The Flash movie review: A time-travelling superhero blitz that aims to give a second chance to DC, Ezra Miller

The basic idea is that in the present day, The Flash is getting rather fed up with being – what he calls – “the janitor of The Justice League”, called upon just to clean up after the Big Guys. There is also a verdict coming up, where Barry’s father (Ron Livingston) is set to be wrongfully convicted for the murder of his mother.

Having stumbled upon time travel by chance — achieved by being Flash and running at mach speeds — Barry decides to go back to change what happened the day his mother died. The Batman of this reality (a wise and wizened Ben Affleck) tries to warn him with his usual speech about scars and how we are meant to carry them.

Barry of course ignores, and when he does hurtle back in an attempt to go to the past, lands himself in an alternative reality where his parents are well and old, but where, importantly, he himself exists as a goofy, prankish college-going version of himself. This Barry is happy crashing with his no-good friends, far from burdened by the woes of the world such as a murdered mother and a father facing death.

Where one thing is leading to another, what speeds along matters – but only slightly – is Zod’s appearance as the bad Kryptonian intent on destroying the Earth. In the interweaved time-space continuum, of “temporal paradoxes and causal loops”, there are some inevitable intersections – and Zod as the omnibus villain is one of them. Wherever Barry washes up, apparently, Michael Shannon will be there, snarling from behind a glass helmet.

Still confused? Bruce Wayne a.k.a. Batman explains it better – in this parallel reality, he is Michael Keaton (another former Batman turning up to play him). Bruce serves a bowl of boiled spaghetti, and says that there lies one’s multiverse – for, if time as a linear quantity is fiddled with once, it is reduced to a jumble where any strand could go anywhere.

There is a lot of fighting, all the better for The Flash to earn his Justice League stripes. There is a lot of colour, all the better to leave us confused about what is past, what is present, and just flashing by. There are lots of Kryptonians, all the better to battle with. And there are lots of people, including infants in one flippantly callous scene, all the better to endanger and then save.

Miller is good, bringing that weird vulnerability that they bring to their roles. The film is also refreshingly honest about Barry not being able to win this galactic fight to save the world alone. However, is that also an honest admission that Miller alone can’t bring DC the hit it requires, all on their own?

That is a thought one can’t shake off as the film dusts off a number of stars to give them company, a Supergirl (Calle) who really needs someone to brush her hair out of her eyes, and keeps adding subplots to spice up the spaghetti.

As for the inevitable intersection between Barry’s multiple realities and ours? The villains on Earth remain the Russians, as much the provocateur in this new reality. Superman held in a black site somewhere in Siberia is part of their super villainy this time.

The Flash movie director: Andy Muschietti
The Flash movie cast: Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Jeremy Irons
The Flash movie rating: 2.5 stars