There was a genuine feeling of enthusiasm as the cast of Prime Video’s new superhero film Samaritan, including, Sylvester Stallone, Javon 'Wanna' Walton, Pilou Asbæk and Dascha Polanco reunite for a virtual press conference ahead of the film dropping on August 26th. Moderated by entertainment reporter Ben Lyons the cast certainly offered a lively and engaging discussion.
Sylvester Stallone leads from the top, his character Joe is mysterious and you know has a history. What I personally enjoy in many of Stallone’s films is the theme of redemption and Samaritan tackles this in a very clever way. “Redemption. It's one of my favourite, favourite topics. Almost everything I read is dripping with a sense of redemption. This is a second chance to right a wrong. Now, there's a twist in Samaritan that I don't think anyone's gonna see coming.” Says the A-lister and action hero.
Javon 'Wanna' Walton portrays the young boy, Sam Cleary who was clearly excited to have boxing in common with Rocky Balboa himself. “I think what really grabbed my attention is being able to work with Sly on such amazing project. You know, he is super-big in the boxing world, and knowing that I'd have somebody on set that I could talk boxing with made me happy for sure.”
And for every superhero you need a supervillain, and a worthy advisory with the acting chops to pull it off is Game of Thrones, Pilou Asbæk as Cyrus. “Cyrus is very much a character that's from the outside in, so you create the physical world of the character. You create the looks of him, the feeling of him. The tattoos, the jacket, the gun, the colouring of the hair. The earrings, piercings. All these elements you bring together.
With an abundance of superheroes films and series for audiences to choose from Dascha Polanco describes what gives Samaritan its USP. “We have that aspect of heroism. And then you have the mother as a hero as well. And then you have Pilou, even though he's antagonistic, he also plays a hero in the sense within his world. So the sense of superhero as we've seen it, in this film, is more, I want to say realistic and more, you can connect to more with the relationships that are established.”
