Review: 'Samaritan,' starring Sylvester Stallone as a superhero in decline, is an idiotic mess of an action movie

The idiotic action movie “Samaritan” is proof that “straight to streaming” is this generation’s “direct to DVD” — an indicator that a famous face on the box art isn’t enough to guarantee anything interesting within.

The famous face here is Sylvester Stallone, who plays Joe Smith, a garbageman who tries to keep to himself in his neighborhood on the seedier side of the fictional Granite City. One person who does notice Joe is Sam Cleary (Javon “Wanna” Walton), a 13-year-old kid who spends his days trying to dodge a gang-banging weasel, Reza (Moises Arias) and his cohorts — who all work for the area crime boss, Cyrus (Pilou Asbaek, formerly of “Game of Thrones”).

When Joe finds Sam getting beaten up, and tosses Reza and his pals to the farthest walls of the alley, Sam has an epiphany: That Joe must be Samaritan, the Granite City superhero who disappeared from the scene 20 years earlier, after reportedly killing his brother and main nemesis, called Nemesis, to prevent an evil plan being launched on the city. Joe denies that he’s Samaritan, but the feats of strength and tolerance for pain are telling a different story.

Meanwhile, Cyrus is amassing big weaponry for an evil plan of his own. A key to that plan is stealing Nemesis’ old mask and his weapon, a sledgehammer that is supposed to be the only thing that can kill Samaritan.

The script, by Bragi F. Schut (who co-wrote “Escape Room”), is loaded with placeholder characters — people with a handful of traits in search of a well-rounded personality. The prime example is Sam’s mom (Dascha Polanco), who we know only as an emergency-room nurse who’s always pulling a double shift. That’s about all the script gives Polanco, or us, to work with, and it’s a credit to Polanco that she can keep from laughing at the string of cliches she’s supposed to project.

Director Julius Avery (“Overlord”) manages to string together a few solid action sequences, which is no small feat when your star is 76 years old and not moving like he did in his Rocky Balboa days. 

But any sophistication in the production side is undercut by sketchy plot mechanics and some astoundingly bad performances — namely from Asbaek, but also Arias and Martin Starr as a bookstore owner with his own red-stringed wall of Samaritan sightings. One wonders what it might have taken to bring the material up to snuff, but the answer is the difference between a streaming service and a real movie studio.

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‘Samaritan’

★1/2

Starts streaming Friday, August 26, on Prime. Rated PG-13 for strong violence and strong language. Running time: 100 minutes.