Thursday 21 November 2013

The Crow (1994) - #241

Empire top 301: #241
IMDb top 250: -

Rating 5/10

Director: Alex Proyas
Writers: David J. Schow & John Shirley
Starring: Brandon Lee, Ernie Hudson, Michael Wincott, Anna Levine & David Patrick Kelly

"If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever."

Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) returns home on Devil's night, to find his fiancée Shelly being brutally attacked by a group of local thugs. He is attacked and thrown out of a window to his death whilst Shelly is raped and also murdered. One year later Eric rises from his grave as an undead avenger intent on seeking revenge for his and Shelly's death. 



I didn't hate The Crow but I never really liked it either, it didn't bore me but it never really excited me either. I'm not really sure whether it was the cringey dialogue, all over the place nature of the film or the bad over the top acting that made me indifferent to the movie.

The script is just so corny, I was cringing for the actors having to deliver such awful lines. Whether this had an effect on their performances or not I don't know but it was all just too silly, the whole "fire it up, fire it up" thing was just ridiculous and didn't make the thugs seem at all threatening, if it wasn't for the knives and guns they were carrying you'd have just thought they were a bunch of simpletons! David Patrick Kelly, who I love in The Warriors, is just awful here as are the rest of his cronies! 

Michael Wincott is the absolute worst though, his performance is so over the top, but not even in a "Showgirls" type of way or one that befits the comic, it's just so cartoony and ridiculous. The young girl Sarah was also a major annoyance for me. I can't abide precocious children on screen or in real life and she has got to be one of the worst. Throughout I just wanted her to be run over by a garbage truck whilst she was skateboarding on the roads! 


   
Brandon Lee is amazing as Eric and I really love the character of The Crow and what he did. In a better movie, with much better dialogue and direction it would have been perfect, it's like he's giving a 10/10 performance in a 5/10 movie. I'd never seen the movie before but had known the story of Brandon's unfortunate death and I found myself watching the film waiting for that particular scene to come up and wandering how much had to be changed and re-shot and perhaps this affected my enjoyment of the movie. 

I found a lot the scenes quite dark, not in a moody sense, but in a "it's so dark I can't see a thing" kind of way and this annoyed me somewhat. It's definitely a movie I'd watch again at some point later in my life but I wouldn't rush to watch again just yet.



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