Samaritan Review
After many delays, the latest Sylvester Stallone lead comic book movie Samaritan drops on Amazon Prime Video. And what’s interesting about this movie is that it’s not based on a Marvel or DC property, but it is based on a comic book so it is a comic book movie. How is the movie? Is it another great Sylvester Stallone movie? Let’s get started!
The Good:
And what I appreciated about this movie is that it doesn’t feel like it has to match the ambitions, scope, or tone of the other comic book movies. As much as I love the MCU, they have influenced a lot of big franchise films to be quicker paced and have a lot of jokes sprinkled into it. So DC was trying to copy that formula with Suicide Squad (2016) and Justice League (2017), and that didn’t really work. Even several other franchises tried to do this and they failed at it. This movie doesn’t do that, they had a story for a street level and grounded comic book movie and they told it the way they wanted to tell it. So the scope is very small scale; there aren’t all that many jokes sprinkled through-out the movie. Plus the run time for the movie is 1 hour and 42 minutes, and that’s refreshing when comic book movies such as Eternals, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and The Batman all have these 2 ½ hour long run times, this movie doesn’t have that. So to sum it up, I appreciated that they didn’t follow the formula of other comic book movies.
Along those same lines since this is a comic book movie that isn’t tied to Marvel or DC it can just stand on its own. Both Marvel and DC are multiverses so whenever a new Marvel or DC comes out, you immediately ask “how does this tie together?”. Is Venom and Morbius in the MCU? But since this isn’t that, it’s refreshing. It is a bit refreshing that we are getting a comic book movie that doesn’t have a multiverse tied to it so it kind of just stands on its own as a darker grounded comic book movie and that’s nice. As much as I love the comic book movie genre and so many Marvel and DC movies I do also like this approach.
As it is a Sylvester Stallone movie, you have to talk about Sylvester Stallone in the lead. And he’s great in the movie, he can play this grumpy old man really well but still a character that you like and care about. Stallone is 76 years old, so he is an “old man” but he still looks intimidating. He looks like an old man that you don’t want to pick a fight with. And he is simply put…a Hollywood legend, he’s been in the industry for almost 50 years so just having him in this movie pulls it all together. The movie doesn’t have a strong supporting cast, so Stallone has to do all of the heavy lifting and I thought it worked.
Finally, I do appreciate that central idea that is being presented here. Where Samaritan was this simple hope decades past and his villain…Nemesis was the villain that wanted chaos. And so in the present day people are divided as to whether Samaritan or Nemesis was correct, and so you have the city divided based on this idea. And I just appreciated that, it is an interesting idea and a good question. Are the bad guys always wrong? Are the good guys always right?
The Bad:
And the big thing here is that the tone for the movie is a bit uneven. Most of this movie is pretty dark, it’s not a comedy there are jokes but they are more subtle jokes. And some of the actions that the characters do aren’t very good, kids got beaten up several times in the movie. So this is a PG-13, but it’s a hard PG-13. I think this movie easily could have been rated R. But sometimes the humor, things that Stallone does, and the score don’t match with the rest of the movie. The movie opens up with a montage telling the origin story for Samaritan and Nemesis and you have the main character of the movie doing the voice over for it, the way it’s done feels like it should be in a more family friendly movie. Immediately when it started I don’t think it worked with the rest of the movie.
Also some of the CGI for the movie is pretty noticeable. The finale takes place in a burning building and very clearly they are on green screen. Because there is fire all around them but nobody seems to be bothered by that. There is no smoke whatever people aren’t trying to evacuate the building. So it’s just a weird choice that they made in the finale, that didn’t make any sense to me.
Finally, I wish they did give Samaritan more depth in the movie. They tried this backstory and origin story as a mystery, it’s presented to us in segments but I wish we got more of it. We don’t fully understand what makes him tick, why is he the way that he is. And so I just wish that movie spent more time fleshing out him and rather keeping his back story a mystery but presenting it more to the audience. Maybe if this movie does get a sequel it can flesh that out, but as is I do think it is a flaw in the movie.
Final Thoughts: In general, my excitement level for Samaritan was pretty middle of the road. I wasn’t super looking forward to this movie but I was interested because I like Stallone the genre. And this was a good enough Stallone movie and a good enough comic book movie. I feel like if the tone, CGI, and main character was given more depth then this might have been a much better movie.
The Score: 8.0/10 (B-)
Comments