Samaritan is an oddly enjoyable and predictable journey into the world of superhero what-ifs more in the mold of Unbreakable rather than Marvel
It would be easy to tear into Sylvester Stallone’s latest action flick, Samaritan. It would be easy to step through the the massive plot holes and point out the twist ending that is overtly obvious in the first two minutes of the movie. It would be easy to point out everything that is wrong with this movie.
However, it is even easier to forgive all its faults and simply enjoy this one.
Stallone plays a trash collector named Joe. His neighbor, a thirteen-year-old named Sam (Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton) is convinced that Joe is a former superhero named, that’s right, Samaritan who perished more than two decades prior in a battle with his super villain brother, Nemesis.
And now, there’s a new evil, his name is Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk) and he wants to take on the role of Nemesis bringing havoc to the fictional Granite City.
Of course as Sam digs for the truth, Joe comes out of retirement to battle Cyrus. And that is pretty much it, that’s the plot. It’s not overly layered, nor does it try to be.
While Samaritan has much of the same premise as M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, the approaches are very different. Unbreakable is slow and meandering, taking an epic amount of time to build to its twist and heroic reveal. On the opposite end is Samaritan, which is loud and fast paced and confronts the forces of good and evil in a similar way.
Add them up together and you might have a pretty damn good movie. As it stands, Samaritan is equally flawed as it is enjoyable, much like its reluctant hero in Stallone.
Ed’s Grade: B-
