It Can't Rain All The Time (Movie only) (The Crow (Special Edition, DVD))

Member Name: marandina

Product:	The Crow (Special Edition, DVD)
Date:	12/05/07 (288 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Wonderful story, outstanding musical score and soundtrack, Brandon Lee

Disadvantages: Subpar sfx

In superhero land, there’s nothing we like more than an anti-hero it seems. Dark, moody characters have littered our cinema screens over the years. Keanu Reeves’ "Constantine" and Ben Affleck’s’ "Daredevil" are just two recent examples of dark figures operating in a gloomy future consisting of shades of darkness and brooding violence. Perhaps the thematic template for the more apocalyptic side of superherodom came in the shape of the 1994 movie “The Crow”. Starring the ill-fated Brandon Lee, the film was a stylized exercise in gothic romance, violence and retribution.

On Devil’s Night - October 30th - a city is ablaze with fires and random acts of violence perpetrated against its civilians. Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and his girlfriend, Shelly Webster (Sofia Shinas) are attacked, beaten and raped by a ruthless gang operating under the umbrella of the notorious crime lord, Top Dollar (Michael Wincott). With Shelly having lobbied for resistance to plans to buy the apartment block for redevelopment, she pays with her life along with her boyfriend at the hands of the gruesome trespassers. At the start of the movie, we have been told that sometimes a soul will be trapped in limbo following an event that is so wrong that it cannot be released until that wrong is righted and the transporter of that soul is a crow. One year on, just such a crow brings Eric’s soul back from the dead to gain revenge on his killers and right the wrong so callously inflicted on his girlfriend. Immune from gun shot wounds, being knifed and generally invincible, Eric Draven sets in motion a bloody sequence of revenge killings as Top Dollar scrambles to find a way of saving himself and defeating the ghost haunting his despicable crew.

Based on the comic book by James O’Barr and directed by Alex Proyas, “The Crow” is a picture book triumph of gothic über-violence carrying its underlying message of enduring love that transcends life itself. Shot throughout in low light and often using red filter, the motor city setting is a dour place of constant rain and shadowy side walks. The film is remembered most of all for Brandon Lee’s towering performance. The son of martial arts legend, Bruce Lee, Brandon had a glittering career ahead of him until he was accidentally killed during the staging of one of the scenes. With an edge of mania to his performance, Lee dominates the movie from start to finish. Michael Wincott is chilling in his depiction of the psychotic Top Dollar and his penchant for extreme violence is matched only by his crazed girlfriend Myca (Ling Bai) who seems to have a thing for people’s eyes. His gravelly voice, deliberate speech and cold indifference to anything other than a passion for anarchy sets him up as the movie’s monster. Ernie Hudson (probably best known for playing one of the Ghostbusters) plays the honorable cop, Sergeant Albrecht, and becomes the moral barometer of the movie, with the frequent violence challenged by his overriding respectability and desire to do the right thing. In many ways, he’s probably the actual hero of the movie showing a willingness to sacrifice what was important to him (demoted for delving too deeply into the killings of the main characters and getting divorced from his wife) in order to access the truth and trigger justice for those so heinously wronged by the lowlife of the city. The little girl, Sarah (Rochelle Davis), plays the narrative friend of the couple who tells the audience about the spiritualistic aspects of the story through the voiceovers as well as playing the neglected street urchin, symbolic of the loss of conscience and values of the city in general.

If there is weakness in the movie it's in the occasional below par special effects. The aerial shots of the city at the beginning and the end are clearly miniature models overlaid with CGI and aren’t overly impressive although our attention is drawn away by the voiceover that sets the scene at the beginning and recounts the underlying moral of the movie at the end. Notwithstanding, the film is loaded with glorious set pieces, often set around the imaginative demises of the unrepentant gang members. With the central figure, Draven, face painted grease white and looking like a clown-esque wraith, he stalks the murderers from the opening scenes leading to a number of memorable stand offs, the most notable in my mind being the ones in the pawn shop and Top Dollar’s HQ above the rock club. As Draven tip taps on the pawn shop owner’s glass door reciting words from Poe’s famous poem “The Raven”, the shop owner Gideon (Jon Polito) tells him to f*** off only for our hero to crash through the window and announce his arrival. Intent on finding the wedding ring pawned to Gideon by his partner’s murderers, Draven takes two gun shots in the chest before torturing the shop owner into giving him the information he seeks; pouring petrol all over the shop and setting it ablaze in a slow motion sequence that sees the terrified Gideon scrambling out of the back door as the shop explodes in a ball of fire. The set piece at Top Dollar’s HQ is even more impressive. With numerous gang members present and seated around a table, Draven appears demanding that he is given the next in his sequence of members he wants to take retribution on. As Top Dollar denies him his request, the gang open fire on Draven in a blaze of bullets and mayhem and as the shadows and silhouettes merge in a hailstorm of anarchy, Draven leaps, dodges and shoots most of the members up in a torrent of stylized violence that would sit well in a Quentin Tarantino production.

Along with Brandon Lee’s unfortunate death during filming (which meant using CGI to recreate Lee during some scenes to finish the movie), “The Crow” is also renowned for both its musical score by Graeme Revell and the rock songs featured throughout including music from The Cure, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against the Machine, Stone Temple Pilots, and Pantera, winning the 1995 BMI Film Music Award, from the BMI Film & TV Awards and the 1995 MTV Movie Award for Best Movie Song. David J Schow’s screenplay adaptation of the comic book is full of memorable quotes including Draven’s apocryphal “It can’t rain all the time” (which is the cue for Sarah to recognise the wraith as Draven) and the wonderful exchange between Albrecht and Draven after our hero has just torched the pawn shop. As Draven strolls towards the cop, Albrecht demands “Police! Don't move! I said, "Don't move!" Draven replies “I though the police always said, "Freeze!" to which Albrecht retorts “ Well, I am the police, and I say, "Don't move!" So once you move, you're dead.” The invincible Draven concludes now only a few feet away from Albrecht “And I say, "I'm dead," and I move.”

With a respectable run time of 102 minutes and an 18 certificate, “The Crow” is a movie for adults only with its extreme violence and graphic scenes. It will appeal to fans of horror/fantasy movies who like a great story and an iconic lead. Brandon Lee’s death is one of the greatest tragedies in cinema history, robbing us potentially of one of the greatest stars of the silver screen we would have probably ever seen. “The Crow” is his epitaph and greatest achievement. It’s also one of my all-time favourite movies.

Thanks for reading.

Mara.

More info available at http://www.thecrowsloft.com

Dvd including special edition available from Amazon from £4.98 with the original soundtrack available from £12.98 new. Special edition DVD includes:

Region 2/Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
2 disc/Available Audio Tracks: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, Dolby Digital 2.0/Filmmakers Commentary/Deleted Footage/Extended Scenes/Featurette/Profile Of James Obarr/Poster Art/Production Design/Storyboard Sequences

Summary: Overview of "The Crow"