Tuesday 5 March 2024

Samaritan (Julius Avery, 2022)


If they are wise, musclebound action stars start turning down the volume early enough to go out gracefully, as Schwarzenegger is doing, and likewise here with Stallone, whose portrayal of a superpowered vigilante presumed dead long ago and living a quiet life as a gruff garbage man has some nice echoes of the blue-collar beginnings of Rocky Balboa.
Of course this has to change, and when the 13-year-old son of a neighbour discovers who he really is and falls in at the same time with the wrong crowd, a gang of self-styled anarchists led by a man who styles himself on the former hero's villainous dead brother, the hero has to reluctantly reassume his mantle. Thereafter the film plays out in more standard fashion with relentless fighting and explosions. But a few marks for the slower build-up all the same.

5/10

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