Samaritan (2022)

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://www.msbreviews.com/movie-reviews/samaritan-spoiler-free-review "Samaritan holds quite an interesting premise, but sadly, it's yet another addition to the list of films with wasted potential. What could have been a truly dark, fascinating story about two superpowered brothers with distinct views on life is, instead, a bland, predictable, formulaic narrative with less Sylvester Stallone than expected. The cast offers good performances, but choosing to focus on Javon Walton's generic character when the prologue leaves room for such an engrossing exploration of the past proves to be a terrible decision. Action-wise, it lacks the energy and creativity necessary to entertain most viewers, despite the dedicated stunt work. A tad frustrating in retrospect." Rating: C-

Samaritan is a by the numbers action flick but that's not necessarily a bad thing. One of the key problems with a lot of modern movie making, is the constant need to experiment and at times, inject social messages into what it supposed to be entertainment. Samaritan follows a well known and well worn, by the numbers, action film formula. It tries to throw in a twist I saw coming pretty early on but that's alright. In essence, this film is inherently watchable. Stallone still has excellent screen presence and the chemistry, between him and the young boy, works well. My advice, ignore the carping from the soy latte class of movie goers who bemoan a lack of sophistication. Its often the simple things in life that are most enjoyable and this is one of them. In summary, Samaritan wont win any accolades for high brow cinema but what it does, it does competently enough to be reasonably enjoyable and entertaining. For many of us, tired of shallow cinema sophistry and intellectual pretension, that's what really matters.

"Sam" (Javon Walton) lives with his mum in a run down housing project in Granite City (no, not Aberdeen) where he is frequently bullied. After the timely intervention of his neighbour "Mr. Smith" (Sylvester Stallone) the youngster starts to believe that his rescuer may be none other than the eponymous super-hero who went missing some twenty years earlier. Could he be back to save the city from terminal decline at the hands of his "Nemesis"? Well despite the reticence of "Smith", the young man is determined that he can cajole his newfound friend into saving society. As the pair start to bond, we realise that this young man is decent and has potential and that his elderly chum has quite a few skeletons in his closet - though perhaps not quite the ones anyone is expecting. Sadly, though the young Walton is quite effective, the underused Stallone is just going through the motions and the story is an amalgam of loads of other DC/Marvel style affairs with some fairly pedestrian writing underpinning a disappointingly under-developed story. The ending has a twist but it's not really enough to redeem the rest of this rather predictable effort that, though it looks fine, is all pretty forgettable fayre from all concerned.

**Surprisingly deep for a Stallone movie** Wonderful and uplifting movie and story with some relatively deep messages that I didn't expect in a superhero movie starring Stallone. The twist was good too and nicely build up, though maybe they were building up the twist a bit too well. Cause if you think about it, the title itself already gives away the twist, at least to someone who is familiar with the Bible and knows what "Samaritan" refers to. Cause a "good Samaritan" isn't simply a good guy, but is actually someone who is supposed to be bad, but turns out to become good in the end, which is exactly what Stallone's character (Joe) goes through. So in a way, he really is the Samaritan of the movie and the true antagonist Cyrus, really is the perfect "nemesis" for him as they are actually perfect counterparts. While Joe becomes good, Cyrus becomes bad. While Joe starts fighting crime, Cyrus instigates it. While Joe bears his cross, Cyrus breaks the cross (literally). Joe is a loner who avoids crowds and hates getting attention, while Cyrus baths in crowds, leads them and incites them, and while Joe goes around looking for broken things (both objects as well as people) that he can fix, Cyrus believes in "Ordo ab Chao" or to put it more direct, in breaking things before things can be rebuild. Talking on a deeper lever, there is both Christian and occult symbolism in this movie, though unlike with many other Hollywood movies, the occult aspects aren't glorified. And though the movie appears to be morally ambiguous, it actually isn't. Joe might seem like a very unchristian hero, but in the end he is probably the most Christian hero seen in a mainstream Hollywood movie in a long time.