Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

The Samaritan Blu-ray Movie Review

Who's Helping Whom?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 30, 2012

The promotional imagery for The Samaritan recalls Samuel L. Jackson's previous turn as Detective John Shaft in director John Singleton's 2000 remake of the Seventies classic: same clean-shaven head, same leather jacket. But the whole thing is a con. Foley, the parolee Jackson plays in this film, is the opposite of the grinning "bad muthah" that swaggered through Singleton's film. Foley doesn't smile a lot. Having survived twenty-five years in prison, he has acquired skills that make him dangerous when cornered, but he's also learned to mind his own business. He'd much prefer to sit quietly and let the time pass.

Still, the advertising isn't entirely wrong, because The Samaritan is all about false fronts and deception. The script, co-written by Canadian filmmakers Elan Mastai and director David Weaver, delights in proceeding sideways instead of forward. It details elaborate setups, only to reveal them as misdirection for something else. It relegates events to the background that, in another movie, would be front and center. While you're straining to glimpe what you think is the main action in the background, you get suckered by the real play close at hand. In the end, it's all been something of a cheat, but not in the wholesomely entertaining way we remember from The Sting. No, this con ends with a lot of corpses and blood and probably years on a psychiatrist's couch. For the viewer, though, it's anything but dull.

The Samaritan opens with Foley (Jackson) being released on parole after twenty-five years. The charge, as we shortly learn, was murder, and the victim was Foley's former partner, Eddie (played in intensely colored flashbacks by Luke Kirby). Once upon a time, the pair were successful con men or "grifters", until something went wrong.

An ex-con trying to go straight is a familiar character in films, whether as a supporting player (e.g., Dennis Haysbert in Heat) or a lead character (Dustin Hoffman in Straight Time). The Samaritan toys with this motif, but that isn't its real subject. Foley's status as a parolee is just a pretext to introduce him to the son of his former partner and victim, Ethan (also played by Kirby), who quickly becomes Foley's nemesis. Following in his father's footsteps, Ethan operates in a shadowy underworld that has something to do with money laundering, but his real ambition is to become a world class grifter like his father, and he wants Foley to help him. He figures Foley owes him.

Ethan operates out of a boisterous club, and it is there that Foley encounters two important people. One is a big-time hoodlum for whom Ethan works named Xavier (Tom Wilkinson, channeling the same kind of cold-blooded killer he played in RocknRolla, but with a vaguely North American accent). As it happens, Xavier is also the "mark" whom Ethan wants Foley to help him cheat out of big money, which is a hard sell, since Foley's first sight of Xavier is watching him "discipline" a subordinate who stole a much smaller sum from him. The subordinate does not survive the encounter.

The second key person Foley encounters at Ethan's club is a young woman named Iris (Irish-Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga). Perpetually intoxicated, Iris might as well have a sign over her head that flashes "Damaged". When she first throws herself at him, Foley assumes she's a working girl and declines. But the next night, when Foley is drinking in his local bar, Iris stumbles in with a pick-up, and Foley realizes she's just a sad party girl. When the pick-up gets rough, Foley reluctantly comes to her rescue. As much as Foley doesn't want it, a relationship is born. And Ethan, who has been watching, senses some leverage.

Much of The Samaritan is consumed with the battle between Foley and Ethan over Foley's independence. Luke Kirby, whom fans of Slings and Arrows will remember as the Hollywood action star trying to gain credibility by performing Hamlet in Canada, paints an effective portrait of a rancid weasel who thinks he holds all the cards but has no idea how to play them. His Ethan miscalculates every move. Meanwhile, Jackson's Foley is so weary and so concerned about being sent back to prison that he doesn't simply kill the little bastard and have done with it, which guarantees that Ethan will keep coming back at him. Foley is, after all, the man who murdered his father. When they finally do end up planning the con to be pulled on Xavier—it's a scheme known as "the Samaritan", hence the title—we never do get the details, because the con isn't the main action of the film. The battle between Foley and Ethan is.

Several familiar faces appear in small but crucial parts. Gil Bellows plays Bill, the bartender at Foley's local, who helps him clean up the mess after Foley rescues Iris from her violent date. Martha Burns (also a Slings and Arrows veteran) appears as Gretchen, a figure from Foley's past, who brings him up to date on their old circle, most of whom are dead, then tells him to get lost. And in a few crucial scenes, Deborah Kara Unger (The Game ) plays Helena, another grifter whom Ethan recruits for the team; she reminds Foley that the grifter's life was never that great.

I've tried to step carefully in describing the film, because its oblique approach leads to some surprising developments that a first-time viewer shouldn't have spoiled. Suffice it to say that nobody gets what they started out wanting, but Foley does finally have a chance at redemption. He actually gets to be the Samaritan.

The Samaritan Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

I wasn't able to confirm the shooting format for The Samaritan, but both the credits and the appearance suggest digital origination. The cinematographer was François Dagenais, who shoots a lot of work for Canadian television, where digital acquisition is common. The image on MPI Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is clean, noiseless, detailed and, for the most part, very dark. Dagenais and director Weaver were obviously going for a film noir look, with much of the film set at night, on deserted city streets and in expansive areas of darkness, both indoors and out. Characters are often draped in shadow, in the manner of classic film noir heroes and villains. The Blu-ray rises to the challenge with deep blacks and well-delineated shades of black to allow figures to stand out against the darkness or disappear into it, as necessary. Colors are vibrant and saturated where they should be, as in Ethan's club, and dull and drab where they shouldn't, as in Foley's apartment. The occasional scene in bright light (notably, Xavier's introduction) is contrast-y, but not so much as to blow out detail. Banding is the Blu-ray's sole weakness, and it's manifest primarily on dissolves and fade-ins and fade-outs; these are common moments for banding to occur, but The Samaritan's occurrences are more severe than usual. Other forms of artifact, e.g., from compression, were not observed.

The Samaritan Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The sound mix for The Samaritan, delivered here in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, doesn't contain any flashy surround effects, but it does provide a satisfying accompaniment to the various environments that Foley traverses. We get the distant echoes of prison noises at the beginning; the unexpected quiet when Foley is on his own in an apartment; the pounding house music that nearly drowns out the voices at Ethan's club; the late-night hum at Bill's bar; the work sounds of the job site where Foley takes construction work (and where a loud accident proves to be a plot point); and many others as the story keeps shifting gears. Dialogue is always clear, and the musical score by Todor Kobakov (Monster Brawl ) and David Whalen provides suitable, if not noteworthy, accompaniment.

The Samaritan Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Other than the film's trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:21), no extras are included. At startup, the disc plays trailers (in 1080p) for Citizen Gangster, Kill List, The Snowtown Murders and Polisse. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

The Samaritan Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I can't say whether The Samaritan will wear well on subsequent viewings, and I can imagine that there will be some viewers who will find it disturbing (and not in a good way) on even a first encounter. The film has the virtue of being unexpected, which is never a quality to be undervalued. In the end, the film's story may not add up to much, but it provides an occasion for Samuel L. Jackson to do the fine character work that has become the norm in his career to the point that it is almost taken for granted. Here, playing a man forced to confront sins of his past that he never even knew he committed, and fresh ones he has tried his best to avoid, Jackson reminds us why he remains one of the busiest and most durable actors in movies. Recommended with the caveat that it's not what you think.