Bad Samaritan

Bad Samaritan

Starring David Tennant, Robert Sheehan, Kerry Condon, Carlito Olivero

Directed by Dean Devlin

The Story:
Down on his luck Sean Falco (Robert Sheehan) is a wannabe photographer who has an intelligent girlfriend (Jacqueline Byers), and works with his best friend Derek (Carlito Olivero) as valets for a prestigious restaurant.  They use their jobs as means to rob people who eat at the restaurant, breaking into their homes and stealing just enough to get by, but not enough to draw attention.

When snobby, condescending patron Cale Erendreich (David Tennant) arrives in a Maserati, Sean has no qualms with robbing the rich snob's home.  However, not soon after breaking in, he discovers Katie (Kerry Condon), a girl brutally beaten and horse-tied to a chair.  He tries to free her, but has to return to the restaurant before Cale gets wise, so he calls the police.

After the police don't find any evidence, Sean sets out to save the girl himself, while Cale discovers Sean's intentions, and sets out to destroy his life piece by piece, leading him into a cat-and-mouse game with deadly consequences.

The Synopsis:
The parable of the Good Samaritan can be found in the Bible, in Luke 10:30-37:
"A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead.  By chance a certain priest was going down that way.  When he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was.  When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.  He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.  On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, 'Take care of him.  Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.'  Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?
He said, 'He who showed mercy on him.'
Then Jesus said to him, 'Go and do likewise.'"

To take a famed parable like that and turn it into a movie titled "Bad Samaritan" was a stroke of genius for longtime Roland Emmerich collaborator Dean Devlin in his second outing as director (the first was his abysmal "Geostorm").  Unfortunately, that was the only stroke of genius Devlin delivers, as the film seemed to stem from too many late nights watching reruns of "NCIS" and "Law & Order," as the film focused on every tired cliche and trope of the crime drama subgenre and used them in ways that left me rolling my eyes so many times I was worried they'd fall out and roll down the aisle.

What is interesting about the Good Samaritan parable is that Jesus told the story to Jews, who detested Samaritans and saw them as the lowest form of life.  Devlin uses this in "Bad Samaritan" in introducing the "good guy" as a pothead moron who has no discernible future and who robs people.  Both are detestable in the eyes of the general public, but both also have a heart and are shown to be caring in certain situations.  Again, Devlin spent more intellectual time in the title than the actual product.

The film seemed to pay homage to Hitchcock (especially in one particular scene including Tennant driving down a deserted snowy mountain road with the camera from the sky and an eerie ethereal music playing in the background), but this film is far, far removed from the master.  The script is a play-by-play of your generic genre film, right down to the main character finding a big problem, going to the police, and no one believing him because he's a criminal.  Scenes roll by where you can almost predict what will be said before they said it, because you've heard it all before.  There's nothing new, original, or even exciting offered in "Bad Samaritan," except for a bad taste in your mouth.

There's a lot about the film that doesn't make a lick of sense (including the bad guy's motives), and not just from a narrative standpoint.  When Sean calls the police, he waits outside Cale's house to see what happens, and he emerges with a woman - I have no idea where she came from, he must have Houdini'd her out of thin air.  Then, after the police leave (without even stepping foot inside), he breaks in to find that the torture room is now a plain old office, and another room filled with torture devises is now an empty shell of a room.  How the heck did Cale manage to totally transform both rooms in less than ten minutes?  Why do I even care?

Then there's the cat-and-mouse game between Cale and Sean that seems so incredibly one-sided: Cale is by far the more superior criminal, and Sean is completely inept at everything - he doesn't even wear gloves when he robs peoples' houses.  Cale gets his hands on Sean's passwords and goes about destroying his life through Facebook, and then heightening his threats more and more in your typical fashion that, one again, will make you think you've suddenly become psychic because you predict everything that follows.

The only light in this film (both literally and metaphorically; the film was incredibly darkly shot so I have no idea what was happening at some points) is David Tennant's performance.  Even though he's a ruthless, maniacal madman, you find yourself rooting for him because the other actor is incredibly insufferable.  Even so, Tennant is given a lean script to follow and you can sense the frustration in his voice as he probably thinks, "I was a 'Doctor Who' and now I have to do this filth?"  I like to think the moments Tennant's character erupts in surprise yelling is the actor momentarily breaking character to express his disdain for the script.

Robert Sheehan plays our hapless hero Sean, as so he would be called.  You don't want a character of his caliber on your side, and if I was chained to a chair and only relying on him to save me, I would already be preparing for the sweet hereafter I would be experiencing shortly after.  He spends most of the film on the defense, uttering curse words as he looks like he's about to cry at any given moment.  He's completely idiotic, yet he tries to wax philosophical ("it's like we're both trapped in that house" he laments to his friend at one point, and I for one actually wished it was true).  Even when he seemingly gets the upper hand by finding Cale's secret hideout, he does two of the most moronic things - not calling the police, and apparently stopping at every location along the way to visit his girlfriend, see what his best friend is up to, catch the latest "Avengers" movie, get some snacks, and take a yacht ride around the world.  If you actually cared where the film was going, you'd be throwing your hands up several times in anger over Sean's actions, which again only served to make you root for the bad guy because he's at least intelligent in his madness.

Ultimately, the film boils down to the tit-for-tat between the two, and Sheehan can't hold a candle to Tennant even in Tennant's worst days, which probably occurred during the filming of this movie.

The Summary:
"Bad Samaritan" plays out like a cat-and-mouse game if the cat was Albert Einstein and the mouse was a one-minute-old baby just born who only cries and wets himself constantly.

The Score: D