the flash review

The Flash review.

Reframed as the reset for the DC Universe, despite Aquaman still scheduled to rise from the tide, The Flash proves to be a flashpoint on the past of both Warner and DC and acknowledges legacy in a way that makes the multiverse relevant again.

For all the alternatives and pondering on the mutable of reality, every decision and scene is set on a path of putting Barry at the front and centre and how he deals with consequences as he attempts to stop his mother from dying.

To avenge a loss is beyond trope and cliche. Batman himself is a walking iconograph of it. For me, though, it changed something else. My mother died during the pandemic, but I’m in my 40s, and it was cancer. There is no point ‘I’ could have changed that. 

But when I was 19, I was in an accident. We were two young men who got drunk and ran down a hall without regard. We both fell. In my case, into a wall, in his case. over the stairwell. 

It made changes, not define me but was like a filter on how I perceive the world. And I often thought of it, but I always thought of it in a transactional sense. If he had lived, I never thought I would be here that I would have gone over the stairs. And that idea of both of us continuing our ways, and me as a 40-something now..maybe that more carefree I would be a bit of a dick?

The film places that dynamic at the heart of the film. It’s a desperate journey to return, but Barry Snr does not realise how far he has come. And it’s not the storm and dang of the Snyderverse. The opening action shows that this justice league lite is more Arrowverse than Snyder cut with the bat in the grey and blue and some absolute beauties in the first ten minutes with its humour. The nod to everything good in DCU and the media around it is crammed in as lighthearted but never throwaway as you see every element drives the tone.

And, of course, Keaton, I specifically went to the VUE Leicester square. I had stood there in 1989 when it was the warner west end, looking for the bat sign, feeling pissed that they had taken it down. I was standing underneath it, that is why. The film does have the same exhilaration, the same sense of wonder, and the slightly irrational but never breaking tone of disbelief. And Keaton hits the fan quote notes while never giving less than a plausible bruce wayne. A man who has emerged not from hiding but rather from having fulfilled his dream and having fallen into a certain ennui. His ability to explain time travel and casual effect, though…was a bit much. 

The best gags often lay in the everyday. Meeting Barry Jnr’s flatmatetes in theri gen mellenal zezy life and tone. The fact that trauma, danger, and cosmic threat still have to live in tandem with laundry and taxes is a massive plus in the film.  As our Kryptonian heroine with no allegiance to Earth emerges, we know the scales are greyer in this world. Sasha Calle’s ‘super girl’ gives the right level of distaff without being an unbeatable terminator. 

Ad the twists within the film and the plays not only with time but tone and story allow for a great deal of shock value. At the same time, Marvel has rendered the multiverse a place to devalue every being in it. The way this plays, you care for each mysterious character that emerges.

There’ve been bold choices in story, taste, humour, and impact. It is a great superhero film and a fitting elegy for a world that might have been.th reality is not jsut of the planets but what you grow from, and no one element defines you.

There are still legal issues. It is a flash film. It’s not an ensemble. You will watch two Barry aliens for the majority of the film. They are distinct and creatively acted. It is not captain America’s civil war. This is the flash costarring.

I washed the film; I enjoyed the film. I recommend the movie. But some things are more significant than that, and I am reviewing it. It’s two hours of two of him…

But if you see it, I recommend going before the spoilers are everywhere.

And run  like a teenager in 1989