The background music far too loud to hear the mumbled dialogue in many scenes. Plus the background music is horrible, often vibrating in my head completely distracting me from the dialogue. The plot is disjointed and barely believable, yet predicable. The grift twists were not believable, in fact the grift itself was too simple to be realistic. Too many scenes are in the dark or weird yellow light. The 'surgeon' must been absolutely brilliant to work in the dim yellow light of his room. It's very hard to say more about this movie as it was pretty much a yawning waste of ninety minutes. Samuel L Jackson is an excellent actor, I'm a fan but I'm surprised he made this movie. The English actor/master criminal Tom Wilkinson wasn't believable, he looked more like a merchant banker. Very disappointing.

Taking story lines straight out of other films and blending them together, The Samaritan is one strange and confusing film, that will really turn people off. While watching this film, one could easily identify elements straight from films such as Shaft, Payback, and Oldboy, making this film anything but original. Samuel L. Jackson stars as a con man, who has just been released from prison. He's been in there a long time and wants to go straight, but his partners son is determined to make sure that doesn't happen. Samuel L. Jackson is a legendary star that can carry any film he stars in. I love his personality and will watch anything he's in, I even sat through Black Snake Moan, but The Samaritan makes even less sense than that did. The story is just completely all over the place, jumping from one thing to another, without resolving any of the issues it presents. Often times films like that will come together in a terrific ending, but the end of the Samaritan just leaves more questions than answers. Jackson is of course very solid and shows his wide range or ability and emotion, but the rest of the cast is just awful. Independent films often times only feature one person of recognition, but when you're releasing a film like this one, which is heavily advertising that star, you've got to give them something to work with. I honestly feel like some of these people were just pulled off the street and asked if they wanted to be in a movie, their inexperience is that obvious. When you add to that a confusing story line, that is full of slang and innuendo, the result is something that is unwatchable. The biggest star in the world couldn't have made a film like this work.The Samaritan is a rare instance where I wish I had listened to my fellow reviewers and just let this one pass me by.

I am a pretty big fan of Samuel L but who isn't right? So when I saw that he was the executive producer I was thinking this could have potential and figured ole Sam had a project he really liked and believed in, but to me it lost it's edge near it's end. I really liked the acting, that wasn't the problem at all. I found Ruth Negga's performance quite good, I had not seen her in anything but she is a very beautiful and talented women so I look forward to seeing her in other films. Tom wilkinson was great as always, he's done so many good movies and I have really come to enjoy his range and talent as an actor over the years, I just wished he had a larger role in this film) Luke Kirby was great as well, he really plays the guy u love to hate well, I thought his character was a cocky, no good, slimy piece of dog excrement and believe me that is a complement to him and his performance (although it doesn't sound like it does it? Oh well). And Samuel L was fantastic as usual. The problem was either with the writing or the adaptation of it onto celluloid in my opinion. The movie starts off interesting enough and I actually found it to be picking up momentum as it went along and it also had a twist, a twisted twist if u will that was pretty off-putting but made the story more compelling and worked well. I really thought this movie was going to be great but near the end (and thats what is so disappointing) the movie just seemed kinda sloppy and confused on where it wanted to go. It's really a shame because it had a lot of potential but just couldn't quite seal the deal in my opinion. This wasn't an awful movie by any standards but it also wasn't great and will most likely be forgotten within a short amount time, oh well I guess u could say that about most movies huh?

A massive failure at the box office, only earning 2.500 dollars in 3 screens in the U.S. and only big-screened in only three another countries, Portugal, earning 12.500 dollars there, the U.K. S and Japan, of which there aren't any income records. With a 12 million dollar budget, this is a major flop, obviously. BMW didn't get much back from their sponsoring. But the film isn't by all means that bad. This gets bashed due to a part of the story putting some off, and it's not the violence. In stead the film is very enjoyable on many levels, as a film noir filmed story with lots of cult potential.An old convict gets out of prison, unwillingly revisiting his past, finding most of his old companions in crime dead and buried. Awaiting him, though, is a son of his partners, Ethan, which is an apple which hasn't fallen far from the three. And he's proud of it, but has an agenda.The opening is very interesting. We watch people fallen on the wrong side of the fence of life. The acting is good. Obviously by Samuel L. Jackson, and very much so by mob boss Tom Wilkinson. Deborah Kara Unger is also good. Not to fond of Luke Kirby here, though, being less convincing. I'd love to see a real slick devil in that role. The chemistry between Jackson and Ruth Negga isn't there at all, starting out the film's problem. It's simply not believable. It's easy to see on the screen that they don't fancy each other. What a bad casting, of an otherwise proved good Negga.The scenes with them slows down the movie so much, that you lose interest in the film. I can't help thinking these would have been great scenes, if the chemistry was working. The shifts and clippings which could make the film fast paced, slows it down. Thankfully it paces up again.I like the tone of the movie. I felt it was a pleasant watch, with good production value, good filming and nice plot. The Hollywood Reporter wrote that this was "a gritty serving of pulp fiction", and it is. Obviously referencing to Jacksons main role in "Pulp fiction". The film is better than it's rating here.I would say this is one of the better in this genre I've seen, and it's absolutely worth watching. The best "convict trying to get back to life"-film I saw was the comedy "A somewhat gentle man". A equally gritty movie, but much funnier to watch.