The word that Sylvester Stallone was producing and appearing in a new superhero movie — and one that didn’t fall within the expansive Marvel or DC stables — gave rise to a sense of cautious optimism among movie and comic book fans.
After all, Stallone has shown a real talent for breathing new life into grizzled characters — 2006’s “Rocky Balboa” and 2015’s follow-up “Creed” is so good because Stallone was willing to acknowledge his own physical limitations, and let those movies become fascinating character pieces.
So it makes sense that Julius Avery’s “Samaritan,” directed by him, would feature him as an ailing, aged superhero. Stallone portrays Joe Smith, a trash collector who ekes out a life in Granite City. Joe just wants to watch TV and fix things while he lives out his days.
Except that Sam (Javon Walton), his teenage next-door neighbor, has convinced himself that Joe is the Samaritan, a superpowered hero who perished decades ago after protecting the city from his brother Nemesis. When Sam teams up with neighborhood crime boss Cyrus (Game of Thrones Pilou Asbaek), Joe is forced to decide whether to keep his identity a secret or save his friend.
Sadly, “Samaritan” soon becomes an oh-so-predictable and depressingly clichéd slugfest between Sylvester Stallone’s macho hero and Pileggi Asbaek’s over-the-top pantomime antagonist. The dynamic between Joe and Sam is constantly shifting, to the point where it never feels genuine, and the more general story behind Granite City’s problems is never really investigated.
There is a plot twist in the third act that briefly promises to give the movie a bit of life, but it is blatantly telegraphed, and it is then seamlessly swallowed back into the perplexingly plothole-riddled script faster than you can blink. It is a shame because you can practically sense how badly Stallone wants this movie to be successful. This could have been a really good movie.
The movie “Samaritan,” on the other hand, feels too much like a jumbled collection of superhero movie cliches that were hastily cobbled together using little more than naive optimism to hold the story together. In a similar vein to Joe’s perspective at the beginning of the tale, there are some causes that are simply not worth fighting for.
Sylvester Stallone on “Tulsa King”: “I Never Worked So Hard in My Life”
The first season of Tulsa King has finished filming, and boy is the champion worn out.
Star Sylvester Stallone claimed in a video posted to his Instagram account that he had “so much fun” but that he had never worked so hard in his life. Wearing a gleaming blue suit, a bolero tie, and an enormous belt buckle, Stallone declared, “What we came up with is something spectacular and life-changing for me.” “Love you guys, keep on pounding.”
After Yellowstone’s Season 5 premiere on Sunday, November 13, two episodes of the Taylor Sheridan series will air on Paramount+. Oklahoma was naturally where it was filmed.
He said in his Instagram post, “This was a very lengthy, difficult, amazing, mind-blowing production. Even though it was a lengthy absence, working with incredible talent both in front of and behind the camera made it worthwhile.
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In Tulsa King, Stallone plays New York mafia capo Dwight “The General” Manfredi, who is summarily banished to Tulsa, Oklahoma, by his boss after being released from prison. Dwight steadily assembles a staff out of an odd cast of personalities to help him develop a new criminal empire in a location that, to him, might as well be another planet after realizing that his mob family might not be acting in his best interests.
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Along with them, the drama also features Garrett Hedlund, Dana Delany, Jay Will, A.C. Peterson, Martin Starr, Max Casella, Domenick Lombardozzi, Annabella Sciorra, Andrea Savage, and Andrea Savage.
MTV Entertainment Studios and 101 Studios co-produce Tulsa King. Sheridan, Winter, Stallone, David C. Glasser, Ron Burkle, Bob Yari, David Hutkin, Allen Coulter, and Braden Aftergood will serve as the series’ executive producers.
