Samaritan (2022)

Sylvester Stallone’s latest masterpiece, the 2022 movie Samaritan, portrays Joe Smith, a somewhat mysterious and lone garbage collector who, after saving his 13-year-old neighbor Sam from being beaten to death, is forced to step out of the shadows and finish what he had started over two decades ago.

Characters from the movie.

The character is portrayed as a cynical old man who’s trying to leave his old life behind him, namely that of a costumed vigilante running around the city delivering justice, for initially unknown reasons, but presumed to be the result of his hated, yet also beloved, twin brother’s death. During the course of the movie, Joe undergoes a great character development: after saving Sam from some punk kids who were also members of a gang, and being kidnapped by said gang in order to lure him out, Joe has no other choice but to go and rescue him, after developing a liking to him, from the gang leader Cyrus, who planned to plunge the entire city into darkness and anarchy.

Despite being a “good guy”, Joe fights all the gang members ruthlessly and then finally gets confronted by Cyrus. When in the end he is referred to as ‘Samaritan’, it shows that despite all that darkness, Joe has the potential to do good and never actually wanted innocents to get hurt, thus it is quite fitting for him to be at center of the movie poster, foreshadowing his eventual destiny and truly earning his current title.

F. Garioni