Samaritan on Prime Video: ‘Superhero Standing in Reality’ According to Sylvester Stallone

Starting this Friday, August 26, Sylvester Stallone will present the film The Samaritan, available exclusively on the Amazon Prime Video platform. For this occasion, the interpreter of Rocky and Rambo spoke to us about the project that is dear to him and his desire to revisit the superhero myth in a more realistic setting, to allow the audience to better identify with the character, regardless. His supernatural powers.

What attracted you to this project? Why did you decide to make this film?

Sylvester Stallone : I think the film is a reflection of today’s society. Too often we think that people should take care of themselves and therefore the law of the strongest prevails. And then suddenly we wonder why there is such a climate of violence.

In movies, the answer usually comes from a “mythological” character, but the reality is different, and I always say that in order to move society forward, you have to act independently. But sometimes it is necessary to have a role model, even a hero, to embody the responsibility we are not ready to take.

In the particular case of this film, the character has experienced problems in the past that he could not solve, and so he chose to disappear by adopting the most anonymous identity of our society: the garbage collector. No one pays attention to these people, but without them we would be in big trouble! There are so many metaphors in this story that caught my attention.

Before acting, you did odd jobs. Were you inspired by this past experience to interpret Samaritan?

You are not wrong. I’ve done every job in the world, doorman, bartending, decapitating fish… It’s a great lesson in life that teaches us to stay humble and many other things that will serve us throughout our existence. . For example, today I enjoy my job more than when I was 30 years old. At that time I thought I knew everything, but the truth is that I knew nothing at all. We reach the form of experience only at the age of 41 and we continue to learn things day by day.

Out of all the action scenes in the movie, which was your favorite to shoot?

There comes a point in life when you realize you can’t do Rambo-type action scenes like you’re still 29. We should be aware of the age we are and this stage is also part of the lessons that life offers us. We are still the same person, but we are also different.

This guy has superhuman strength, he’s not particularly fast, he doesn’t jump from building to building, but he’s definitely very strong. So he’s a superhero that’s pretty grounded in reality, in a way he’s a modern day Hercules. We will be able to identify the character more easily if he can die like us and defeat his enemies.

The Samaritan is not inspired by any of the comics, allowing the film to develop its own mythology. How has this aspect fueled your imagination as an artist?

Admirable work has been done by certain filmmakers and certain companies like Marvel and DC to push the boundaries of what is possible in cinema. Everything you can imagine has been shaped by these movies. But I’ve always thought that what we identify with the most are the mundane things that relate to our daily lives, like almost getting hit by a car, walking down a dark alley at night… these are very concrete things.

What I’m trying to say clumsily is that with this film we wanted to make the story realistic and believable enough, to give the audience the impression that all this could happen to them, the action takes place in our world and not in another world. . The movie is set in streets like ours and the message will be that we should always be careful of what might happen to us.

This is what I tell my daughters: nowadays there is no warning before danger. You must learn to constantly look around. This is the feeling I tried to bring to the film, because despite its supernatural nature, it is first and foremost a film designed to ground us in our reality.