So Sly is back in the form of the Samaritan, which is now streaming on Amazon. Finding it hard to find anything decent to watch, I thought I would put it on, so here’s my review.
You may have seen the trailer we reported about recently of the Samaritan, and it pretty much covers the story:
A young boy learns that a superhero who was thought to have gone missing after an epic battle twenty years ago may in fact still be around.
The movie stars Stallone, Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton, Pilou Asbæk, Dascha Polanco, Sophia Tatum, Martin Starr, Moises Arias, and Jard Odrick.
It’s directed by Julius Avery, known for Son of a Gun and Overlord, and the due out The Pope’s Exorcist. The writer is Bragi F Schut, known for Escape Room 1 and 2, and the Ninjago TV series.
In the opening credit of the movie, we have a Sin City-style tale about how there were two brothers, born with superpowers, who had to watch their family die. One of the brothers became a force for good, to help people, and the other turned bad. They became known as the Samaritan and Nemesis.
We learn that Nemesis built a hammer that he could use to destroy Samaritan, but in their final battle, Samaritan saved the day, Nemesis was defeated and died. They both fell into legend and the Samaritan just seemed to disappear and was presumed dead as well.
25 years later, in the present day, a young lad, Sam, gets caught up with the wrong crowd but ends up impressing Cyrus, the leader of a local gang. Cyrus kind of adopts him and takes him under his wing, at the same time, he finds the legendary hammer and sets himself up as a new Nemesis.
Sam gets beaten up by some of the other gang members but is saved by Joe, who seems to have super strength. Sam believes that Joe is the Samaritan and that’s all in the first act, so I won’t spoil the rest.
The story is pretty good, I mean, it’s not amazing, but I enjoyed following the characters and was pleasantly surprised by the movie’s end. I liked the conflict with Sam since he was making new friends, but they are the wrong kind of friends, and the conflict he has looking up to Joe.
One of the downsides of the movie was Sam, played by Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton. There are times he is good, but there are also times his acting is just bad and annoying, which takes you out of the movie for a while, it was a real shame.
The rest of the cast is great. Sly plays a grizzled old man who just wants to be left alone but also craves attention from someone, anyone. Cyrus, played by Pilou Asbæk, is kind of a miss-cast since he’s only ever going to be the bad guy since he has that look. Although, he does do bad well.
The direction does the job, I couldn’t say it was outstanding, but it was competently done, however the action is well done and pretty exciting.
I know at the moment superheroes are getting a little annoying, but this wasn’t really a big superhero movie. Yes, there is a guy with superpowers, but it’s not overly done. This feels like it understands the audience, who they know are bored of the genre, much like Joe, the Samaritan, himself.
It’s not a perfect movie, but I did enjoy it. It felt like an 80s action flick, even with a couple of good one-liners, before and after a couple of kills.
Samaritan gets a 3.5 out of 5 from me. It was better than I expected, a decent story, but just had a couple of things that let it down, but overall, a good action movie.
Check back every day for new content at Last Movie Outpost.
To like us on Facebook Click Here
To follow us on Twitter Click Here
See our YouTube channel Click Here
