With “Black Adam” coming out in theaters all around the world, many are moderately excited to watch it. But does the film live up to the hype?

Black Adam is a brooding anti-hero with a dark history of death and grief, but he is not willing to share his woes. However, with a dangerous corrupt government taking over his once free city, he will have no choice but to fight back with his new partners, a mother who is wanted by the government, and her always positive son.

But as Adam must fight back, he also runs into the “Justice Society,” a group of heroes who strive to keep peace, along with every innocent man, woman, and child safe. Black Adam must figure out a way to save his country, while getting past others who stand to stop his work as an anti-hero.

This review will contain spoilers for “Black Adam,” and will be a completely opinionated review.

To get one thing out of the way, the highest point of this film is its action. Whenever a fight scene breaks out, it is usually able to grab the viewer’s attention with its fast paced camera movements, climactic music, and thrilling moments that can bring shock or excitement, or any other pure emotion out.

“Black Adam” excels at this aspect. While not totally refined or original, the action brings enough superhero tropes, and even plain joy to the table that it is completely irresistible to talk about or remark.

Although, unfortunately, this is where most of the praise dies down. Some of the characters have endearing aspects to them, but they mostly fall flat.

The side characters all feel one dimensional and shallow, with only a few exceptions; those being Dr. Fate and Hawkman. These two characters have a bond that slowly deepens as the movie goes on as more of their secrets are revealed, leading to a shocking climax with their friendship as work partners.

Black Adam is mildly fun, but it feels as if he only really shines around his fight scenes and his interesting backstory, though it does admittedly take a surprising twist.

Other than that, everyone else falls flat. As said, the rest of the side characters feel one dimensional and boring; a standout being Amon Tomaz. All he does throughout the film is tell Black Adam all of his comic knowledge, persuading him to use inspiration from said comics to give out a superhero-like edge in his combat and motives.

While slightly funny and charming at first, it becomes irritating, as this is what Amon mostly does throughout the entire run-time of the film. He is your typical child character who believes in a better future, through one person who brings power unlike anything before.

Even the rest of the heroes in the Justice Society feel boring. Atom Smasher felt more like a stereotype than a hero, as he was portrayed in a typical “nervous teenager” lens. Of course, not that you shouldn’t use stereotypical character moods or types for a character in a film, but again, Atom Smasher feels like an exact stereotype with no sort of soul; nothing more, nothing less.

It gets a bit worse for Cyclone. She starts out by being a quirky nerd who is into science, but slowly devolves into only really shining in the action scenes. It is a great set piece in terms of bringing fun characters to the table, but fails miserably in scenes other than fighting, as nothing really happens with her character at all.

The villain of this film is extremely uninteresting, only really having his goal to be to get the dangerous dark crown artifact that can give him the power of the underworld. His entire character is focused around his motives, making for again, a boring character. He really only gets interesting near the end; coincidentally, when he is in a fight scene.

It is not like every single character needs to be dense with lore and filled with all sorts of character development, but it feels as if “Black Adam” really did not even try to give any characters the smallest bit of development, at least other than important characters like Black Adam, Hawkman, and Dr. Fate. Other characters seem to flesh out and become interesting when fighting is involved.

It makes the overall experience of the film to be quite frustrating, because with most of the characters having personalities that lack, it makes dialogue between them become boring. Especially in the scenes that lack action at all, the ones that are set to build up the plot with dialogue.

Although it should be known that the actors of these characters are not bad. They do fine overall, and there is nothing laughably awful or even bad in terms of acting quality. That being said, the actors in turn do not captivate and capture the essence of this film as much as the action, which again makes the more peaceful scenes a little bit less entertaining.

Unfortunately, “Black Adam” overall is a superhero film with all of the base aspects for it to be a great film, but there is nothing to enhance it. It makes an underwhelming experience that is only brought up by its action, and interesting characters, in which those interesting characters come far and few.

It has its merits, especially considering that the action scenes are pretty great and wildly entertaining. Other than that, it does not really have much else. I would give this movie a five out of ten. Again, it has points that are fun and enjoyable, but not that much.