The Crow Review
by The Phantom (sbb AT panix DOT com)June 1st, 1994
THE CROW
A review by The Phantom
([email protected])
All the ingredients were there--that's for sure. Friday night in Times Square, sitting in a just-this-side-of-sleazy movie theater among the kind of audience that can really make a picture like this. We had KFC on the right, and--not to put too blunt a point on it--a certain controlled substance on the left. And the movie itself? Well, what more could one ask for than Brandon Lee coming back from the dead to settle and old score in the most violent way possible?
And yet it didn't take too long for the Phantom to realize that things were not going as planned. He should have been having a great time watching THE CROW--reveling in the soundtrack, the slick cinematography, the timeless theme of revenge, revenge, and more revenge. But instead he (and the rest of the audience) was growing increasingly restless; it seemed for a while that the entire auditorium was in perfect psychic sync: all of a sudden, 400 perfect strangers found that their expectations were not being met.
It took a while for the Phantom to figure out why he wasn't enjoying THE CROW as much as he expected to, but somewhere between the opening narration (always a worrisome sign in a genre picture; after all, what could possibly be unclear about someone returning from the grave to seek vengeance on those who put him there?); the fourth camera swoop through the miniature Gotham that is its setting; and the tenth bucketful of rain that comes close on the heels of at least a thousand more, it became clear. Too much style, and not nearly enough attention to what makes a good genre picture good.
People are often fooled into believing that action, horror, or exploitation films are easy to make, but they're not. Though they may not require inspired writing, acting, or plotting, genre pictures do require solid direction, if only to make up for the lack of nearly everything but a straight-ahead story and good special effects. Steven Spielberg--who is responsible for four of the best genre pictures of our time (DUEL, JAWS, POLTERGEIST, and most recently JURASSIC PARK) -- knows this, which is why his latest blockbuster opens not with ponderous narration by a precocious, death-culture waif, but with someone being eaten by a dinosaur run amok. Consider what happens during the first 10 minutes of DIE HARD or LETHAL WEAPON, and you'll understand why John McTiernan and Richard Donner are among the best at what they do.
Straight-ahead action, horror, or revenge is best accomplished without a lot of window dressing, but although THE CROW is a genre picture to the core, so much time and energy are spent making it look alternately like BATMAN, BLADE RUNNER and any of a number of "stylish" videos on MTV that it's sometimes hard to tell. Although Miramax and Dimension would very much like you to believe that THE CROW is a mainstream film, it's not. Not even close. For underneath the by now familiar urban dystopia setting; the death culture gloss; the trendy soundtrack filled with retailer-friendly cuts by industrial/alternative bands; Brandon Lee himself, who until his untimely death as a result of a stunt mishap always seemed to be on the brink of major mainstream success--underneath all of this lies the cold-blooded heart of a sleazy revenge flick. Take all the window dressing away (and there may perhaps be more window dressing than window in THE CROW) and you're left with THE EXTERMINATOR. And much as the Phantom enjoys a good revenge flick, he knows full well that very few other people do -- crows or no crows.
Too, revenge flicks need to be carefully crafted. THE EXTERMINATOR, like DEATH WISH before it, succeeds where many pretenders fail, by placing the audience in the position of an average man who suffers a terrible wrong and does what he must to put things right (which always means taking revenge; after all, no one in his right mind is going to pony up $7.50 to see 90 minutes of personal injury litigation). James Glickenhaus has some feeling for this particular cinematic niche, and his exceedingly seedy film works precisely because it is so completely straightforward. The "everyman" in his film could be any man in the audience; when he goes about methodically taking his revenge (and employing some particularly inventive ways of dispatching the bad guys), we're with him precisely because he is so completely two-dimensional. To put it another way, THE EXTERMINATOR succeeds as a revenge flick in large part because it is *not* stylishly filmed; because it *isn't* raining all the time; and because no one crawls out of a grave and dresses himself up as a mime with a very bad attitude.
Well, maybe not a mime, but Lee does go to some lengths to look like the lead singer of The Cure (or, come to think of it, of The Black Crowes, which seems appropriate). It's not every corpse that enjoys access to water-proof theatrical makeup, but hey, that's this film's schtick. That and the crow who serves as Robin (so to speak) to Lee's Batman--it is the source of his superhuman powers as well as an early-warning system that lets Lee see things from a bird's eye view. All of this is fine and well; perhaps a little much for a movie about a guy who finds and kills the bad guys who seriously aggrieved him, but it's workable. What is less workable is all the window dressing that the filmmakers obviously felt compelled to pile on top of such a slight plot. Had THE CROW stuck to basics, it might have worked better than it does. But then it wouldn't be THE CROW; nor would it any longer be based on the successful comic book character of the same name.
But style (and exposition) in a comic book don't obscure action, whereas on the screen that's all they can do. The Phantom presumes that a lengthy preparation for The Crow's return from the grave works reasonably well in a comic book; on the screen, however, it seems like nothing more than the worst kind of wheel-spinning. The idea that a crow guides souls from the land of the living to the land of the dead (and sometimes back again when they have some unfinished business to take care of) is not one that requires a lot of explanation, and yet explanation is all we get for the first 10 minutes of the film. Even after Lee crawls out of the grave, it seems like we endure another 10 minutes of pointless flashbacks before the film finally gets into gear. Perhaps only the Phantom believes that THE CROW might be a lot more enjoyable had Lee simply climbed out of the grave and killed someone in the first 10 minutes; instead we get an overwhelming amount of exposition, narration, and ultimately frustration as the filmmakers succumb to the worst case of Enterprise-itis since STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. Do the obvious miniatures that comprise THE CROW's obvious tribute to BLADE RUNNER and BATMAN's Gotham look good? Yes, at first. The very first time the camera swoops through the city streets, over rooftops and down alleyways, it looks pretty good. The second time it looks a little less good. The third time the Phantom started worrying that the filmmakers might have even more miniatures in store for him--perhaps the camera would swoop through miniature cow pastures and past miniature 7-11's, around miniature farm animals and miniature Big Gulps. After the third time, the Phantom lost count, but suffice it to say that the budget did not permit any more interesting swoops--THE CROW sticks loyally to the three-square-block radius of miniatures it can afford. By the last swoop, it seemed to the Phantom that the filmmakers needed only a jolly king, a trolley, and Mr. Rogers dressed in black to complete the transformation from urban dystopia to Evil Land of Make Believe.
Putting aside a setting which even the characters themselves feel compelled to comment on (says the annoying little girl who -- incredibly--serves as the only character with which we can identify: "It can't rain all the time, can it?" "Not all the time," answers Lee. "I'm sure it will," replied a waterlogged Phantom who at that point in the film had thoughts of a warm and dry bed dancing in his head), there's the cinematography, which is--without trying very hard--the absolute worst of every music video cliche of the past few years. This is not entirely unexpected--after all, the director Alex Proyas does quite well for himself directing commercials and music videos in Australia--and yet it still took the Phantom aback. What on earth was all this fancy camera work doing in an action film? Didn't anyone associated with the production realize that action sequences cannot be shot as if they were music videos or Diet Pepsi commercials? Or that music videos can support the kind of jumpy, hyper-stylish camera work that so plagues THE CROW precisely because they are not required to maintain any sort of coherent narrative flow? Strobe lights, incessant rain, a camera that can't stop jumping around--this is not the formula for a successful film of any kind, let alone an action film. After all, what good is a fight sequence if you can't tell where anyone is, what they're doing, or who they're shooting at? As coldly stylish as BLADE RUNNER was, at least Ridley Scott knew enough to leave the camera in one place long enough for his audience to get a feeling for where they were and what was going on. Proyas lets his cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (who is actually quite talented when someone keeps him from going over the music video edge) run hog wild, and the film suffers for it.
The real problem with THE CROW, however, would exist even had the entire picture been shot sans MTV fireworks. The real problem is with Lee's character, a small-time rock star who finds himself crawling out of his own grave one evening because his great love for his fiancee has prevented his soul from resting. Assuming that the filmmakers wanted to play this for straight horror, it would have worked almost as is. But they don't--they want us to identify with Lee and so pile on flashback after flashback showing Lee and his fiancee acting as if they were in a extra-long Levis commercial: smiling, hugging each other, having goofy stove-related accidents while making dinner ("We'll eat out" declares Lee as his fiancee sets fire to a pot), lighting candles, making love. This goes on and on, all throughout the film, and to what purpose the Phantom cannot imagine. Because all the flashbacks do nothing more than expose the paradox at the heart of THE CROW: if Lee is such a wonderful, sweet-hearted guy, what on earth is he doing dispatching the four people who killed him and raped and killed his fiancee a year before? And in ways gruesome enough to give even James Glickenhaus pause? If he's so nice, what is he doing stabbing a pawn shop dealer in the hand and blowing up his store? Is this guy THE CROW or THE PUNISHER?
Since a movie about an enraged mime with a bird on his shoulder killing four neighborhood thugs wouldn't be long enough for theatrical release, the plot is padded with a number of scenes involving Sarah, the death-culture waif who hung around with Lee and his fiancee before their untimely deaths. Sarah exists as another mainstream sop--it seems that in addition to making him a supernatural, revenge-crazed killer, the screenplay has also tossed in a caring, tender side for Lee to juggle. One moment he's brutally killing a thug; the next he's helping to reform Sarah's mother by leading her away from a life of drug addiction and prostitution. (By the way, the Phantom is fairly sure that he was not alone in feeling puzzled by the earnest anti-drug and anti-smoking messages in THE CROW. Brutal vigilante revenge? That's fine! But just say no to anything you might want to inhale.)
But although the scenes showing Lee's sensitive side do help pad things out a bit (while making far worse the central paradox of the film), the screenplay can't stop there. Instead, in a futile attempt at BATMAN-ization, the filmmakers throw in scene after scene of Top Dollar (that's his name, believe it or not), who plays the Mr. Big of THE CROW's Gotham, acting malevolently. It seems that Top Dollar and his henchmen are responsible for all the crime in the city, including the "Devil's Night" fires that the camera swoops past once or twice near the beginning of the film. How is he tied to Lee? Well, it seems that he ordered some of his henchmen to clear out an apartment building, and things got out of hand. This (very) loose tie enables the filmmakers to steer the CROW in a more BATMAN-like direction, but it happens far too late in the proceedings to make much difference. There's a lot of mumbo-jumbo by Top Dollar's Asian half-sister/lover; people's eyeballs are bandied about; and meanwhile the audience is left to wonder why, if Top Dollar is the King of all Bad Guys, he can't get a decent hair cut.
As Lee moves toward the final, inevitable confrontation with Top Dollar, the last of THE CROW's major flaws is revealed to us. Because he's back from the dead and out for justice, it seems that Lee cannot be permanently injured or killed. If he's shot or stabbed, his wounds disappear (courtesy of the hard-working folks at Dream Quest) T2-like, which must have seemed very cool to the filmmakers. But as it happens, Lee's superhuman abilities do more to throw THE CROW off track than all the rain and fancy camera work combined. After all, if Lee is never in any danger, what's the fun? Do people really want to see a film in which an invincible "good guy" finds and brutally kills four bad guys? Even as one who loves the genre, the Phantom quickly realized that he, for one, did not.
It remains to be seen how well THE CROW will do. Certainly the film will benefit from Lee's untimely death and from the publicity surrounding it and the digital tricks the filmmakers played to continue shooting without him. There was something undeniably spooky about seeing Brandon Lee claw his way out of a grave; but one spooky scene doesn't pay the rent. As for the rest of the film, THE CROW is as good an example as any of how good ideas can go wrong as they're transplanted from one medium to another, and how--once again--filmmakers can underestimate the effort and talent needed to produce a quality genre picture. THE CROW has all the right elements, but the mix is all wrong. And it is truly a shame that in real life Lee won't be able to come back and do it again--but this time do it right.
: The Phantom
: [email protected]
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
