Samaritan
Sly reaches for his slice of the superhero pie.
It may just be my love and fascination with superhero myths, but I’m always game for a cinematic attempt at creating new, original superheroes, set in their own worlds, without the sacred shackles of SOURCE MATERIAL to hold them down. In a landscape dominated by the ubiquitous icons of Marvel and DC, it’s just fun to see someone try to carve out their own little mythology as a way of contributing to the cultural cape-and-cowl tapestry.
Unfortunately, it’s rare that these non-adaptation superhero films are any good. Obvious exceptions like Unbreakable, Chronicle, and Darkman aside, they’re generally pretty hollow and cheaply made. Samaritan is no exception.
The film opens with a heavily stylized synopsis of the history of superheroes in the fictitious Granite City. As the story goes, there were once two superhuman brothers, Samaritan and Nemesis, who took different paths—light and dark, respectively. One night, Nemesis started a building fire in an attempt to lure his brother into one final fight. The two engaged in a brutal smackdown before both disappearing into the flaming wreckage, never to be seen again.
We see this world through the eyes of Sam, a kid growing up in a poor area who is obsessed with the long-gone, nearly forgotten Samaritan. (Sam is played by Javon “Wanna” Walton, who is weird to see playing a normal, relatively well-adjusted child, after essentially playing a bipedal bulldog in Euphoria.) He believes Samaritan is still alive out there, living among the populace.
When Sam is saved from some older, gang-involved kids by a shockingly strong old man (Sylvester Stallone), he becomes convinced that this must be Samaritan in-hiding. The old man insists he’s just Joe, and that Sam has no idea what he’s talking about. But Sam can’t help but persist in finding excuses to poke and prod Joe about his past as a superhero.
Meanwhile, the gang that Sam’s bullies are wrapped up in is led by a bitter man named Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk), who believes Samaritan was a “false prophet,” of sorts, and that the one who really represented the will of the people, the voice of the oppressed, was Nemesis. He recovers Nemesis’ mask, and uses it to empower an army of downtrodden locals to enact his control over the city. As Sam sees this uprising form, he urges Joe to step back into the fight and save the day.
Before I complain, positives up-front:
Stallone, despite being saddled with a stale script, admirably attempts his recent brand of world-weariness, which works more often than it doesn’t to create a portrait of a Logan-esque washed-up superhero, without the benefit of half-a-dozen prior appearances as the character.
Director Julius Avery and his crew display flickers of panache for kinetic action. They’re relatively few and far between, but I had some fun with the clever choreography and camera work during the film’s sparse setpieces. I’d probably be more impressed if this were Avery’s first studio outing, but Samaritan is clearly operating on a smaller budget and more limited resources than Overlord, and it still manages the occasional, “Ooo, nice.”
There are tidbits of compelling lore about Samaritan and Nemesis sprinkled throughout. I like when these movies tease us with a rich history behind the characters without getting too bogged down in the worldbuilding. The concept of Joe’s superhuman healing factor radiating a ton of heat and putting stress on his heart is one of a few interesting touches.
Aside from that, Samaritan is pretty bland. Sam is kind of the typical “annoying movie kid,” and the flimsy attempts at enriching his character through his relationship with his loving but overworked mother Tiffany (Dascha Polanco) simply aren’t enough to give his story any weight. Likewise, Joe is bolstered by Stallone’s performance but is still frustratingly underdeveloped.
Cyrus is a wet fart of a villain, whose motives shift and dissipate from one scene to the next, and his lack of personal connection to either Sam or Joe takes some oomph out of what could have otherwise been a meaningful conflict.
There just isn’t really any part of this movie that sticks out as the reason to see it. It’s far from terrible, but also a ways off from thoroughly compelling. I like to support stories like this, as I think telling original stories by way of the superhero myth is cool, but they also need to justify their place in the crowd.
The little that Samaritan has to say about superheroes and society has been said louder and better by dozens of superior movies, and the pure-entertainment value simply isn’t there to back it up.