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An Exercise In Nonsense

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Blistering performances.

Taking story lines straight out of other films and blending them together, The Samaritan is one strange and confusing film, that will really turn people off. While watching this film, one could easily identify elements straight from films such as Shaft, Payback, and Oldboy, making this film anything but original. Samuel L. Jackson stars as a con man, who has just been released from prison. He's been in there a long time and wants to go straight, but his partners son is determined to make sure that doesn't happen. Samuel L. Jackson is a legendary star that can carry any film he stars in. I love his personality and will watch anything he's in, I even sat through Black Snake Moan, but The Samaritan makes even less sense than that did. The story is just completely all over the place, jumping from one thing to another, without resolving any of the issues it presents. Often times films like that will come together in a terrific ending, but the end of the Samaritan just leaves more questions than answers. Jackson is of course very solid and shows his wide range or ability and emotion, but the rest of the cast is just awful. Independent films often times only feature one person of recognition, but when you're releasing a film like this one, which is heavily advertising that star, you've got to give them something to work with. I honestly feel like some of these people were just pulled off the street and asked if they wanted to be in a movie, their inexperience is that obvious. When you add to that a confusing story line, that is full of slang and innuendo, the result is something that is unwatchable. The biggest star in the world couldn't have made a film like this work.The Samaritan is a rare instance where I wish I had listened to my fellow reviewers and just let this one pass me by.

This movie tries to remake the movie that serves you one of the all time greatest and most shocking plot twists ever, Oldboy (2003), although I personally like the 2013 US remake as the better version of it. Yet it went way than a bit too far. The movie has so many characters, leaving most of them severely under developed. Seeing how the title sounded, I was surprised how the main twist, presented quite prematurely, was then developed into a literally turn down of a climactic ending. This movie tries to show you some kind of alternate ending to the original movie, yet it fails, and quite miserably I'd say. Having Samuel L. Jackson is a great job as his acting kept the vibe of the movie enduring throughout the entire movie. Luke Kirby lacks so much in portraying the sleazy antagonist.

I am a pretty big fan of Samuel L but who isn't right? So when I saw that he was the executive producer I was thinking this could have potential and figured ole Sam had a project he really liked and believed in, but to me it lost it's edge near it's end. I really liked the acting, that wasn't the problem at all. I found Ruth Negga's performance quite good, I had not seen her in anything but she is a very beautiful and talented women so I look forward to seeing her in other films. Tom wilkinson was great as always, he's done so many good movies and I have really come to enjoy his range and talent as an actor over the years, I just wished he had a larger role in this film) Luke Kirby was great as well, he really plays the guy u love to hate well, I thought his character was a cocky, no good, slimy piece of dog excrement and believe me that is a complement to him and his performance (although it doesn't sound like it does it? Oh well). And Samuel L was fantastic as usual. The problem was either with the writing or the adaptation of it onto celluloid in my opinion. The movie starts off interesting enough and I actually found it to be picking up momentum as it went along and it also had a twist, a twisted twist if u will that was pretty off-putting but made the story more compelling and worked well. I really thought this movie was going to be great but near the end (and thats what is so disappointing) the movie just seemed kinda sloppy and confused on where it wanted to go. It's really a shame because it had a lot of potential but just couldn't quite seal the deal in my opinion. This wasn't an awful movie by any standards but it also wasn't great and will most likely be forgotten within a short amount time, oh well I guess u could say that about most movies huh?

If you have nothing better to watch, then go to bed. SLJ was OK in this. the plot was full of holes, the acting wooden, the cast other than "Ethan" garbage. The "love interest" was a) poor actress b) not pretty c) not believable d)cheesy. The ending was predictable and cheesy. I reckon SLJ must have done this one for free, as a 12Mil budget is nothing these days. They definitely used a B list casting here, no doubt to compensate for SLJ fee. I think a lot of SLJ films are excellent, I can only assume he did this one as a favor to someone. Someone said there were a lot of twists in this movie, I can only imagine they have not seen a lot of movies outside of American RomComs as the "twists" were entirely predictable and obvious. I gave it 5/10, change that to 4/10.