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Review by 385
Added: February 02, 2008
A man and woman are in love, one or both of them are murdered, and then later rise from the dead to avenge the grisly act so they can finally rest in peace. Now, I'm sure you'd run out of fingers before you finished counting off the number of times a variant of this plot has been used; but even so, through its dark and gritty execution,The Crow has been able to secure a rock solid cult favorite status that continues to grow to this day. Now, a lot of people argue that this status is solely due to the untimely death of actor Brandon Lee (Bruce Lee's son) during filming; and while I'm sure that has entered into it, The Crow was more than strong enough to stand on its own merits.
The plot here is pretty straight forward. In an unnamed city, the night before Halloween has taken on the deadly tradition of Devil's Night, where the cases of arson number in the hundreds every year. As we survey the damage, a voice-over tells the legend of The Crow. Basically, when a person dies, a crow carries their soul to the afterlife, but sometimes the crow will bring the soul back to avenge its memory and finally have peace. Meanwhile, Eric Draven is living happily with his fiancée, Shelly Webster, in a loft apartment. After they receive an eviction notice, Shelly gets a petition started to fight it. The owner of the building deals with the petition by sending four thugs to the apartment to deal with the problem. Eric walks in to the sight of Shelly getting raped, and in his attempt to stop them he finds himself stabbed, shot repeatedly, and thrown out of a six story window. Shelly died the day after, after thirty hours in intensive care. The case was never solved, and on the anniversary of the murders, a crow lands on Eric's tombstone and two minutes later, his body crawls out of the grave and wanders back to his old apartment in a daze. Once there, he is assaulted by flashbacks and memories of his life with Shelly, finally culminating in reliving the murders. Now fueled by rage, he sets out with the crow to find the gang that destroyed his life.
Again, it's the execution, not the plot, that carries this movie. The movie has a very dark tone to it, and director Alex Proyas takes full advantage of that. His shots of Eric running across the rooftops or stalking his victims from the fire escapes are excellently done, they really emphasize the rage driving his quest for vengeance. This deadly focus wouldn't be fully appreciated without the stark contrast of his more emotional scenes. When he was alive, he and Shelly had befriended a young girl named Sarah, and his reunion with her as well as the conversations with Albrecht, the officer who handled his case, was amazingly efficient at keeping the character human. Instead of just enjoying the ride as we watch this guy systematically take out this gang, we've seen what happened to him, shared his pain as he lost everything, and it feels pretty damned good when we get to see him strike back.
For the most part, the acting here was pretty damned good across the board. In his final role, Lee was awesome, jumping back and forth from the sadistic glee he took in taking out the thugs, to the heartbreaking depression he was in while reflecting over his lost life, and even in the flashbacks, where we could see just how truly happy he was. It's a shame that he died during shooting here, as this surely would have kick-started his career into high gear. As Officer Albrecht, Ernie Hudson was just as good. While he didn't run the emotional gauntlet that Lee did, he still did a great job. Rounding out the trifecta here was Michael Wincott as the crime lord that runs the gangs in the city. He's usually typecast as the villain, which has left him well practiced in the role, and he was at the same par. Sofia Shinas was Sarah, and while her delivery was kind of stiff, her character was written as very stoic, which sidestepped the problem nicely. The four gang members also garnered no complaints from me; the most famous of which was David Patrick Kelly, who's piercing voice will forever be known for the line "Warriors, come out to play."
So yeah, I really can't recommend this movie enough. Wile it's definitely sad that Lee died while making this, at least there's some small condolence that he went out with a fucking bang. 9.5/10.
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![The Crow [UMD for PSP]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41JWV5BHFNL._SL75_.jpg "The Crow [UMD for PSP]")
