Mark Reviews Movies: SAMARITAN

Samaritan, Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | August 25, 2022

Bragi F. Schut's screenplay for Samaritan tries to be more than a simple superhero tale. The hero of Granite City is long gone, apparently having been killed in a spectacular battle with his villainous archnemesis, who also happened to be his super-powered twin brother. A couple decades have passed since then, and this city has fallen into economic turmoil and is succumbing to rising violence. At one point in director Julius Avery's movie, the older man whom a young boy is certain is that superhero says that this is the inevitable result of people putting their trust in a couple of "genetic freaks" to figure out their problems.

There are a few such moments of self-reflection in Schut's script, which does ultimately and unfortunately become little more than routine superhero story—albeit one about an older and cynical super-powered man that's more about brutal brawls than high-flying spectacle. In between the lines of that familiar plot, though, are some questions about the impact of and reliance on superheroes as sources of inspiration, as easy fixes for deeper social ills, and as examples for how we're supposed to live.

The movie, of course, takes place in a world where super-humans are real, but considering how much these fictional stories have overtaken the media landscape and dominated the cultural conversation for more than a decade now, our real world has made these characters about as important and real as any fictional people can be. This movie, then, isn't just about a fictional world where superheroes once actually existed.

It's about this world, where people dream and fantasize about fictional superheroes whose existence does serve as some kind of model for the people we could be and the world we might want to see. Joe (Sylvester Stallone), the garbage man who may or may not have been the superhero named Samaritan about 20 years ago, isn't some model hero, then, but more a warning. Well, he is that, until he isn't even much of a character anymore by the time Schut's screenplay has reduced him and this plot to formula—as well as a long game of messing with our expectations.

The whole here doesn't add up to much except the familiar and the confusingly twisty by the end, and that's too bad. Schut seems to be getting at something deeper and almost subversive about the nature of superheroes and our current cultural obsession with them, and Avery displays a fine sense of grounding this story with some gritty realism in its portrayals of everyday lives, social upheaval, and those fierce fights. For his part, Stallone also shows a real understanding of this character: a washed-up hero who laments being unable to do anything and becomes increasingly enraged about being forced into having to do something.

The components of a solid and introspective tale are here and occasionally considered—enough that the ideas feel as if they'll be explored. The filmmakers, though, have other, less intriguing, and more common things in mind.

All those decades after the apparent deaths of Samaritan and his archnemesis/brother the Nemesis, a boy named Sam (Javon "Wanna" Walton), being raised by his mother Tiffany (Dascha Polanco) in a rough part of town, is obsessed with the superhero. The kid even believes that Samaritan is still alive and in hiding, and after Joe the garbage man easily fights off some bullies and bends a switchblade with his bare hand, Sam becomes convinced the quiet, mysterious man from the apartment building across the way is that superhero.

Obviously, Joe does have superpowers, and the most effective scenes here involve Joe, whose initial look of despair at seeing the kid being chased by those bullies says a lot about the guy's inner conflict, and Sam simply discussing and debating the role of superheroes in the world. The kid just wants some sense of hope, but the old man knows that any hope brought by a masked vigilante is false and fleeting against the real problems of society. Schut eventually gets to a moral of the tale, involving the idea that people are capable of both good and ill, and that feels like a conversation that's missing before the epilogue.

To be fair, Schut does try to make it register in the character of Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk), a local gang leader and pseudo-activist who idolizes the Nemesis in the same way Sam reveres Samaritan. Cyrus is of the mind that the supervillain was the only one who seemed to fight for the downtrodden, while Samaritan was nothing more than a glorified cop. Any sense of this perspective as a legitimate one or this character as anything other than a generic villain, though, is undone by his elaborate scheme—an attempt to shut off power to the entire city to cause mass looting and rioting—and his ruthless, murderous ways.

As a generically plotted but down-to-earth superhero story, Samaritan more or less works in certain moments, especially by way of Stallone's conflicted performance and the scrappy but hard-hitting action scenes. The movie, though, clearly has larger ambitions in regards to this character and what his existence—what he stands for and who he actually is—means to society. As for how the filmmakers address those ideas, they don't, really, because we can't let such things get in the way of a big, climactic showdown.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products