Film review | Ezra Miller’s The Flash isn’t quite the resurrection DC wished for but is a foundation to build on

In a scene from DC’s The Flash, the protagonist is trying to help people in an under-attack Gotham. A hospital building collapses in slow motion as Ezra Miller’s cocky version of the eponymous superhero saves at least half a dozen babies, by moving through the falling rubble. It’s a Marvel-like moment if you like, where the goofiness of the sequence attempts to create a springboard for the film’s quirks that are likely to follow. This is one of DC’s lightest, most fun films in recent memory and yet it’s also somewhat hamstrung by the indecisiveness what, if anything, does it want to be in the end. Part teen comedy, part superhero film and part fan-service to DC’s better bets, this film shows signs of life, at times even innovation, but is eventually crushed under the weight of expectations it comes tied with.

For a film that was announced as early as 2014, and has been through creative bumps, near collapses and a toxic star presence, The Flash is probably not as bad as you’d expect a film with such a toxic origin story to be. We meet Barry Allen (Miller) as he works in the forensic department at the Central city police station. Allen is tardy, a bit of a loner but possibly also a quasi-genius. He obviously has a tortured past in the context of is parents. His father is serving time, and may find himself on death row for committing the murder of his wife. The complicated shadow of that crime is never quite situated in the space of a torturous moral conundrum — the direction you hope a brave superhero film, at least a DC film, will eventually take. Rather than evaluate the father figure’s culpability the film goes all out to rescue him as Flash, for the fourth or fifth time in recent memory takes us into the multiverse.

By travelling back in time, Allen takes us to a timeline where none of the other superheroes bar one, exists. This one sole proprietor of heroism is of course the scene-stealing act of Michael Keaton returning as an unkempt, and directionless Bruce Wayne, who has given up the cape after crime in Gotham has been erased. Again, the implication of a Batman becoming existential in the absence of crime is never queried beyond the surface. In the process of travelling to a time where he can save his mother, Allen teams up with a younger, more annoying version of himself, the then Batman and — not a spoiler — Supergirl to take on Zod, Superman’s nemesis from Man of Steel. There are plenty of holes to be picked into DC’s supposition of time travel here. To pull of the thuggery of such make-believe ideas you need to summon charm; the kind that Miller unfortunately, can’t provide; at least not in twos. Thankfully that charm is somewhat supplied by Keaton’s magnanimous resurgence as the Batman who probably didn’t get the love it deserved.