


Gallowwalkers (2012)

  Tags: action, Andrew Goth, Diamond Dallas Page, gallowwalker, Joanne Reay, Kevin Howarth, Patrick Bergin, Riley Smith, Sheer Films, the wretched, Wesley Snipes, wild west

Your rating: None Average: 3.5 (4 votes)
Reviewer Rating: 

Rating #: 
Andrew Goth
90 minutes
Wesley Snipes, Riley Smith, Kevin Howarth, Patrick Bergin, Diamond Dallas Page

Gallowwalkers had a pretty troubled production and it unfortunately shows in the final product. The flick originally started out as "The Wretched" and had Chow Yun-Fat set to star. Back then the story revolved around a bounty hunter whose job was to wipe out the population of the undead in the Old West. It sounded more like a traditional zombie film (with action elements), but filming never happened, the script was rewritten, title changed, and Wesley Snipes eventually replaced Chow Yun-Fat. To make matters worse, Snipes was arrested for tax evasion during filming, which led to an obvious delay. He was eventually granted permission to finish production, but would later spend several years behind bars after being found guilty by a Grand Jury.

The film would have a lengthy editing process (especially after reshoots in 2009) before sitting on the shelves for a number of years. The studio likely didn't want it distributed until closer to Snipes' release from prison. Now after anxiously waiting to see the film all these years, I finally got my hands on it; and to no surprise, it was a mess. I seriously wanted to like this, but I knew that all the wait and hype meant only setting myself up for a letdown and that's exactly what happened. It's not an entirely bad film, but it has A LOT of problems.

The initial concept of a badass gunslinger taking out zombies in the Wild West is good, but sadly somewhere along the lines the script just became muddled and full of holes, leading to a very problematic storyline with a lot of scenes either not making sense or just seemingly out of place. That also goes in part with the horrible editing throughout the movie. Snipes does his best to recreate his Blade character, as he replaces his swords with guns and is actually the only thing saving this flick from being a complete waste of time.

However, the problem with his character is that he's entirely too powerful and recruiting a "partner" seemed almost completely pointless other than to have Snipes offer more dialogue and fill up the flicks running time. Although the villains return from the dead, they aren't anything more than humans with bright blue/yellow eyes and shitty looking wigs, except for some that needed to replace their skin with other humans (or creatures), while the rest concealed themselves with masks or awkward looking helmets.

There are some scenes that I actually enjoyed, like the intro and other key moments that were obvious homage's to past westerns. It's just unfortunate that such a promising concept was ruined by a faulty script and shoddy editing, and not to mention some really bad CG scenes.

Gallowwalkers is a promising story that failed due to many production issues, a limited budget, bad script and horrible editing. Despite that, I was still entertained and it does offer some cool scenes and a badass lead character, but it's simply hard to ignore its many faults, especially when we're given scenes that are never explained or makes no sense. If you're just looking for Snipes to be badass again then give this a look, but if you expect anything more you'll be in for a disappointment.

Posted on July 29, 2013 - 12:26pm | FrighT MasteR