August 29, 2022
Long ago, there were two superhuman brothers who lived in Granite City. Samaritan was the good brother, and Nemesis was the bad brother. According to the legend, both of them perished in a big fire at the power station while they were fighting each other. There were still people who believed that Samaritan survived the fire and was still alive up to the present.
One of Samaritan's most faithful fans who believed he was still alive was 13-year old Sam Cleary (Javon "Wanna" Walton). One day, when got into trouble with some gang boys, his old neighbor Joe Smith (Sylvester Stallone) came to his rescue. Sam witnessed Joe doing some superhuman fight moves, which made him suspect that Joe was actually Samaritan.
Writer Bragi F. Schut adapted his own graphic novels published by Mythos Comics, which he wrote with Marc Olivent and Renzo Podesta. Director Julius Avery wisely did not take his material too seriously and kept things light and rated PG, which may disappoint some viewers who are used to more blood in their Stallone movies. A lot of the violence (and they were a lot) looked graphic, but had no actual gory details.
The kid Javon "Wanna" Walton played the spirited Sam with just the right amount of sass but not too overboard so as not to make him annoying. I first noted him as Diego and Lila's son Stan in Netflix's "The Umbrella Academy" where he already displayed much confidence and promise. Here, he had very good acting chemistry with Stallone, as well as with Dascha Polanco, who played his financially-challenged mother Tiffany.
Of course, the main draw of this film still remains to be Sylvester Stallone, still very much in possession of his action hero mode. At 76 years of age, Stallone still looked very good and solid here, and was still quite agile and graceful with his fighting and other action scenes. At no point did we doubt that Stallone's Joe could defeat the entire horde of bad guys led by Nemesis fan Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk),even as he needed to be cooled down by ice cream after each fight.
Save for an interesting last minute twist, the story was pretty straightforward. There were some preposterous situations that little Sam gets into and survives, particularly in that burning building towards the end, which needed liberal suspension of disbelief. However, Avery's film was quite entertaining and engaging, not boring. It won't earn any awards, but it definitely achieves its primary goal of providing an adrenaline rush. 6/10.
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