Delayed Reaction: Samaritan

Premise: A boy suspects an older neighbor of his is actually a superhero who disappeared years ago.

 

There is a reason we keep retelling the Batman and Spider-Man stories. As a culture, we’ve been sitting with these and other characters for decades. We know the stories to the point that a feature of the movie can be what’s not in a version. The Batman can be notable for not featuring the umpteenth restaging of the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse uses the familiarity with Spidey’s origin story as a recurring motif throughout the film. It shouldn’t be that surprising that the MCU has succeeded so spectacularly. It’s easier to introduce a weird mythology like the Guardians of the Galaxy if it turns out they can hang out with Thor. Honestly, it’s the same reason why King Arthur stories continue to be adapted rather than finding new slants on original or less familiar tales. There’s are stories that have been crowd tested for years.

 

That’s at the heart of why I don’t think Samaritan works very well. Is there a word for verisimilitude when it comes to fake stories? Whatever that word is, Samaritan lacks it. You see, Samaritan is the story of the comeback of a hero. For the movie to work, the audience first has to feel a sense of history with the character. The disappearance and return of Samaritan has too feel tactile. That requires a sort of iceberg effect watching it. It needs a sense of there being 10 Samaritan movies I’ve never seen. The best comparison I can make is The Legend of Tarzan. I’ve really come to love that movie because it feels like a sequel to a movie that doesn’t exist. It assumes we know the Tarzan story then offers only enough details to get the outline of his prior adventures. The mythology of Samarian on the other hand always feels like a bad comic book story. It doesn’t feel like a world that used to have Samaritan and Nemesis lurking around. That’s because it’s hard to build authentic mythology. Like, imagine this movie if it was Superman instead of Samaritan. That immediately works better because the work has already been done to set a layered backstory.

 

As is, Samaritan feels a lot like when an author in a movie reads that poem from their fictional new collection. If it was really actually a great poem, it wouldn’t be wasted as a thing the author reads in a book store before the robbers crash in and start taking hostages. No, it would be in a real collection of poems actually published. Samaritan work as an authentic impression but an impression nonetheless.

 

Note: I know Samaritan is based on a graphic novel series, but the general point I’m making could be applied to that series as well. If the story of Samaritan and Nemesis was really that great, it would’ve been a comic series itself and not the backdrop of a story about a retired super hero.

 

I do want to acknowledge that I know this is very difficult to do. Many other superhero movies have the same problem: Super, Kickass, Up Up and Away, etc. That’s what makes the successes – The Incredibles – stick out so much and is why we’ve had 5 Batmen in 30 years rather than telling a different story. It’s why Logan could’ve been easily adapted to be about any generic hero but they made it about Wolverine.

 

So yeah, I was underwhelmed by the movie. The world never felt real to me. They never figured out the right tone for Stallone hanging out with the kid (Javon Walton). Unlike his contemporaries, Stallone never had his “movie with kids” before this and it shows. That is a skill and it seems to be too late for him to develop it. I did enjoy the twist in the movie, but even that relies on me buying into the Samaritan/Nemesis backstory. The only thing keeping me from recommending against this even more is that it’s a pretty harmless watch. It bored me more than it made me actively frustrated.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend