Harefooted Halloween: The Crow

What I Liked:  Visually awesome.  Apparently Alex Proyas (Dark City) wanted to shoot this in black and white but the studio vetoed the idea.  So instead Proyas went for as close to black and white as he could by using a limited color palette and having almost the entire thing take place at night.

The city setting is fucking filthy and so crime-ridden the police seem helpless.  It’s great atmosphere and setup for a superhero to come along and clean things up.

The makeup job on Brandon Lee (Showdown in Little Tokyo) is actually kinda creepy looking with the ghostly white base and only some black accents around the eyes and mouth.  Throw in the curly wet black hair that’s always covering part of the face and you got yourself an iconic image.

Michael Wincott (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) is very entertaining and so fucking funny as the main villain Top Dollar (good name although I don’t know if it’s ever uttered once).  This might be my favorite performance of his because you can tell he’s relishing being exceedingly blunt and cruel.  Like when The Crow interrupts his scumbag board meeting the two talk for less than a minute when Top Dollar exclaims “aw this is already borin’ the shit outta me.  Kill him!”  Plus he sports a southern accent for no apparent reason.

What I Didn’t Like: The bad guys are all pure evil with no redeeming qualities.  They rape, murder, loot and do dumb shit like swallow bullets with their round of shots.  Do they have any idea how much that toxic piece of metal is gonna tear up their insides?  That’s gonna be one extra painful shit later.

Conversely The Crow, or Eric Draven when he was alive, is kinda too good.  Even though he has such a dark and ghoulish appearance he’s a total sweetheart to everyone that’s not a terrible human being.  I know it sounds like a weird aspect to pick on but the polar opposite way of how he treats his enemies and friends clashes a little.  It would’ve been nice if he were a bit more even in his personality.  But maybe being brought back from the dead fucks you up so I should probably cut him some slack.

Overall Impressions: True, this is not a horror movie but come on, it’s so damn gothic and the events take place on October 30^th (Devil’s Night as it’s mainly known in Detroit) and the 31^st (Halloween as it’s mainly known in, uh, Detroit?).  It’s really a comic book action film but on an aesthetic level it has a strong horror vibe and I guess that’s why I dig this one so much.  You don’t see that combination too often in movies (Blade is another kickass one).

The action itself is just ok which is why I didn’t include it in either of the main categories.  Brandon Lee does minimal martial arting because The Crow is supposed to be some regular dude (albeit invincible) who fights the bad guys and not a skilled assassin trained in the ways of Bruce Lee.  And that’s fine it’s just that the action isn’t choreographed particularly well or showcases the best camera work.

Lee in the lead was an interesting choice.  There are moments when he completely loses himself in the role and tears it up a la Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight.  And then there are moments when he’s too goofily sentimental which feels out of place.  Lee drives the story though and overall he does a very good job holding his own against Michael Wincott, David Patrick Kelly (Last Man Standing), Ernie Hudson (Oz) and Terry Todd (The Rock).

This is a fun one to return to every now and again.  I always forget how quickly everything moves like Draven turns into The Crow in the first fifteen mins and then it’s all revenge killings after that.  It’s also way more of an action picture than I remember too.  There’s a big shootout sequence involving dozens of henchmen, a car chase and the finale is a sword fight on top of a cathedral in the rain.  Unfortunately the grunge soundtrack really dates the movie and if it weren’t for that it would hold up much better.  But don’t let that stop you.  It’s pretty cool and right up there among movies about a human sized crow that kills bad guys.