Movie review
August 25, 2022 · 102 min · PG-13
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
Samaritan is a 2022 action movie starring Sylvester Stallone as a reclusive man in a crime-filled city. A thirteen-year-old boy named Sam suspects his quiet neighbor Joe is actually the legendary vigilante Samaritan who vanished twenty-five years earlier. Sam tries to pull Joe back into action to stop rising gang violence and chaos. The story focuses on personal choices between good and evil, with a twist about the hero’s true past and reformed life.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Samaritan.
Woke representation / casting
The cast features a Black teenage actor in the prominent young lead role and a Hispanic actress as his single mother in a financially struggling urban family. The city setting includes diverse supporting characters in gang and neighborhood roles. This fits realistic modern demographics without strong audience-visible identity signaling, quota emphasis, or mismatch with the story world. The central hero remains a white working-class man played by Stallone.
Woke political dialogue
No explicit activist, identity-based, or social-justice dialogue appears in the story. Conversations stay focused on personal morality, family struggles, and fighting street crime.
Identity-driven story themes
The narrative centers on universal ideas of good versus evil inside every person, redemption through better choices, and individual heroism. It does not drive plot or character arcs through race, gender, sexuality, or systemic identity frameworks.
Western institutional / cultural critique
The film shows vigilante action against gangs and crime in a decaying city. It contains no activist-style attacks on traditional institutions, patriarchy, capitalism, Western norms, or cultural guilt framing.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. This is an original story concept with no established source material, historical figures, or canon characters altered for ideological or identity-driven reasons.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
A handful of viewer comments on review platforms criticized the casting of a mother of color and diverse urban characters as feeling like standard Hollywood diversity pushes. No widespread social media campaign, major news stories, or organized complaints framed the film as pushing woke, DEI, or activist content. Most reaction stayed on story quality.
Creator track record context
Writer Bragi F. Schut has a track record in horror and sci-fi with no activist history. Main director Julius Avery works in genre films without known social-justice patterns. Some producers have credits on films with diverse leads or mild social themes, but no strong evidence of personal identity-driven or DEI-focused agendas shaping creative choices.
Production
