,' and infuses the totality with his unique charisma. 'Black Adam' confirms that he’s studied the classics and cherry-picked bits that seem to work for him. One thing’s for sure: everyone wants Adam to help them prevent a crown forged in hell and infused with the energy of six demons from being placed atop the head of someone in Intergang, a global corporate/mercenary consortium whose interests are represented by a two-faced charmer ( Marwan Kenzari).ĭecades ago, Humphrey Bogart played a lot of cynical men who insisted they weren’t interested in causes, then changed their minds and took up arms against corruption or tyranny. It’s initially hard for the people in Adam’s path to tell if he’s good, evil, or merely indifferent to human concerns. But the sharp edge that the film brings to the early parts of its story never dulls.Īdam initially seems as much of a literal as well as a figurative force of nature as Godzilla and other beasts in Japanese kaiju films. 'Black Adam' then stirs in dollops of a macho sentimentality that used to be common in old Hollywood dramas about loners who needed to get involved in a cause to reset their moral compasses or recognize their worth. Throughout the rest of its running time, “Black Adam” leans into the inevitability of Adam’s evolution toward good-guy status, condensing the transformation of the title character in the first two “Terminator” films (there are even comic bits where people try to teach Adam sarcasm and the Geneva Conventions).

But Worse Will Come by C.C. Adams