It may be time to stop declaring what Sylvester Stallone can and cannot do. Fifteen years ago, when the 76-year-old made the last Rocky movie in which he boxed (Rocky Balboa), it prompted sniggers overs his prolonging of a career requiring that sort of physicality. Since then he’s made another movie where he boxed (Grudge Match), two other Rocky movies where he didn’t box (Creed and Creed II), three Expendables movies (with a fourth on the way) and two more Rambo movies. When he was limited to a voice role in last year’s The Suicide Squad, it was tempting to suggest the senior citizen was finally stepping back from on-screen action roles – only for that to be followed by another superhero movie where he appears in front of the camera, quite credibly.

That’s Samaritan, Julius Avery’s new film that has just debuted on Amazon Prime. Sure there’s plenty of stunt double work in Stallone’s action scenes, but you wouldn’t know it from the seamless construction of those scenes. And you wouldn’t know that Stallone is closer to 80 than 70 from the intensity and gravitas he brings to this role, suggesting I might be writing a review like this again in another 15 years, when he’s 91.

If it were up to Joe Smith, the only action he’d experience on a daily basis would be emptying bins into the back of a truck, as part of his role as a Granite City rubbish collector. But as tends to happen with reluctant/retired superheroes, his cover is blown when he uses his super strength to save his young teenage neighbour, Sam (Javon “Wanna” Walton), from the gang of thugs who are beating him up. See, Joe may have once been Samaritan, the super-powered twin brother of Nemesis, who protected Granite City from the schemes of his n’er do well sibling. Both were thought to have died in a power plant explosion 25 years ago, which was triggered by their epic showdown.

Trying to help his mum (Dascha Polanco) out of her financial difficulties, Sam allows himself to be conscripted into the low-level criminal enterprises of a neighbourhood gang. Their higher-level boss, Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk), has bigger things in mind. He’s found the super-powered hammer that belonged to Nemesis, stored away in an evidence locker, and he’ll use a Nemesis mask to “return” as Nemesis and to restore havoc to the streets of Granite City. It’s up to one lowly rubbish collector, who is trying to pass as just a rubbish collector, to save the day.

As superhero movies go, this is a tight little piece of work. The back story is laid out through a nicely animated prologue, and we learn all we need to know about the special rules that apply to Joe. For example, use of his super skills – which he must do when a car runs him down at full speed, as vengeance for beating up the gang members – causes Joe to overheat, one of the only dangers to a body that is impervious to bullet wounds and blunt force trauma. One of a variety of ways he has of cooling himself down is a refrigerator full of ice cream.

Stallone’s got a nice camaraderie with Walton, a reasonably promising young actor, walking that line between denying his identity as a superhero and begrudgingly getting involved once his hand is forced, all the while giving some version of tough love to Sam. For an actor who goes by the nickname “Wanna,” we wanna see more of Walton. We’ve been wanting to see more of Stallone his whole career, and the personality he brings to this role is a refreshing reminder of his star power. Instead of being a Balboa-style broken down old boxer, Stallone looks ready to go several more rounds, metaphorically speaking.

The character stuff works, but so does the action. These are clean, cleverly conceived action set pieces, whose relative spacing is easy to work out. Much of the violence is on the tamer side, but it ramps up as the movie goes, especially depending on which character is meting it out. The movie on the whole remains in a comfortably aspirational age range for younger viewing audiences, peppering in some bad language and gore but not going for anything like the aforementioned The Suicide Squad, in which the character voiced by Stallone – a walking shark – tears a man in half with his bare hands.

Samaritan is by no means reimagining anything we’ve known about superhero movies these past 20 years. Some of Nemesis raising an army of criminal rabblerousers is reminiscent of Joker, for example. The initial temptation is to roll your eyes about yet another one of these coming along.

However, it’s the kind of movie that reminds us why we keep coming back to identical thematic material: It always has the chance to feel fresh in the hands of someone who cares about it. Director Avery clearly is that person, and he’s made a nice latter-day addition to an overstuffed genre. In fact, movies like Samaritan will contribute to the future overstuffing of the genre – for better or more likely for worse.

 

Samaritan is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.