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Samaritan centres around old timer Joe Smith (Sylvester Stallone – Escape Plan 3),who young kid Sam (Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton) somehow thinks is really the titular long-dead superhero, who passed away 20 years ago after getting into a fight with his brother, Nemesis.
Of course, as a kid, we dream up a lot of nonsense, but in this case, if he wasn’t a superhero, it would rob the film of its USP (unique selling point), and the trailer gets across how we know this is the case.
However, Sam first sees Stallone occasionally fishing stuff out of the bins, while he and his friend are taking junk to be sold for scrap, prior to falling in with the wrong crowd so some older kids can steal some lottery tickets.
Enter Borgen‘s Pilou Asbæk with a Kiefer Sutherland ‘Lost Boys‘ haircut, whose character takes an interest in the Samaritan superhero. I’ll leave you to discover how that all pans out so as to avoid spoilers, obviously, but safe to say it allows our Kasper Juul to snarl a lot alongside his cronies, all of which hang out in a huge studio apartment that they’d never be able to afford in reality, whilst all having silly tattoos on their faces, as well having their bodies riddled with them.
On the plus side, Stallone’s in this quite a lot, unlike some straight-to-video films which big stars appear in – Bruce Willis being a case in point with Air Strike, where he literally put in 10 minutes’ worth of screen time.
Given the beating-up that Stallone carries out, though, his character does seem to suffer from severe anger management issues. He also suffers from mumbling issues. I remember going to see Bullet to the Head in the cinema, and the Odeon staff said that screening had subtitles. I replied: “Well, it’s a Stallone film, so it’ll probably help!” 😀
Add in a cliched game of chase between Sam and his Mum, with the baddies, plus the latter having EMP grenades which fry any electronics, and we have a a film which is not very good, but it could be a lot worse.
Additionally, Samaritan is a PG13 in the US, but if it’s a 12 here (and BBFC’s site doesn’t yet list it), then it’s a very violent one, since Stallone does a lot of punching, and the film seems more like a 15-certificate.
Thanks to our friends at Prime Video for the screener prior to release.
Samaritan is on Amazon Prime Video from Friday August 26th, but the film isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 97 minutes
Release date: August 26th 2022
Studio: Amazon Prime Video
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 (Anamorphic Panavision)
Rating: 3/10
Director: Julius Avery
Producers: Braden Aftergood, Sylvester Stallone
Screenplay: Bragi F Schut
Music: Kevin Kiner, Jed Kurzel
Cast:
Joe: Sylvester Stallone
Sam Cleary: Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton
Cyrus: Pilou Asbæk
Tiffany Cleary: Dascha Polanco
Sil: Sophia Tatum
Reza: Moises Arias
Albert Casler: Martin Starr
Farshad: Jared Odrick
Tuna: Michael Aaron Milligan
Arthur Holloway: Henry G Sanders
Jace: Abraham Clinkscales
Devin Holloway: Shameik Moore
Chris: Frederick Williams
Omar: Kevin Mikal Curry
Pete: Roger Payano
Willis: Dwayne A Thomas
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.