Thirteen year old Sam Cleary suspects that his mysteriously reclusive neighbor Mr. Smith is actually the legendary vigilante Samaritan, who was reported dead 20 years ago. With crime on the rise a...
Sylvester Stallone, Rocky Balboa himself playing a superhero? That’s what Samaritan promoted and promised to us and those promises only get the movie so far, much to my dismay. If this was an Unbreakable remake, maybe it’s mishaps would be more forgivable.
But it’s not, so I gotta make due.
The script at play here takes a soft sitcom-like approach to the eventual bond between Sam and Joe and it’s chockfull to the brim with LEGO bricks worth of tired cliches and a safe, formulaic structure that, while not terrible, makes utter mincemeat out of a flat direction and a presentation that is screaming for something beyond a PG-13 rating, an impressive stylized opening sequence and the plot twist near the end. Every crevice of this story has been inspired by or taken from something similar in superhero pop culture for the past decade in change and it’s so on the nose and in your face about it, it BARELY avoids bordering on parody.
The hammy acting definitely proves that as such; Sylvester Stallone and everyone else phoning it in to high Heaven.
Worldbuilding is hinted at early on but then drops out and is completely forgotten, none of the characters are particularly likable, and for all of its themes about redemption, heroism and karma, any depth needed to not only explore such concepts but to make better use of them is not present here. The first act isn’t anything special but the inconsistencies in logic, idiotic character decisions, and the lack of any real stakes made the second act meander and lose a lot of steam. The third act only doubles down on all of this.
I did, however, find myself digging the pacing after a while, editing is sustainable enough and despite dodgy CG, threadbare irritating dialogue and how the action sequences gradually range from average to utterly dull, the cinematography passes for being strictly functional and looking the part well. That doesn’t get it very far, however
Between the light-hearted safeness of Marvel and the hardcore balls to the walls insanity of DC or The Boys, this falls strictly right down the middle and doesn’t have anything to show for it in the end; it’s so average and by the numbers, it’s honestly not worth discussing. How much you bet this was supposed to be a regular guardian/kid bonding movie and then they tacked on the superior element at the last minute to give it a gimmick to stand out? Makes sense to me.
