BY CHRISTOPHER STAMM
GUEST MOVIE REVIEWER

Samaritan (Now streaming on Amazon Prime)
This film is rated PG-13 – for language, adult themes, and violence

Alright, raise your hand if you are just burned out and sick of superhero movies.
(See me waving my arm over my head with vigor.)
So, when I sat down to watch Samaritan this weekend, I was expecting to be underwhelmed and bored with the same old, same old.
Imagine my shock when it turned out to be … well, pretty damn good.
Samaritan tells the story of Joe Smith, played by Sylvester Stallone (who claims to be 76 years old in real life, but I suspect he may be some sort of warlock or something, cause the man is fit as a fiddle and that just irks me to no end, as I put on my knee brace and make noise as I get out of bed in the morning).
Joe is a garbage man who likes to tinker with gadgets and fix them. Along comes the prerequisite neighbor kid to intrude on Joe’s quiet life, and one thing leads to another, and it turns out Joe is a superhero who had been thought long dead as the result of a duel with his equally-powerful superhero brother.
Along comes crazy bad guy and henchmen (acquired from orderathug.com, I’m sure, since there always seems to be a never-ending supply of them). Joe is forced to come out of the shadows, and we are off to the races.
I hate to admit it, but as far as superhero movies go, this one is above-the-fold, with a good story and real environments and real issues that any inner-city kid can tell you about. (Including me, since I grew up in New York City in the 1970’s, and let me tell you, that place was nearly a gladiator academy back then.)
This one gets four out of five stars.
Streaming on Amazon Prime right now, Samaritan is excellent and worth the time to watch it, but be warned: the language is, shall we say, salty. Joe is NOT a warm and cuddly type, and the violence is graphic and brutal.
This superhero movie is not for the little ones and probably should have been rated R. If they had just tossed in a guy smoking a cigarette, it would have been, but slam a grenade into a guy’s stomach, and it’s cool … PG-13 it is. We live in a very odd world.