As I am sure I have said many times in the past, I wasn’t much of a Sylvester Stallone fan growing up. My dad wasn’t a fan, and he was a strong influence on the movies I saw. Same deal with Steve Martin, really. He wasn’t a fan, so I didn’t really see anything. In more recent years, I’ve grown to appreciate both Stallone and Martin, Martin moreso, and while I would never claim to be a huge Stallone fan, I’ve seen enough of his work to make me wonder what might have been had he not made endless Rocky and Rambo movies and other somewhat by-the-numbers 80s action movies. That Stallone is at least somewhat responsible to creating those numbers might be beside the point.
Regardless, he has a new one out on Amazon Prime, Samaritan, where he might be a missing superhero.
As explained over the opening credits by massive fan Sam (Javon “Wanna” Walton), Granite City was once the home of the superhero Samaritan, a masked man of great strength and invulnerability. He had frequent battles with his brother Nemesis, who basically had the same powers and a hammer that could kill Samaritan. Both brothers were believed to have died in a battle at the city power plant, and today, Granite City looks like Gotham City’s much poorer kid brother. Sam, however, believes Samaritan is still alive somewhere and won’t stop looking for him. He finally sets his sights on Joe (Stallone), a garbage man who seems to possess great strength and a few suspicious scars. Sam has some problems with a local gang, led by Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk). See, Cyrus is a big Nemesis fan, attributing some anti-police, anti-rich guy rhetoric to the guy as he wants to fight the power. Or just be an evil jerk. Either works.
So, is Joe the long lost Samaritan? Sam thinks so, and he forms a bond with the older man. Yes, he has superhuman strength and he’s hard to hurt, but is he really the lost Samaritan? Even with his superpowers, he isn’t a the level Samaritan supposedly had, and that may be due to the fact that he’s now an old man. On the other hand, he really doesn’t want to get involved, so even as Cyrus is gaining followers and ramping up his attacks, the real problem may be getting Joe to even do something about it. Is Joe a long lost hero? And can he be bothered to actually do something?
In many ways, this is a very by-the-numbers sort of movie. I was never really surprised by much of anything that happened. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A movie like that could be a good “comfort food” sort of movie. Samaritan never quite reaches that level. It’s fine, but it’s not what I would call great. I have no idea what Asbæk’s motive might be as he’s just a bad guy. Sam is a fanboy, and his put-upon mother (Dascha Polanco) is very much a stock character of the single mom trying to raise a son without much money or the ability to keep an eye on him as she needs to go to work to avoid eviction.
If anything, this one will come down to how much the individual viewer is a Stallone fan. Me, not so much, but I can admit to appreciating he was more than a slab of muscle who sometimes acted. I would imagine someone who is a bigger Stallone fan would get a lot more out of this. Me? I thought it was decent fun, something to do on a Friday night after a long work week that didn’t annoy me or anything, but that was about all. At the least, this movie seems to acknowledge Stallone’s age more than a lot of his past work has. He’s well past seventy, and this movie actually say yes, Joe is an old man. He just happens to be an old man who can bend steel with his bare hands. Is he good or evil? It may or may not matter, and some janky CGI aside in a spot or two, I had decent fun with this, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend this to anyone who isn’t a big fan of the lead actor.
Grade: C+
0 Comments