Sylvester Stallone Starred In A Modern Superhero Movie That Nobody Ever Talks About

There's a famous anecdote Denzel Washington told about Sylvester Stallone on several occasions about the time the "Rocky" actor paced back and forth in front of his house when Nelson Mandela came to visit Washington and his family, and Stallone wasn't invited. That's a long way of saying Stallone doesn't like to be left out of popular and cool things. He might've got a slice or two of the superhero boom by appearing as Starhawk in two "Guardians of the Galaxy" films, and then voicing King Shark in James Gunn's "The Suicide Squad," but none of those were the real deal. Sly is too eccentric and ambitious not to take at least a stab at the subgenre on his own terms. He has to be the (super)hero — even if he's too old and battered for it now.

Hence we got 2022's "Samaritan," starring him as a vanished/retired superhero now living incognito as garbageman Joe Smith. Although Sly didn't direct or write the picture, he was one of the producers besides being its star, and the film was a co-production between his company Balboa Productions and MGM Pictures. It's safe to say he had all the control he wanted.

Based on the 2014 Mythos Comics graphic novel, "Samaritan" has an old-school, predictable plot. Taking place in the poverty- and crime-stricken fictional town of Granite City, the story follows youngster Sam Cleary (Javon Walton from "Euphoria") as he tries to help his single mom make ends meet by joining a local gang. When it all goes sideways, Sam is saved by Joe, whom he suspects is the superhero Samaritan, who presumably died 25 years ago.

Released in 2022 on Prime Video without even a limited theatrical window, "Samaritan" came and went with no fanfare. Critics dismissed it from the get-go (the feature currently holds a 37% rating on Rotten Tomatoes), and audiences didn't care for it long enough to become anything other than streaming fodder. Honestly, it's far from a terrible or cheap-looking flick (after all, Sly and Co. did pump $100 million into it before knowing it'll end up with a straight-to-video release), but it's so standard and unoriginal in every way that, in this day and age, it'd be hard to find anybody buzzed about it or even championing it as a flawed but strong piece of work.

And that's despite the fact that "Samaritan" had a decent cast, including Pilou Asbaek, Dascha Polanco, Moises Arias, and Martin Starr alongside Stallone and Walton. Not to mention the up-and-coming director Julius Avery, who gave us the frenetic war-zombie-horror madness "Overlord" back in 2018. All in all, Stallone couldn't really crack the recipe that Marvel and DC have been tinkering with for decades to deliver a superhero flick for the ages — or one that's at least worth talking about. Well, now that he's had a go at it, he hopefully returns to what he does best: making action films and playing the smooth gangster Dwight Manfredi in Taylor Sheridan's "Tulsa King" — or, as it stands, he can't learn from it and doubles down with a sequel nobody wants or needs, as he did so many times before.