Caw Blimey! (The Crow (DVD))

Member Name: andrewl

Product:	The Crow (DVD)
Date:	03/08/09 (42 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Performances, first half

Disadvantages: A weak second act

The Crow is, sadly, a film remembered almost entirely for the bitterly ironic and tragic fact that Brandon Lee was shot during filming. And so most people only watch the film trying to work out the scene in which the fatal bullet was fired and trying to spot the 'Oliver Reed' bits. The chief villain looks like Neil from the Young Ones, for goodness sake, and most of his henchmen in the set-piece gun battle look as though they're between gigs with their Village People tribute band.

And yet, the film has a certain charm in its own right. It is cheese incarnate, with its overblown electric soundtrack. It is required viewing for the Goth community with its crows and bad make-up and a cast full of pale men in leather trousers, yet Brandon Lee puts just enough humour into his delivery to ensure that this is no Blade. Eric Draven (can you see what they did there?) cuts a pathetic but visibly human figure in all the scenes where he isn't just slaughtering gangsters.

The plot is simple, of course. Eric comes back from the dead to bump off the four men who killed him and his fiance. He does this in progressively more gruesome ways which, in a streak of the bitterest irony OF ALL, correspond to each killer's vicious habits. So the knife thrower gets a chest full of his own knives, the junkie gets a chest full of his own needles and the bomber gets blown up into bits so small that Eric presumably can't find his chest to stick anything in it.

The trouble is that things go downhill from this third murder. The writers have worked out that there is a certain moral... ambiguity to a film about an undead vigilante laying cold-blooded waste to the criminal community with cheerful abandon. It's not going to appeal to the family audiences, now is it? So things get 'complicated' as we start to learn more about the powers of the Crow, and that annoying kid crops up again, as is the habit of annoying kids in films.

As soon as the script changes direction, it's as though someone's flipped the boring switch on this previously exciting and stylish film. Even two big gun battles can't disguise the fact that the story has run out of steam in just over an hour.

The performances go some way to compensating for the lull. Brandon Lee was a huge loss to cinema. He is required to project the full spectrum of human emotions in this film and he does so convincingly. He alternates between charming rough diamond and terrifying supernatural avenger with ease and plausibility.
The world-weary cop is steering dangerously close to clich, but he also manages to create some real chemistry with Lee during their scenes together, which serves the film very well. For Eric Draven to have a recognisably warm relationship with a human lends a whole new dimension to the story.


The villain looks like Neil from the Young Ones. Really. He's got some serious Oedipal issues and really silly hair.

And all the other performances are adequate. But that's all they need to be. There is a certain MTV aspect to the editing, so no one other than Lee or Neil is ever required to hold a close-up for long.

So what makes The Crow worth watching? Well, there's some great choreography in the fights as Brandon Lee proves himself to be his father's son. There's a lot of midnight black humour which only occasionally threatens to stray into 'Death Becomes Her' territory. Despite being cheesy, the electric guitar solos and rooftop concerts are extremely funky. The monochrome 'crow's eye view' shots are interesting (when the plot demands it, Eric Draven can see through the eyes of his crow spirit guide), and the four killers are such irritating gangster stereotypes that you really can't wait to see them get diced.

Basically The Crow is well-directed, well-acted and massively entertaining viewing. If it seems to peter out towards the end, then that's only really because the opening is so very strong. I have yet to see any of the sequels, but they can't possibly top this, for all its faults.

Summary: Essential viewing material for awkward teenage goths