3 Short Paragraphs: Samaritan

2022, Julius Avery (Overlord) -- Amazon+

Samaritan is a superhero story set in a grimdark city where two super powered beings once fought against each other. Brothers, one representing an abuse of their power, taking what he wanted from the people of the city, while the other feeling the responsibility to protect others. Until, during one faithful night, a fight between the two at a powerplant ended with a huge explosion, which took the lives of superhero and supervillain. Since then, the city has fallen into chaos, a Robocop or Predator 2 style dark, near future where criminals run rampant, police seemingly having little impact on deterrence. The movie is a bubble story, as there is absolutely no commentary about the world at large or whether there are or were any other super powered beings.

Lifting the same idea from Clean, Joe (Sylvester Stallone, First Blood) is a garbage man who likes to pick things out of the trash, repair them and sell them to local pawn shops. He lives in the same complex as Sam (Javon Walton, The Umbrella Academy S03), constantly bullied by the local, younger gang-wannabees. Sam might become one of them, a wannabee and actually is taken under the wing of the bullies leader, the crimelord Cyrus, but for his fascination with the lost hero Samaritan, actually playing into the "Samaritan is still alive, just in hiding" conspiracy theory. After a particularly brutal beating at the hands of the bullies, Joe saves Sam, pretty much revealing he is ... superpowered. 

The story is a template one, following all the expected twists and turns, including the supposed surprise reveal, which Marmy called about 15 minutes into the movie. But it has a decent visual style, and the roles are played well, for the most part. But for Stallone, who just can't seem to grip the pathos of his character. They want him to be depicted as a tortured man of great thought, only wishing to stay hidden from the world and not get involved. But despite some great play off of Walton, he's just not as good. I was thinking that maybe he needs a wiley director like James Gunn to temper his natural blunt tendencies with characterization. I enjoyed the movie for the most part, but did wish for a bit more nuance or even just gritty, violent style.