Bad Samaritan is a 2018 thriller movie starring David Tennant and Robert Sheehan. The movie deals with a man who finds a tied up woman in a house he intends to rob. Bad Samaritan (2018) movie review
Right off the bet Sean and his friend Derek seem both likable and also awful people. They work as valets but they also steal stuff from people that come to eat at the restaurant they work at. One might say they are petty thieves. However, they also are thieves who will steal anything they can so they can have a good life. I am also not buying Sean (main character) being a starving artist. He uses it as a justification for what they are doing.
Going after a really rich guy named Cale, Sean finds a tied up woman in one of the rooms. Not having a lot of time to save her, he starts having regrets and slowly is drawn back to helping her. However, since Erendreich is ridiculously rich, he starts to play a game with Sean. He slowly starts to destroy his life and hurt those closest to him. Sean, who is rational but also naive for thinking everybody will believe him, starts to lose his mind in figuring out how to get back at Erendreich while maintaining his sanity and protecting those closest to him.
The whole movie is a giant game of cat and mouse that keeps getting more and more dangerous as time passes. I didn’t feel like the killer’s motives have been thoroughly explored (and the flashback snippets seemed weird and not too useful). However Tennant does a good job at portraying this crazy rich guy who yells all the time and has this intimidating presence that is really unsettling. Sheehan also does a good job of a struggling artist who is liable but can also be a dick. Not really sure how I am supposed to feel about him as his actions are not justified by his needs. However, besides his “side hobby”, he seems like a lovable guy to those around him, especially his girlfriend Riley (played by Jacqueline Byer).
By the end of the movie, it seems like everything is against Sean. All those around him are being hurt one way or another, prompting him to take things into his own hands. Quite a few intense scenes in the movie kept me interested in the story and how it will unfold. With all around great performances by the entire cast, the movie is a lot of fun to watch. It has some violence and some tense scenes but they are not too graphic. Everybody seemed to have a decent amount of chemistry (except Riley’s roommate who was just OK).
I am filing this movie under my “pleasant surprise” list. Well done, paced, acted, and shot. It kept my attention even though a lot of aspects of the movie were predictable. Got to applaud Robert Sheehan for carrying the movie.
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