Samaritan

Many of the movies I have enjoyed over the recent years are ones where a good guy is able to put the bad guys in their place. Such was "Taken" with Neeson, the series "Reacher" with Richeson. Here we have Stallone playing a guy who tries to be invisible, but is forced to spring into action when he sees wrong.

The back story involves a pair of brothers, twins, one becomes Samaritan, who fights for good, the other becomes his rival, Nemesis. Many years ago in a giant fire it was believed that both of them perished. In Granite City (not the one in Illinois) a young boy keeps his hopes up that somehow Samaritan survived and lives among them.

This is a better role for Stallone than most of his post-Rocky roles. It is a good mix of fantasy and reality. We know that some of the "super" traits he demonstrates is fictional but fit well in the overall story line. The story is good, the action is appropriate, there is a twist of sorts near the end that requires we re-think everything we saw. But there also is lots of violence and language that pushes the boundaries of the is PG-13 rating. I would not want my under-17 children to watch it.

My wife and I watched it on Amazon streaming. We found it to be worthwhile entertainment.

Really have no clue to the thinking behind movies like this, it's like watching a really bad live action cartoon, the awful clunky editing gives the impression that it was a last minute decision not to make it a mini-series but a TV movie instead.

At 76 years old Stallone does as good a job as actors half his age, some of the physical stunts and fight scenes are surprisingly quite good but the entire movie was let down by childish writing and an overall silly story together with painfully amateurish acting from nearly all the supporting cast, the flip flop personality of characters within each scene made it a confusing watch.

On the whole it could have been good, had the story not been concocted by the person that wrote the lego ninjago animated series.

It honestly reminded me of movies I watched in the late 90s, and no that's not a compliment.

I give this a generous 5 stars for Stallone and a few really good stunts, the rest of the cast along with the story gets a big fat 0.

You know this was so close to being a good movie.

It needed more Rambo level violence, basically all the action scenes lacked a punch, I don't think I seen one person get cut. Stallones character was bottling up so much rage so to just resort to mainly pushing people was a bit of a letdown.

My main issue was with the bad guy though, I had no idea what his plan was, or why he was motivated to do it.

I'd pretty much given up on him as soon as regular people on the street start clapping him and following him into some kind of cult, who wrote that nonsense.

Anyway I'll end on the positives, it was a good idea for a movie and Stallone was great as a haunted has been hero.

Didn't have high expectations, but this was a pretty good movie. The story, with Stallone as a retired super hero living anonymously in a dystopian near future, allows him to play his own age while still being a tough guy in a credible way. The idea works well for him and he is perfect for the part. The kid, who the story sort of revolves around, is also good, and I expect to see a lot more of Danish actor Asbaek (from Bergen and Game of Thrones) who is excellent as an almost sympathetic bad guy. Thankfully the director avoids the one thing I find so annoying about these kinds of movies - endless fight scenes.

I have no idea of the origins of the characters in the film, but being a Stallone fan I had to give it a watch. A great and stylish beginning leads to a decent and well paced story, with good supporting acting backing up Stallone and his usual grunty and menacing style (nothing wrong with that if you are a fan). The storyline is predictable of course, at least to a point, but that doesn't make it boring to watch, with some nice touches here and there and a few moral lessons thrown in for good measure. There are some good set pieces too, and a good ending. Overall then, worth a watch if you are a fan of sci-fi/superhero/anti-hero films and don't mind Slys "acting".