Not Every Problem has a Solution

 THE FLASH (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Superhero travelling at super-sonic lightning speeds that can stop time and reverse it (with potentially damaging repercussions like paradoxes, wouldn't you know?) Yes, Virginia, DC's very own Flash has his own movie. Is it as good as "Aquaman?" You bet. Is it as good as any Marvel movies? Well, it is superior to 2003's "Daredevil" starring Ben Affleck. You see what I did there? I went back in time to a world where superhero movies were not glutting the marketplace every single month. Back in 2003, we just had "Hulk" and "Daredevil" and I am not sure what else. "The Flash" is one of only a couple of comic-book movies I have seen in the last year, and the best one to feature multiverse timelines and characters is still "Spider-Man: No Way Home" (not to mention the animated "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"). "The Flash" is not nearly as good as those but it will do for pure entertainment, wickedly funny scenes and some emotionally true moments. 

Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) works in forensics and is trying to clear his father's name who has been accused of murdering his own wife. Barry knows he is not guilty - all due to a can of tomatoes! Barry spends his time as the superhero Flash who can run faster than Superman on a good day, and can cross the streams of time and bend them a tad while saving dozens of newborns falling from the top of a crumbling building! That is just the opening of the movie, which features cameos by Ben Affleck's Batman and Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman who are trying to catch some robbers! Yet Barry is fixated on the murder of his mother (Maribel Verdú) by an unknown assailant so he does what any anxious, mother-loving son does - he runs faster than the speed of light and prevents the murder by making sure his mother buys that tomato can. Unfortunately, this creates a paradox and an alternate timeline where Barry's mother is alive yet Zod (Michael Shannon), the Phantom Zone villain from "Man of Steel," comes back to Earth and is ready to kill billions of people. This timeline is so screwed up that the movie "Back to the Future" actually stars Eric Stoltz, not Michael J. Fox! More importantly, Barry runs into himself (oh, this movie pays more than just mere homage to "Back to the Future") and tries to convince his doppelganger to become the Flash because alternate Barry no longer has superpowers - all the other Barry has to do, 2013 Barry that is, is to get electrocuted at the precise minute during a rainstorm! Yep, Marty McFly indeed. 

"The Flash" is loads of superkinectic fun and the razzle-dazzle special-effects are fantastically realized - it is fun to see such an upbeat kid who is so innocent. That is thanks to Ezra Miller who embodies Barry and the Flash (and the doppelganger) with wit, humor and major appeal. It is also terrific fun to see the return of Michael Keaton as Batman in the alternate timeline - a role he has not played in thirty years. Not as much fun is the new Supergirl (Sasha Calle) who forecasts so much one-dimensional gloom and doom that it kills the narrative, albeit briefly. The inclusion of Supergirl doesn't jell with Flash's emotional gravitas and the third act has too many explosions, fight sequences and rotation and repetition of the same events to the point of tedium. Sure, it is loud and explosive and it is showing the 2013 Flash trying to save lives but it is all overdone and never-ending - the urgency seemingly fades after a while when we got to worry about the powerful Zod. I think I would have left out this whole Zod business altogether. 

For long stretches, "The Flash" works electrifying wonders and Ezra Miller manages to bring some ebullience amidst the overcaffeinated CGI work. Barry learns that not every problem has a solution, and that creating alternate timelines can create more chaos than necessary. It is a simplistic notion but sometimes our pain, our scars, makes us who we are.