The Crow: City of Angels (DVD)

The Crow: City of Angels (DVD) ... Kirshner ... / DVD released 20 March, 2001 at Dimension / Features of the DVD: Collector's Edition, Colour, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen / Because of his tragic death on the set of The Crow, we'll never know if Brandon Lee would have turned one successful film into a popular series. But one look at this tepid sequel suggests that not even the charismatic Lee could have rescued The Crow movies from the burden of a lacklustre screenplay. Based on the popular comic books by James O'Barr, this sequel finds Vincent Pérez as a man named Ashe, who is murdered along with his young son by a gang of drug-running thugs under the employ of slimy kingpin Judah Earl (Richard Brooks). Ashe is resurrected with the help of a tattoo artist named Sarah (Mia Kirschner), whereupon he begins a campaign of revenge against his killers. More a rehash than a sequel, the film repeats the grungy, dark look of urban decay from The Crow, but its combination of violence, heavy-handed symbolism and tacky sentiment make this a film strictly for nihilistic teens. Then again, no movie in which veteran punkster Iggy Pop plays a slimeball can be considered a total loss. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.co.uk