Corbin Bernsen is a captured Confederate officer, during the Civil War, whose men have suddenly become supernaturally endowed. They have been traveling around killing Union Soldiers and crucifying them. So Adrian Pasdar releases him from prison so he can help track the renegades down and stop them. At least that's what I think the story was, the audio on the DVD was so bad I could barely hear what was going on....and of course there were no subtitles...
The film starts off strong with a creepy, effective title sequence. The camera pans around actual Civil War photographs of wounded and deformed soldiers. Then the film goes to a make shift medical facility where soldiers are having bullets removed and legs sawed off, in all sorts of bloody, gruesome realness.....Very cool! There was even a pretty interesting cameo by Martin Sheen...but then the film takes a bit of a nose dive as it starts to think that it is more intriguing than it actually is and begins to show its sloppiness; Ham-handed acting, weird situations, and a gross out factor that kinda bothered me...example, a character gets doused with a bucket of urine, ugh.
...and then the problems begin as the supernatural Confederate soldiers appear. But its completely unclear what they are exactly. They can't be shot, or stabbed, and after they've been turned into whatever they are, they wear this white tribal makeup.....(I'm pretty sure it has something to do with Voodoo). For most of the film, as I'm watching it, I'm thinking, "are they Zombies? Are they just ghosts or something?" (One of the titles of the film was Ghost Brigade) but I couldn't tell since they didn't look or act like anything I'm familiar with....Then at one point near the end, one of the Soldiers cuts the throat of a character and drinks her blood....and I thought "That's weird why did he do that"......well, as it turns out, and I didn't actually find this out until I watched the special features, they were supposed to be....Vampires.....ok....
After I found this out, it felt a little like an artsy reinterpretation of vampires, and it fails miserably.
The acting was alright, with Adrian Pasdar's Union Soldier probably being the most interesting character. But the story and filming were sub par, and the complete mishandling of the films main creatures (or total lack thereof) made this film somewhat of a boring uninspired viewing experience.
I could seriously write more about Grey Knight, there is more story to be told, but I was so bored by it, and I'm so not interesting in writing a review of it that story points will have to come from viewing it, which I should warn you, you do at your own risk...
This film gets 1 out of 5 Bloody Spurs
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