Almost thirty years ago the definitive clash between two brothers, endowed with superhero powers, Samaritan and Nemesis, took place. Both had been persecuted since childhood by men who had not understood them, one had also decided to fight alongside those who had fought them, the other had grown up animated only by the desire for revenge. In the final fight both were dead.
In Sam’s fantasy, a thirteen-year-old fatherless and with a caring but absent mother to pull the cart, Samaritan is still alive and the boy obsessively follows all the programs and sites that are still talked about (and speculate) about him. We are in the extreme degraded outskirts of the imaginary Granite City (a sort of desolate 1970s Bronx), garbage everywhere, crumbling popular barracks, endless homeless camps and no hope for tomorrow. And they all side with the bad guys, so they regret Nemesis and scoff at Samaritan.
Sam to scrape together a few dollars, to collect the crumbs that are left over from the banquet of the real criminals, puts himself in a bad company, which brings him into contact with the feared Cyrus, who is an absolute carrion who foments social unease to create an anarchy to dominate over. In addition to an arsenal of very heavy traditional weapons, he came into possession of the Nemesis hammer, a very powerful weapon.
In all his reckless agitation, Sam has involved in his misadventures a lonely neighbor, Joe Smith, a man who barely makes a living working in the collection of garbage, among which every now and then he finds a piece thrown away, but which can still be repaired. In the peace of his tidy apartment, he fixes and sells pieces of the recent past. In short, a shy character, who tries to go unnoticed, his face always shaded by the hood of his coat.
Since the actor is Sylvester Stallone, not for a moment do we doubt that Sam is wrong. First out of pity, then out of sympathy and perhaps wanting someone to talk to, Joe lets Sam approach him. But he is wrong because the boy is imprudent and involves him in everything that man had always avoided until then. To save a little girl during a fight with Cyrus’ henchmen, Joe must reveal her talents, while also attracting the attention of the media. So Cyrus cannot miss the appointment with what he considers to be his only real opponent. In a city in blackout and in the midst of revolt, like Gotham City under the influence of Bane, there will be a showdown.
The little boy Sam is Javon “Wanna” Walton, already noticed in big TV series like Utopia, The Umbrella Academy and above all Euphoria, one who surely, if he manages to diversify, has a future ahead. His character, however, is a bit irritating and fails to justify Joe’s affection for him. Cyrus is entrusted to Pilou Asbæk, a Danish actor who rose to fame thanks to Game of Thrones, where he too was the “villain” with enjoyment.
The film is built around (and above and below) Sylvester Stallone, actor / director / screenwriter who has managed to maintain an unbreakable appeal with his fans over the course of a very long and fluctuating career in terms of quality. He recovered when, accepting that he had become old, he played on this element, using it in his favor. In fact, even here he is a tired old man, his face marked by too many misfortunes, with his usual embittered grimace, which is part of him and of his characters.
And it will be this affection that will sweeten many reviews, we think. Because Samaritan, a film ready from 2020 and of which a theatrical release was scheduled, has an elementary plot, which however shows some forcing and some contradictions (it is not clear why one is invulnerable to bullets but occasionally bleeds if hit differently ). At least one final twist (predictable but not too much), lifts the plot from the most total banality. Bragi F. Schut writes the screenplay, on which he then modeled his comic. He directs Julius Avery (Son of The Gun and the most successful Overlord) while remaining in an unstable balance between history of redemption, training and genre.
Samaritan is an elementary story, for grown-up and nostalgic children of Sly, a B Movie that looks to the 80s also in the homage to RoboCop (a cabinet in a shop), with its own dignity (and special effects not excellent ), which leaves us with a wise warning, pronounced with conviction by the bruised hero: there are no whites and blacks, good and bad, with whom to side or fight, in all of us there is good and there is evil and every day you have to fight it, deciding which side to stand on.
And if we wanted to discuss whether the film could become part of the superhero genre, it must be said that aging is itself heroic and aging like Sly even more.
#Samaritan #review #superpowers #guarantee #happiness