David Tennant starts creepy, gets psychotic and ends diabolical in Bad Samaritan.Electric Entertainment
- Bad Samaritan
- Directed by Dean Devlin
- Written by Brandon Boyce
- Starring Robert Sheehan, David Tennant
- Classification 14A
- 107 minutes
We never hear about the bad Samaritans, only the good ones. So give it up for director Dean Devlin, whose horror-thriller Bad Samaritan shines a light on the hood with a conscience.
He’s Sean Falco, a fledgling Portland, Ore., photographer and valet/burglar with an Irish accent that is magically delicious. Played by television actor Robert Sheehan, our bad good guy breaks into the home of a total jerk – rob him blind, he deserves it! – for a “perfect score” that is so big he’ll never need to pull another one (of course). But after discovering an imprisoned woman, he risks his own arrest by relentlessly reporting the situation to the authorities.
Robert Sheehan plays a valet/burglar in Bad Samaritan.Electric Entertainment
The villain imprisoner is played by David Tennant, who starts creepy, gets psychotic and ends diabolical. A trust-fund scumbag traumatized by some sort of horse mishap as a child, his life mission is to break and train people in the way he failed with his boyhood pony. There’s not even the slightest attempt to present him as anything other than a monster.
A few plot contrivances aside, the unspectacular Bad Samaritan is tense and disturbing enough, and worth its weight in popcorn. You’ll never again trust a valet, but why would you anyway?
Brad Wheeler