In the modern age of overwhelming superhero fatigue, an original story attempting to spin the same old tropes to tell a new story should be welcomed. Unfortunately, Samaritan wallows into an oversaturated market without anything new to say. It attempts to bring newfound levels of gritty grounded storytelling to the genre, but its lack of imagination and fun leaves it in worse shape than its protagonist.
Director Julius Avery, late of the fantastic horror/action film Overlord valiantly attempts to bring some personality to the production, to no avail. The story began life as a spec script that became a Mythos Comics series, both of which were crafted by screenwriter Bragi F. Schut.
Samaritan establishes its backstory in the opening, which also happens to be the only visually interesting moment in the film. A pair of superhuman twins were born, their strength and apparent invulnerability inspiring terror in the hearts of their neighbors. Subsequently, the community burns their house to the ground with them inside. The twins are unscathed, but their parents perish in the flames. One twin decides to use his gifts to defend the innocent while the other swears vengeance against all mankind. The former takes the name Samaritan, while the latter selects the comically on-the-nose moniker Nemesis. Since no normal weapon can harm them, Nemesis forges a sledgehammer in his own blood to kill his brother. Their work comes to a climactic end in a duel that appears to leave both men dead.
25 years pass without a hero, and the dilapidated once-great metropolis of Granite City (Atlanta, as a few conspicuous MARTA stations reveal) falls to ruin. Enter Sam Cleary, a kid trying desperately to help his single mother get by and a superfan of the late Samaritan. Sam and his mother are among countless victims of a dying economy, the city's slow decline mirroring the fall of the narrative's hero in one of many metaphors that go nowhere. Sam turns to petty crime to make some cash, and he ends up on the wrong side of some local toughs. When a local old man named Joe displays incredible strength while saving his life, Sam insists that he must be the Samaritan. He's just in time, as well, since a nearby crime lord has designs on becoming the new Nemesis, leading to a crime wave that could destroy the city.
There's almost nothing about Samaritan that wasn't done better somewhere else. The biggest inspiration is unquestionably M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable. The rainy city, the washed-out color palette, the washed-up hero in a raincoat. It comes close to fan-film territory. Countless other little details feel reminiscent of other superhero films. Perhaps impressively, it feels nothing like a Marvel property, but that's the only comparison it manages to avoid. The film's villain, portrayed by Game of Thrones star Pilou Asbæk, resembles Christopher Nolan's Bane. Action scenes seem to steal signature moments from every major action film from Batman v. Superman to Oldboy.
Beyond being unoriginal, it's also all so obvious. The villain being named Nemesis is a good warning for the rest of the film. Every villain sports tattoos and unusual haircuts. All the dialogue feels pulled verbatim from 90s comics. There's one plot twist buried in the third act's big action scene, but anyone paying attention could probably guess it around half an hour in. There's just nothing particularly enjoyable about the film. In its quest to be grim and gritty, it lacks any sense of fun. It fails to garner a unique personality. Part of what worked about Unbreakable is lost in this film that attempts to juxtapose realism with heavy comic book elements. Imagine if the villain of Shyamalan's 2002 classic was actually a minor DC Comics antagonist, rather than the tragic figure of that film.
Even on a technical level, Samaritan is a mess. The acting is fine. Stallone is doing his elder take on Rocky without the decades of prestige that made that performance matter. He's fine in the role, though a bit tough to understand at times. He only reaches any substantial emotional peak in the film's final action scenes, but he handles it fairly well. Javon Walton handles the central kid role well enough. Unfortunately, the script they're given to work with is both a messy patchwork job from better films and full of holes. The film is packed with annoying faults in logic, character motivations rarely make any sense, and emotional lines rarely land in the way they're intended. On top of that, the editing is inexplicably terrible. It's consistently jarring in a way that doesn't feel common among major studio films. Both Pete Beaudreau and Matt Evans have done great editing work on other projects, so one wonders whether studio interference was involved. It's a mess on several levels.
There are a couple of worthwhile things about Samaritan. A good action scene here, a decent line there. But, it fails outright at every major thing it sets out to be, and it's a curiously joyless experience throughout. A lot of Stallone's recent career has had the theme of sunsetting his best-known characters, from Rocky to Rambo. Maybe this could be the swan song of all the terrible films he made in between memorable ones.