Even at the age of 76, Sylvester Stallone can still get it. I don’t care if he’s had a dozen facelifts and his gait has slightly slowed, it will always be fun to watch him kick people’s asses. In his newest movie, Samaritan, he gets to do plenty of that.
The set-up is laid out in one of those prologues with a booming voice saying something like:
“The superhumans Samaritan and Nemesis were twin brothers who lived in Granite City. The heroic Samaritan eventually fought his villainous brother in the city’s power plant, causing a fire, and both were apparently killed in the ensuing explosion. Many people remain fans of the Samaritan and there are rumors that he is still alive.”
Cut to present day, a thirteen-year-old kid is living a pretty typical big city life with his single mom. He is one of the believers who thinks that Samaritan is still out there, somewhere, roaming the streets.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, the garbage man who also happens to live in the next building over, looks a lot like the kid’s fallen hero? Could it be?
It’s no spoiler to say that Sly and the kid become buddies and Sly saves the kid from bullies and worse along the way.
The plot, which I’m not going to flesh out too much for you here, is pretty standard stuff. There’s really only one surprise involving the Stallone character, but otherwise it’s a shopworn narrative template.
And I didn’t care. For a movie this violent (lots of fighting, no blood in this PG-13 outing) it actually comes off a bit corny and wholesome, and I mean that in a positive way.
Yeah, Stallone is credibly crushing the bad guys in well-choreographed fight sequences and you really do have to stop and think to yourself, “This guy will be 80 in four years!”
Is it great cinema? Nope, and it’s not trying to be. It knows what it wants to be and it does it. Period.
Samaritan is streaming on Amazon Prime and playing in theatres | 3 out of 4 Stars
