SAMARITAN
Stallone muscles in on the superhero genre…
DIRECTOR Julius Avery STARRING Sylvester Stallone, Javon Walton, Martin Starr, Pilou Asbaek, Dascha Polanco
“We didn’t really have superheroes,” says director Julius Avery (Overlord, Son Of A Gun) of growing up in the 1980s. “We only had action heroes. And Sly was the closest thing we had to a superhero. So to put him in a superhero movie? That feels fresh and cool and something that people will get a kick out of.”
He’s not wrong. The conceit of Samaritan is a peach: a young lad learns that a superhero who went missing 20 years ago is living next door to him. Yep, it sounds like a powered-up Finding Forrester or Apt Pupil, and Avery confirms that the tone will be grounded in humanity – a film about a kid looking for a father figure, by a director who lost his own dad when he was young.
“It’s got emotion and action and thrill, but it’s really intimate,” he says. “It feels like an action thriller from the ’70s and ’80s but it just happens to have superheroes in it. I think it’s much more interesting to see flawed superheroes, in a world where there’s real consequences, real jeopardy, and people die.”
We can expect, then, Stallone to be bringing the kind of gravitas he brought to Copland and Creed, and he’s apparently matched by his 14-year-old co-star Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton, the child prodigy who was Georgia State Champion in both boxing and gymnastics. “I saw his tape and said, ‘He’s the kid,’” explains Avery. “I didn’t know his backstory. I said to him, ‘Who’s your favourite actor?’ He said, ‘River Phoenix. Stand By Me is my favourite movie and I want to be just like him.’ I was like, ‘Wow.’”
It all sounds great, but might we also hope for some action sequences to match that astonishing one-take plane crash in Overlord? “This is a big event movie – we see our heroes kicking ass,” he confirms. “We’re going to see Sly do things he hasn’t done in a long time, and in a really inventive way. He’s 73 years old! I’m amazed by how much he actually does. I’m telling you, most guys in their twenties wouldn’t be able to do what Sly does in this movie.” JG ETA I 4 JUNE 2021