DIRECTOR: Julius Avery
CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Javon Walton, Pilou Asbæk, Martin Starr, Moisés Arias, Dascha Polanco, Natacha Karam, Jared Odrick, Michael Aaron Milligan, Deacon Randle
RUNNING TIME: 102 mins
CERTIFICATE: 15
BASICALLY…: A famed superhero (Stallone) re-emerges twenty years after going into hiding…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
Long before Marvel came along to disrupt the blockbuster atmosphere, the superheroes of the big screen were the muscular, über-macho, and seemingly unstoppable action heroes of the 1980s, ranging from Arnold Schwarzenegger to today’s topic Sylvester Stallone, whose superpowers came from their beefy brawn and gruff, domineering postures. In that regard, it makes total sense to cast someone like Stallone in the lead superpowered role of director Julius Avery’s Samaritan, because not only is he jacked up enough to be intimidating even without the super-strength, but he’s also got that natural charisma that instantly makes the viewer want to see them save the day.
Stallone’s casting is a genius move, because he alone makes the otherwise derivative and predictable Samaritan more entertaining than it has any right to be.
Set in a rundown city where crime is rampant, the streets are filled with trash and homeless people, and it’s almost always gloomy and overcast (welcome to Gotham – er, I mean, GRANITE City), civilians are aware of a famed superhero named Samaritan who once protected the people from danger, but was presumed killed twenty years prior after an explosive battle with his arch-nemesis called, erm, Nemesis. An admirer of Samaritan’s legacy is a young boy named Sam (Javon Walton), who frequently falls in with the wrong crowd, including local gangster Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk) – but when he meets his solitary neighbour Joe (Stallone), who occasionally shows unfathomable strength and invulnerability, he begins to suspect that he’s really Samaritan, having survived the battle and is now leading a quieter life as a garbage collector. As Joe forms an uneasy alliance with his new young admirer, he must also face himself if he is to return to the public eye as Samaritan, and defeat Cyrus who has adopted the Nemesis mantle to spread chaos amongst his community.
It is a film that, aesthetically and narratively, feels often like you’re experiencing déjà vu, because you’ll swear that you’ve seen just about everything in this movie many times before, which you probably have. Samaritan is formed of a lot of familiar plot threads, characters, dialogue and action that you would have found in a pre-MCU Marvel movie from the early to mid-2000s, not to mention the darker themes and grimy environments that have been present in a large number of DC movies; beyond superhero films, there are call-backs to the likes of The Last Action Hero, Death Wish, Finding Forrester, and even most of Stallone’s action movies of the 1990s. Cobbled together, it’s an unfortunate reminder of Samaritan’s own surprising lack of ambition in the creative department, because it has very little to distinguish itself from all of those other examples that it is borrowing from left and right. You never feel like Stallone’s character is any different than, say, Sean Connery in Finding Forrester because they’re so similar in personality and their shared isolationism – although I’m pretty sure that in that film, Connery never got run over by a car, snapped his bones back together, and then cooled himself down with cold water and ice cream to stop himself from exploding – that you’re thinking of the much better story and character instead. You know every single arc that each main character is going to have, as well as every beat it’s going to take (including a twist that is foreshadowed right from the very beginning), and as a result it lacks much sense of surprise.
Having said that, while it’s far from the most original film in the world, it isn’t exactly boring either, and a lot of that has to do with Stallone himself. Say whatever you want about the quality of some of his movies, but the actor is consistently entertaining and engaged with just about everything he does (even in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, widely regarded as one of his worst movies, he never feels like he’s sleepwalking through the material, even when he’s being embarrassingly tucked into bed by a Golden Girl), and in Samaritan he gives a heavily watchable performance where he gets to be cool and even rather intimidating, sometimes all in the same scene. He has good moments with Javon Walton, and opposite an entertainingly over-the-top Pilou Asbæk – who is acting as though he’s the villain from one of the many overexaggerated Death Wish sequels – Stallone manages to show that, for someone well into his 70s at this point, he can still pack a fairly decent punch every now and then.
Because of the entertainment factor that Stallone brings here, it’s difficult to not recommend (especially if you’re a massive fan of the actor to begin with), but don’t expect much else about Samaritan to feel just as fresh and lively. In fact, you should expect to be reminded of several other movies that are stronger, smarter, and fresher than this is.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Samaritan is a mostly throwaway thriller, derivative of most similar things from mid-2000s superhero movies to the Death Wish franchise, but Sylvester Stallone’s reliable star-power makes it a somewhat entertaining watch all the same.
