The Flash

DC Studio’s The Flash arrives on the big screen with a lot of off-screen baggage, but putting that aside, what we get is something loud, energetic, funky, and very otherworldly. In one hyphenated word, super-powerful!

Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) is a scientist in the Criminal and Forensic Science Division of the Central City department, who dedicates his life to proving his father wrongly convicted of the murder of his mother. One night stuck by lightning in his laboratory, Barry gains the power of superhuman speed, a superpower that he uses in the traditional manner of rescuing the public from disaster. It is when he decides to use his special power for his own needs that things become chaotic. His superspeed enables him to ‘run’ into the past to prevent his mother’s death from taking place. To his shock, in this alternate universe, he exists alongside his spoilt, 18-year-old self, who he dubs Blithe Barry. But worse than that, he discovers that his interference has removed superheroes from the world, leaving the way clear for the lunatic Kryptonian, General Zod. Can he prevent the bad guy by taking over the world?

The number of characters present in Barry’s story is remarkable: Supergirl, Wonder Woman, not one but two Batmen of those it is Michael Keaton’s Batman who steals the show, at times, swashbuckling, in others, acting in the classic, old-fashioned style. Despite this proliferation the narrative, like Barry’s flask, stays linear and clear.

Ezra Miller’s performance meanwhile give the character a super-multi-talented deepness, silliness, funny, intelligent, and believable in his duality, moving into the superhero with a schizophrenic imagination that creates a kind of zen personality, where Barry is “one-but-not-one” and “two- but-not-two.”

Technically The Flash is an impeccable product that deserves a space on the shelves of the best DC products. It travels into a colourful, kaleidoscopic meta-universe. A movie with a nostalgic-vintage feel, recalling classics like Back to the Future (which it alludes to more the once), and a similar feel-good outcome.