In Ryan Coogler’s knockout 2015 reboot Creed, OG prizefighter Rocky Balboa was wisely kept outside of the ring for the first time, focusing on something even more terrifying than getting really beat up: getting really old. Sylvester Stallone, whose screen persona had fully devolved into parody by that point with a series of increasingly risible action films, found new depths in the most textured iteration of his most known character, a bruised fighter weathered by the many battles of life. It scored him a much-deserved Oscar nomination and hinted at a late-stage career bloom, one that was less about fists and more about feelings.
But such hope was short-lived, the actor returning to roles that required him to shoot first and emote later, and so remains an untapped potential, an action hero who could benefit from transforming into a character actor. In Amazon’s delayed superhero saga Samaritan, one of Stallone’s only non-franchise offerings of late (recent films include The Suicide Squad, Escape Plan 3 and Rambo 5 while next up is The Expendables 4 and Guardians of the Galaxy 3), there’s a brief hint of something more but a brief hint is all it is. It’s gone before you know it, replaced with more of the same. Something similar could be said of the film itself, a setup that suggests a left turn but instead takes us down a very familiar road, right down the middle.
Originally filmed back in 2020 before being hurled around the schedule three times and then downgraded to a streaming-only release when backer MGM was purchased by Amazon, Samaritan arrives with a higher gloss quotient than many other digital-first films this season. The Overlord director Julius Avery is a competent hand and working with what appears to be a decent budget, he makes us feel like we’re in a universe not too far away from the Marvel and DC ones we know so well. The story, written by Escape Room’s Bragi F Schut, is of Samaritan, a fallen hero who disappeared years prior when a battle with his nefarious supervillain brother Nemesis led to tragedy (told in an ugly and unconvincing cold open). Euphoria’s Javon Walton plays a local kid obsessed with the legend and determined to find him alive. When he spots an imposing local man, he’s convinced that it’s him.
Stallone recycles the grizzled former fighter shtick from both Creed films but with far less of a dimension here, not a fault of his own exactly but one shared with Schut, whose puddle-shallow script doesn’t give him any real grit or gristle. There’s something interesting, if not previously unexplored, about a superhero choosing to fade into the background after years of service and there are small suggestions of a world that could house a more complex character. In Granite City, fans of both hero and villain remain, with the latter gaining more of a following as the economy dwindles, down to a perceived notion that the hero cared more for the rich and the villain for the poor. We’re not exactly talking The Boys-level social commentary here but it’s rare to hear the words “civil servants union” casually mentioned in the background of a superhero movie.
But it’s mostly a very light bit of window dressing for a film that otherwise rings so many bells that they start to become deafening, a rather pointless addition to the industry’s most lazily relied upon genre. While its late summer drop was not the original intention, it’s unfortunately as ill-timed as it could be, arriving just after another season of underwhelming and overstuffed Marvel films, Samaritan doing very little to make us want to see much more. Because the setup is really just leading to a cut-and-paste good-v-evil battle, as Stallone’s resurfaced hero is pitted against a crime boss obsessed with the memory of Nemesis, a disappointingly rote baddie, played by a stale, snarling Pilou Asbæk, better known for Borgen and Game of Thrones. Their dynamic is as uninspired as the action surrounding them, which might look slicker than the average streaming title but is otherwise indistinguishable, a mush of fire, bullets and steel. As the pair fight to the death, there’s a last act reveal that only the most unengaged of audience members won’t have spotted minutes into the first act and while it offers an intriguing new road for the film to go down, it’s sadly a dead end, its implications half-suggested rather than fully explored.
There are undoubtedly those who still crave more superheroics even after such a lacklustre summer and perhaps the easy, familiar beats of Samaritan might prove worth a low-stakes click. For the rest of us, it’s a fresh spin that feels awfully stale, a Samaritan less good and more mediocre.
Samaritan is available on Amazon on 26 August
