The only reason I'm not giving this movie a flat "1" is because of the respect I used to have for Wesley Snipes as an action star.
This movie does not deserve a real in-depth review seeing as how it's difficult to take it as a real movie at all. But let me shoot off some issues I had with it.
Plot. The plot is a classic tale of revenge. Snipes is out to avenge his beloved who was violently gang raped while he was off with his adopted mother selling animal skins. They apparently gang rape her and leave her otherwise completely unharmed, to the point where the rape only comes to knowledge because she becomes pregnant. Then for some reason when Snipes finds out...he vanishes for 5 years. One presumes it was to track down the rapists? It's not explained...he just leaves for 5 years. In the mean time she dies from child birth...which maybe if he'd been there to support her in the first place she might have lived. Whatever. It's dumb.
While the plot at it's heart might be simple, that being revenge, none of the other elements add to the plot whatsoever. For some reason he frees a random prisoner...killing an entire sheriff posse in the process. They don't bother to explain who he is, why he's a prisoner, why Snipes even knows WTF he is. There's this "whore" that is seemingly an important part of the plot...except THEY FORGET TO TELL YOU WHO SHE IS OR WHAT HER POINT IS. Villains spring up and die at random with no explanation why they exist in the first place.
The editing is god awful. This director is obviously an amateur and so is whoever was behind the editing. Scenes immediately bleed into each other with zero warning or explanation. There's a rough 15 minutes where scenes constantly fade into each other...it's like someone playing with an editing program. I was expecting scenes to fly out in gold stars like an 80's PSA.
The acting was atrocious by everyone. I have no idea what Snipes was going for...but it failed. It's not even him most of the time, it's long distance views or filming him from the back the majority of the time.
Dialogue wasn't even laughable...it was just poorly written. I'd expect better from a grade school student.
Nothing in this movie worked. There's surprisingly little action and it's all anti-climactic. There's long narrative sequences that do little to explain what's going on. The sets are a complete joke, literally cobbled together tents and wooden structures in the middle of nowhere with a minimum of extras.
Well this ended up being pretty long for a review. This movie is bad and amateurish to the extreme. It appears they had somewhat of a budget because the quality of the camera work isn't bad and they had a few cameos that were completely wasted...but the actual handling of the camera is a complete mess. Close ups at the worst moments, the cameraman clearly running around swiveling the camera trying to give a "mystic" feeling. This movie is embarrassingly bad...no one should ever watch this. Sorry Snipes...but this is actually one of the worst movies I've ever seen. And I never say that.
This movie does not deserve a real in-depth review seeing as how it's difficult to take it as a real movie at all. But let me shoot off some issues I had with it.
Plot. The plot is a classic tale of revenge. Snipes is out to avenge his beloved who was violently gang raped while he was off with his adopted mother selling animal skins. They apparently gang rape her and leave her otherwise completely unharmed, to the point where the rape only comes to knowledge because she becomes pregnant. Then for some reason when Snipes finds out...he vanishes for 5 years. One presumes it was to track down the rapists? It's not explained...he just leaves for 5 years. In the mean time she dies from child birth...which maybe if he'd been there to support her in the first place she might have lived. Whatever. It's dumb.
While the plot at it's heart might be simple, that being revenge, none of the other elements add to the plot whatsoever. For some reason he frees a random prisoner...killing an entire sheriff posse in the process. They don't bother to explain who he is, why he's a prisoner, why Snipes even knows WTF he is. There's this "whore" that is seemingly an important part of the plot...except THEY FORGET TO TELL YOU WHO SHE IS OR WHAT HER POINT IS. Villains spring up and die at random with no explanation why they exist in the first place.
The editing is god awful. This director is obviously an amateur and so is whoever was behind the editing. Scenes immediately bleed into each other with zero warning or explanation. There's a rough 15 minutes where scenes constantly fade into each other...it's like someone playing with an editing program. I was expecting scenes to fly out in gold stars like an 80's PSA.
The acting was atrocious by everyone. I have no idea what Snipes was going for...but it failed. It's not even him most of the time, it's long distance views or filming him from the back the majority of the time.
Dialogue wasn't even laughable...it was just poorly written. I'd expect better from a grade school student.
Nothing in this movie worked. There's surprisingly little action and it's all anti-climactic. There's long narrative sequences that do little to explain what's going on. The sets are a complete joke, literally cobbled together tents and wooden structures in the middle of nowhere with a minimum of extras.
Well this ended up being pretty long for a review. This movie is bad and amateurish to the extreme. It appears they had somewhat of a budget because the quality of the camera work isn't bad and they had a few cameos that were completely wasted...but the actual handling of the camera is a complete mess. Close ups at the worst moments, the cameraman clearly running around swiveling the camera trying to give a "mystic" feeling. This movie is embarrassingly bad...no one should ever watch this. Sorry Snipes...but this is actually one of the worst movies I've ever seen. And I never say that.