When his attempt to save his family inadvertently alters the future, Barry Allen becomes trapped in a reality in which General Zod has returned and there are no Super Heroes to turn to. In order to...
As the final chapter of the DCEU before being rebooted into the DCU, “The Flash” had so much working against it with not a lot to live up to. Its last strangled gasps reveal an overwrought but occasionally playful experience that both remedies and cannibalizes itself before tripping over the finish line.
Pretty much sums up the DCEU as a whole.
Taking aside the very real possibility most people are familiar with the Flash’s story, this was guaranteed to be another multiverse movie from the off-set and on that basis alone, it gives us what we’d expect out of those parameters in both the best and worst ways. This screenplay, in general, is a literal Frankenstein’s monster of thoughtful, clueless and , dalliances, muddled and uncertain of its own identity but oddly poignant when you least expect it. On one hand, it actually takes the pain of its characters seriously while also taking Barry on a precarious road of self-discovery through a multifaceted mirror and with a lightness that doesn’t fully conceal the weight of the trauma he or everyone else goes through. All the performances actually carry some gravitas and weight to them with Ezra Miller, annoyingly, holding most of the production together to the point where this version of Barry…..actually started to grow on me.
Andy Muschietti’s sense of direction centers around constantly threading the eye of the needle, taking a very simple approach to everything. It’s surprisingly, relatively brisk at two and a half hours, it’s unstable cocktail of genre and tonal mashups didn’t bother me and the action sequences achieve the lofty heights of being serviceable, but at least it’s backed up by sturdy, up-to-par cinematography and serviceable editing.
Yet, despite putting aside the doomed time travel aspect, which sets up its own rules and then disregards them when it’s convenient, the film plays it safe the ENTIRE WAY THROUGH. Despite bending the Flashpoint story to its whims, the structure of the story is so paramountly static, forcing its characters along for the ride rather than having the choices they make drive the plot (with a few exceptions) and trying to balance dramatic moments with constant attempts at lowbrow humor only “broaden” it out so far. Stripped of any excess, what it presents us offers little in the way of much narrative surprise and while there is a personal conflict within it that has a lot of gradual payoffs, it’s everything else that surrounds it that renders the journey and destination superfluous. For a story heavily dependent on recycled situations, it keeps taking one step forward and three steps back.
The goofy physical comedy is severely hit-or-miss, it doesn’t accord enough screen-time or attention to give the characters much of a presence and Benjamin Wallfisch’s musical score is mostly generic despite its best efforts, not to mention the sound design can be a little wonky.
And there’s the wildly inconsistent barrage of special effects: sometimes it looks like a badly rendered Caravaggio painting with PS2 graphics and other times, it’s just ok. Overall though, it does next to nothing to add any sort of pizzaz to the frustratingly cheap production design.
It also pulls a fast one near the end where it tries to have its cake and eat it too, chickening out of giving justice to the idea of what could have been a stirring, lasting showcase of the scars that made Barry who he is. On top of contradicting the films supposed themes of determinism and moral responsibility, it also further squanders the films already unstable final act. One of the things I hate the most in movies is when you’re dead set on committing to an idea or theme and then you switch back to the status quo.
I’m experiencing a weird Deja Vu moment here because similar to Black Adam, I’m sort of relieved that the film is finally out and able to be seen by the world after being stuck in development hell for decades. But even as I found this mildly enjoyable, it won’t break any new strides as Across The Spiderverse did everything this film tried to do but better in almost every conceivable way. In the end, this leaves me worried but a little hopeful for what comes ahead because no matter what James Gunn has in store for the DCU, things can only go up from here.
