Streaming on Amazon Prime
Back in 2019, Sylvester Stallone injured my fandom toward him with Rambo: Last Blood, a miserable, racist, sexist slog of a film that felt less like a movie and more like a GOP propaganda piece pandering to the kind of anti-immigration crowd that doesn't realize nor care just how much they themselves are descendants of immigrants (but I digress). It was my worst film that year, and I felt the whole movie-going public deserved an apology. While we may never get one, we have been granted yet another punching bag in Stallone's latest line-up of tax-paying projects plopped on the bargain bin of streaming services, Amazon Prime. Samaritan may not be as toxic nor dangerous as Rambo: Last Blood, but it is about as terribly executed and nonsensical. It is a superhero movie for this kind of audience:
The story follows a young boy named Sam (Javon 'Wanna' Walton) living in a gritty & gruff rundown neighborhood with his single mother. After a skirmish with some local gang youths, he is saved from a savage beating by his neighbor, an old garbage man named Joe (Sylvester Stallone), who appears to have superhuman levels of strength. This causes Sam to believe he may be the legendary superhero, Samaritan, who was presumed dead almost thirty years ago after a fight with his arch-enemy, Nemesis. They form an unusual friendship as they partake in cliché old guy & young kid interactions (seen in every other movie with this kind of setup but without any kind of nuance). Meanwhile, a local crime boss named Cyrus (Pilou Asbaek) has stolen the helmet and weapon once belonging to Nemesis and uses them to take control of the city. This eventually prompts Joe to take on the old mantle and face his past in the most asinine and predictable way possible.
I don't mean to sound like a pseudo-intellectual, but I predicted the "twist" of the film within the first five minutes. Not because I had seen this kind of twist before but because it was so painstakingly obvious that I had almost expected it to be a deliberate misdirect towards something genuinely clever. Spoilers: it wasn't; it was just stupid!
The script is unquestionably the weakest aspect of the film. Imagine if David Ayer wrote Logan while watching Wrestle Mania! It feels like a lazy amalgamation of every old-reluctant-hero movie thrown into a blender with excessive amounts of steroids and testosterone. Not even director Julius Avery, best known (okay, only known) for the action/horror masterpiece Overlord, can salvage anything usable from the script.
Samaritan is trash in every possible way and not the good kind! It's just bad, plain and simple! It is not unintentionally funny, it is not accidentally clever, and it is not ironically enjoyable. If you're looking for a Stallone movie with those qualities, watch Judge Dredd. It may not be technically sound, but it is much more entertaining than this piece of junk.
Also, movie studios that aren't Marvel must stop trying to de-age their stars.
Ladies & gentlemen, I am TheNorm; thank you all for reading.
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