Samson

Samson

Starring Taylor James, Jackson Rathbone, Caitlin Leahy, Greg Kriek

Directed by Bruce Macdonald

The Story:
Samson (Taylor James) is a towering Israelite who was chosen by God before he was born to lead the people of Israel out of their Palestinian captivity under King Balek (Billy Zane).  Balek's son, Rallah (Jackson Rathbone) draws Samson out of the shadows, but Samson is far from ready to lead his people - he's too busy getting involved with women, especially Palestinian woman Taren (Frances Sholto-Douglas), whom he desires to marry.

After Rallah disrupts his wedding and brings tragedy to Samson, he decides to fulfill God's calling on his life and lead the people of Israel, but the sins of the past still haunt him and he encounters Delilah (Caitlin Leahy), who threatens to expose Samson's source of strength that could bring him down for good.

The Synopsis:
In 1950, the famed director Cecil B. DeMille directed the best big-screen adaptation of the Biblical story of Samson ever told - it garnered rave reviews, and was even nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.  In 2018, unknown director Bruce Macdonald directed one of the worst big-screen adaptations of the Biblical story of Samson ever told - it garnered terrible reviews, and will never be nominated for an Academy Award.  This abomination is overly long (yet somehow seemed like it was actually longer before it got left on the cutting room floor), had terrible actors, convoluted the actual Biblical story, and supplied some of the most laughable costumes and effects you could muster.  To say this film is terrible is doing an injustice to the word "terrible" - this is just atrocious.

While watching this film, you can't help but notice the strange transitions and editing that make you think the film might've been a television miniseries that somehow found its way to the big screen.  The effects are laughable and even though it was done on a small budget, it could've been done a lot better.  The costumes looked like they were borrowed from a megachurch who wasn't doing anything with them, and then there's the absolutely awful beards that some of the characters wore, that made you think back to the old "Scooby Doo" cartoons when the gang rips off the mask of the ghost of the week.  Nothing about the cinematography was anything near excellent or praiseworthy.

The actors offer absolutely nothing to the sullen script either.  As Samson, Taylor James surely has the towering physical appearance down, but fails to deliver any cohesive performance.  Billy Zane - who, of course, plays the bad guy - hams it up quite nicely as the King, but his scenes are very short.  Jackson Rathbone looks like he stumbled on the set on his way to a Kiss concert, while Caitlin Leahy, Greg Kriek, and Frances Sholto-Douglas just sort of exist.  Then there's veteran actors Rutger Hauer and Lindsey Wagner, who just seemed happy to actually find jobs.

While the film does include several of the "highlights" of Samson's biblical career - the killing of 1,000 men with the jawbone of an ass, tying foxes tails together and setting them on fire, offering a riddle no one could solve - there's so many added-on things to the film that detract from the actual account.  Macdonald gives Delilah a more sympathetic feel, presenting her as a woman who actually did love Samson and hated herself for what she did, even though there's no evidence of that in the actual narrative.  Most of the film is told with Samson's brother Caleb (who is never mentioned by name in the Bible) at the heart of it all, and there was never a cat-and-mouse game between Samson and the King's son.  All of that was added in to make the film more Hollywood, and failed on every cylinder.

The most unintentionally humorous part of the film comes when Rallah comes up with another plan to bring down Samson (basically, these two are the live-action equivalent of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, all it needed was Rallah standing off a ledge with a small sign saying "oops" on it before falling), and then the film goes to black.  Then the words "many years later" appears, and we get a quick narrative of the lives of the characters during those many years before.  They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, but by that time the dish Rallah is preparing is frozen goulash, which has been set in a freezer for many years and then thrown into the deepest, darkest cave in the northern most part of the North Pole, then had Iceman from "X-Men" touch it.  He waited many, many years to bring Delilah into the picture when he could've done it that very night, and I wonder what he was doing all that time.  Actually, I didn't wonder that, I didn't want to waste my brain energy.

The Summary:
Making an interesting, exciting Biblical story boring and dull is no easy feat, but that's exactly what Bruce Macdonald and company did to Samson, creating an easily forgettable wannabe biblical epic that was just an epic fail.

The Score: D-