‘The Flash’ movie review: Ezra Miller is one of DC’s only good actors

The superhero movie “The Flash” has been plagued by off-screen drama, from Ezra Miller’s erratic behavior that landed the star in court in Hawaii and Vermont in 2022, to the Warner Bros. shakeup in October 2022 that led to James Gunn and Peter Safran taking over the limping DC Studios.

Beneath all that rubble, though, is a solidly entertaining if predictable time-travel film that boasts something most DC movies sorely lack: a strong lead performance.

Think about it. Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill aren’t so much a Justice League as a petrified forest — attractive and wooden. The talented Miller, who is personally troublesome but very good, is DC’s much-needed answer to Tom Holland’s embraceable “Spider-Man.”

That is, if they’re even able to hire Miller again. For WB and DC that’s TBD.

And “The Flash,” which is being called “a reset” to the hot mess DC Extended Universe, shares a lot in common with Marvel’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” by featuring multiple Flashes and throwback nostalgia in spades.

Is it “one of the greatest superhero movies ever made,” as Gunn has claimed? No. But “Flash” is good fun and a promising first standalone film for the neurotic researcher-turned-speed-demon.

While director Andy Muschietti’s movie isn’t a straightforward origin story, the script by Christina Hodson explains, with terrific humor, why Barry Allen is able to bolt around Metropolis and what his unique motives are for fighting villainy. 

On the day his father loses his appeal trial — he’s wrongfully spent years in jail for the murder of Barry’s mom — the Flash discovers Speed Force, which basically means if he runs fast enough he can travel back in time. 

In a fit of emotion, Barry, who now has full control of his powers, decides to jet to the past and prevent his mother’s killing by ensuring dad stays home that day. 

From there, we do the cinematic Time Warp again. Barry’s well-intentioned effort to reunite with mom obliterates the future — and past — events, and suddenly General Zod (Michael Shannon) from “Man of Steel” descends upon earth with no meta-humans (Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman) around to stop his annihilation. 

But, with the help of an alternate-timeline slacker Barry, he manages to track down Bruce Wayne, who suddenly looks a lot more like a caveman Michael Keaton than Affleck from the start of the movie.

Retired Batman, kinda, becomes helpful hermit Obi-Wan Kenobi here, while Barry is a stuck-in-the-past Marty McFly. And the filmmakers are well aware of it. Everybody Barry meets in the new timeline hilariously raves about Eric Stoltz’s performance in “Back to the Future.” (He was famously replaced by Michael J. Fox.)

Keaton was always a Batman you could get a beer with in Tim Burton’s movies, and he easily brings back his comic chops and heroic gravitas, only with a bit of pathos this time. Chills come as composer Danny Elfman’s memorably seedy caped crusader theme from the 1980s and ’90s is sweepingly woven into Benjamin Wallfisch’s new score.

It’s Miller time, though. Plenty of films have used special effects to have one actor play two twin characters, but Miller is particularly adept at doing double Barrys. Our main man is the spastic, romantically inept, shaky genius of Zack Snyder’s “Justice League,” while the other is a laughy stoner whose brain cells are on sabbatical. Both performances are seamlessly edited into a winning buddy cup duo.

And that’s the thing — “The Flash” depends less on an absorbing plot than on personality, which is why it drags towards the end more than its title would suggest. Barry’s final clash with Zod, joined by a short-changed Supergirl (Sasha Calle), gets lost in the metaphysical weeds.

Regardless, the movie is far less off-putting and more likable than most of DC’s sooty, overly serious frogmarches. 

I’d pick whatever alternate timeline “The Flash” is on over that of “Black Adam” and “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” any day.