I don't give a hoot what the out-of-touch snobs say. Samaritan is meaningful, engaging, exciting and as such, good.
Samaritan stars Sylvester Stallone in a tale of a once renown superhero who fought his bad brother, Nemesis, to save the world, or is it the other way around? (Spoiler: The names sometimes get bounced about in this sardonic fable.) Anyway, Samaritan is believed dead, but someone who resembles him roams the slums as unassuming Joe Smith, until an idolizing, wayward boy named Sam, played by Javon "Wanna" Walton, discovers him, and from there, things roll like a well planned, social-studies lesson.
Written by Brigi F. (Escape Room) Schut and directed by Julius (Overlord) Avery, Samaritan inserts elements of Unbreakable, Glass, The Last Action Hero and perhaps the last couple Rambo movies, with traces of Oliver Twist to make its point. That means its roots are earthy and its intent designed to thrill but more so to enlighten during a time wrought with unemployment, urban violence, false prophets and hollow, political banter. Yeah, sounds like the here and now, and on most levels, Samaritan is.
Stallone's hero doesn't sport a complex costume, at least not for the long haul. His armor is part of his past, which is shown in a concise, opening credits overview and through nightmares. A mighty hammer figures in, which references Thor and Steel, but this devise is more a decorative allusion than a plot twister. Our hero's exemplary trait is his redemptive compassion.
A fair sum of the plot's compassion also comes from Sam's mom, Tiffany, played by Dasha (Russian Doll) Palanka, and to counter that compassion, there's villainous Cyrus, aka Nemesis II, played by Pilou (Ghost in the Shell) Asbaek, who delights in grenade-ing the compound that harbors Samaritan's discarded weapon, which he seizes to gain symbolic leverage. If not for Smith's manifestation, it seems likely that Cyrus would transform Sam into his junior version, thus breaking Tiffany's maternal hold, but with the right father figure coming aboard, well, one can see where the plot then heads, and it heads in every respect in the proper, wholesome direction.
That's not to say the movie lacks grit. Cyrus' Nemesis is a rabble rouser of the worst kind. His rise to putrid power is unsettling because it holds an ugly truth behind it: a reflection of the too often justified violence one sees on the mainstream news. That people follow Nemesis II, that they destroy their city for no more than the sheer hell of it, is so reality based that it might turn more sensitive viewers off. That's good. The truth can sometimes hurt, and what Samaritan presents is the pure embodiment of social truth and its consequential evils, even if decorated with some beyond-reality graffiti.
I caught Samaritan a day late, thanks to my overstuffed schedule, but maybe it's just as well, coming of the heels of a doctor's office marathon of modern, Disney-princess fluff. A hard dose of quixotic realism was just what the doctor should have ordered, and I'm thankful that I finally got my swallow through Amazon Prime. I suggest others partake the same. Without question, Samaritan's medicine is worth the consumption.
