by Joel Harley

Ezra Miller and Ezra Miller star in The Flash, the first solo outing for Ezra Miller’s scarlet speedster. It’s been a long time coming and, unfortunately, is now outpaced by its star’s high-profile misdemeanours and a very public binning off of the DCEU as we know it.

But where does this leave the Flash? And, more specifically, where does this leave Andy Muschietti’s The Flash? With its controversial star in not one but two leading roles, Ezra Miller is all over The Flash, and it’s hard to overlook that, no matter how many Batmen they jam into the thing.

The Flash finds Barry Allen (Miller) at the beck and call of Batman (Ben Affleck), helping the Dark Knight as he attempts to take down a gang of terrorists. It’s a riotous opening, marred only by some nightmarish CGI babies, and is a good setup as to what follows. With his dad (Ron Livingston, replacing Billy Crudup) still in prison for murdering his mother, Barry blows off some steam by heading out for a run. Here he discovers himself capable of running back in time to alter the past.

Zipping back to help his mum buy a can of tomatoes, Barry finds that he has irrevocably broken the timeline – no Superman, no Aquaman, no Wonder Woman… no Justice League. Even worse, he’s managed to turn up on the day General Zod (Michael Shannon, wasted) lands in town, demanding that he be delivered a Kryptonian. In a world without metahumans, Barry enlists the help of his teenage self (the more irritating Ezra Miller) and Batman… but not that one.

This is the Flash’s movie, but the Batmen are its heroes. As this fractured timeline’s Batman, Michael Keaton steps back into the role effortlessly, stealing every scene from the boggle-eyed and gurning Ezra Millers. Muschietti and writers Joby Harold and Christina Hodson (Birds of Prey) deliver a Batman we haven’t seen before – comfortably retired and fairly content, having saved Gotham and made peace with his own losses a long time ago. At the same time, they realise that Keaton’s Bruce Wayne is a weird guy, and so we meet him, shaggy-haired, bearded and rambling about spaghetti (in a fun series of pot-shots at Avengers: Endgame). He’s essentially filling the same role as his plastic counterpart in The LEGO Movie, but it works just as well here as it did then.

Muschietti doesn’t give Barry – or the audience – much time to stop and think about any of this, breathlessly charging headfirst from action sequence to action sequence. While some of it does look good (Affleck’s bat-bike chase is a highlight), most of it is hideous, with no effort given to tidy up the CGI paste-work in the cameos (ranging from the great to the ghoulish) or Flash’s Speed-Force sequences.

Between Affleck, Keaton, and Sasha Calle, the film does a good job of distracting from the Ezralephant in the room. It’s a shame that this will likely be the last we see of any of them – with Calle barely in it as Supergirl and Affleck giving a surprisingly poignant performance as Batman. There’s a weightlessness to the film – a sense that none of it really matters – which may bother those in it for the DCU worldbuilding.

Frustratingly, The Flash is one of the DCEU’s strongest entries yet. Its action, while ugly, is appropriately kinetic and fabulously inventive. It’s a film bursting with wit and energy; all misdirected – in service of a star one cannot support and a universe that no longer matters.

The Flash is out in cinemas across the UK now.