My Review of "Samaritan"

Samaritan is a Prime exclusive film that came out in 2022. It's also a superhero movie starring Sylvester Stallone. There's a lot to like about this movie but then again it's not without its own hiccups. I found that there were a ton of things that made it palatable to go through but I don't think I'd be able to watch it again.

It all starts out with a narration to describe what had happened to this fictional place called Granite City. In the past there were two superpowered titans that fought one another. The one that fought for good was called Samaritan and the evil one was called Nemesis. I know the names are very on the nose but that's the tone it was going for (at first anyways).

There was one last major fight decades ago that resulted in the deaths of both of these powerhouses. What remains are the remnants of these superhero icons. Of course the people of Granite City don't forget and they kind of put these guys on pedestals. Both titans are revered by different sides.

Unfortunately for Granite City one guy from a bad side of town is obsessed with Nemesis and decides to steal some of his old paraphrenia at the police station. The old weapons still hold great power and he wants to use this power to create what seems like chaos in the city. I guess because he felt like his area of town felt cheated throughout the superhero clashes.

Meanwhile we have this kid Sam who is obsessed with Samaritan and believes that he still lives. He starts cluing in that one of his apartment neighbors, Joe, might actually be him. Joe starts to show some pretty weird attributes and eventually the lid gets blown when you see he does have superpowers.

The rest of the movie is Sam and Joe learning about one another and Joe struggling to live a quiet life away from the spotlight. We later get an understanding of why he has left the public eye for a life of solitude.

Around the midpoint of the movie this movie really shifts gears from a movie about two characters learning about one another to another movie. We have the stereotypical superhero movie for that first half of the movie too. It's not a crazy switch up and I guess not totally unexpected but tonally it is a little weird.

This movie doesn't want to be a color by numbers superhero movie but kind of ends up in that direction anyways. Little added nuances would have helped this movie a lot by making the names of the characters a little more believeable. Have the motives a little more believable as well.

Why would a guy name himself nemesis other than to tell the world that he's a bad guy? If you want them to be human you might not pick such a dastardly name. Also the motivation of the main bad guy could have been tweaked a bit. It seemed like he just wanted chaos for no reason. There could have been a better motivator to make his story make more sense.

In terms of action and special effects. It does the job but there are certain effects later on in the movie that look very cartoon like. They kind of break the mood of the movie. Nuances like these really kind of break this movie for me. One or two aren't bad but heavy sprinkles throughout the movie kind of got to me.

Overall it was an entertaining movie but kind of in a B movie kind of way. Don't take anything too seriously and shut off your brain a little so you can have a good time. There are definitely some good directions in this movie but I wouldn't say anything is groundbreaking. As it is I would say it's a good one and done family film. That's why I have to give this one a 6 out of 10. It had a ton of potential but ultimately fell a little short.