“Wesley Snipes is a bonafide action star, though “Gallowwalkers” isn’t his best turn.”

Before Wesley Snipes went to prison for tax evasion, he completed a film called “Gallowwalkers.”  It popped up on Netflix yesterday, and since it’s been such a while since he’s been on screen, I really wanted to like it.

I hoped that that I would be revisiting ‘Blade’ territory, with six-shooters instead of TEC-9’s.

Instead, what I got was a Western that wasn’t quite a Western.  Does it take place in the past or some sort of apocalyptic future?  The way most of the characters dress implies the Old West, but since there’s little in the way of a visual reference to tell, it could be pretty much anytime.

A character, pictured below, that looks like an extra from a Star Wars film, doesn’t help matters.

The story revolves around Aman, played by Snipes, who revenges himself upon the people that raped his sister (I think it was his sister, though the relationship felt a little more incestuous, truth be told) killing them before he himself is killed.  His mother makes a deal with a disembodied voice in the desert (is it supposed to be Satan, a demon, or this guy), and she sacrifices herself to bring him back to life.  As part of the deal – for reasons the movie never clarifies – this disembodied voice also brings to life everyone he’s killed.

Which isn’t a good thing, since it appears that he’s killed enough people to make up a decent-sized posse.

“Gallowwalkers” isn’t a very good, or easy understood, movie.  The worse of it is, if the movie had underwent a few more rewrites, it would have at least been a bit more clear as to why things were happening, which would have perhaps made the whole affair a lot more interesting.

Though that’s not the movie that was made.  As it stands “Gallowwalkers” is probably most interesting for the hard-core Wesley Snipes fan, though even for them it’s too confusing, too odd to be anything more than a trifle.