Samaritan drains all the fun out of an unbreakable superhero story
Sylvester Stallone has spent much of the past decade saying goodbye to his signature characters, passing the torch from Rocky Balboa to the next generation in Creed and having John Rambo literally ride off into the sunset in Rambo: Last Blood. At the same time, he doesn’t seem entirely satisfied with that potential finality: He brought Rocky back forCreed II, and had Rambo vowing to keep fighting in Last Blood. Amazon Video’s aging-superhero movie Samaritan feels a bit like an “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” gambit, made to continue the trend. Stallone is running out of classic mostly human characters whose stories he can wrap up, but now he has a new one: a weathered, Stallone-y version of a late-stage superhero in what seems like the final act of his career.
It’s a bigger, more tailored role than Stallone’s recent smaller parts in 2021’s The Suicide Squad and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 for superhero-team specialist James Gunn. It’s probably unfair to wonder what Gunn might have done with Samaritan, but it’s hard not to wonder, because the movie is such a dispiriting mishmash of good ideas, theft from better movies, and clumsy filmmaking.
The premise has an appealing directness, laid out in an illustrated prologue: Granite City was once the home of two brothers with superhuman strength and endurance, dubbed Samaritan and (sigh) Nemesis. Samaritan saved people around the city, while his brother apparently chose “Nemesis” as his nom de supervillain. Their conflict came to a violent end, though Samaritan left behind a legacy of devoted, hopeful fans like young Sam (Javon Walton). Sam has noticed that “Joe Smith” (Stallone), a loner who lives in the apartment building across the way, seems suspiciously strong and
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