The Crow
LIONSGATE
The first half-hour of Rupert Sanders’ reimagining of James O’Barr’s The Crow is a thunderous bore. Opening with a hokey flashback of a young Eric Draven (Bill Skarsgård) freeing an injured horse and hurting himself with the fence’s tripwire, Sanders immediately sets a lethargic, uneventful pace with stilted acting that doesn’t inspire at all promise that his take on O’Barr’s comic will be any different than the horrendous direct-to-video sequels that followed Alex Proyas’ 1994 film.
It also doesn’t help that the chemistry between Skarsgård’s Eric and FKA Twigs, who portrays Shelly, is completely frictionless. That’s probably because FKA Twigs is not an actor and can’t exude legitimate human emotion, even when her life is in mortal danger after she receives a video that her former boss, Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), does not want to be made public. While Sanders expands upon the relationship between Eric and Shelly, which the original film only briefly alluded to with sparse flashbacks (that weren’t shot with its lead actor, Brandon Lee, who died during the film’s production, leading the story to be retooled), one can’t help but feel distant to their love, which never actively blossoms into something tangible.
With a sluggish pace, it’s hard to become invested in their connection, knowing full well what’s in store for the two once Roeg’s henchmen eventually find the couple. Asphyxiated via plastic bags (lame), both Eric and Shelly die, with the former being sent to a quasi-metaphysical limbo where he meets Kronos (Sami Bouajila), who tells him that his life isn’t finished yet and won’t be able to move on to the spirit realm until his heart is at peace. Eric then wakes up in the real world as if nothing happened and is immediately attacked by a corrupt police officer. He then realizes that he can’t die, leading him to a revenge-fueled quest to take down the people who murdered Shelly and kill Roeg, a seemingly immortal crime lord who has lived on this Earth for over two hundred years.
It’s there that The Crow becomes interesting and smartly remythologizes Proyas’ film (and, by extension, O’Barr’s comic) to modern-day sensibilities, where its aesthetic isn’t so much driven by a wide array of goth tunes, extensive makeup, and lots (and lots) of lightning. Of course, it’s very much goth-inspired, but far less baroque and in-your-face than Proyas’ film was. Rather, cinematographer Pat Annis takes his time to slowly delve into Eric’s descent into madness with carefully calibrated camera choices that exacerbate his state of ‘eternal purgatory’ as he longs for vengeance. Standardly composed shots become more elaborate, including a striking close-up of a ‘resurrected’ Eric who comes out of blood-filled bathwater, reborn anew as The Crow, and will stop at nothing to kill everyone in his path.
It’s not just his resurrection, but a baptism of sorts in which blood becomes his ‘holy water’ (he’s always covered in it after each action scene) that drives him to complete his goal. There’s even a neat reversal of expectations that comes with the mantle of The Crow, where there are legitimate human stakes to his quest rather than simply being ‘at peace’ with himself after he’s finished his mission. One wouldn’t want to reveal those in this review, but it further enhances Eric’s quest, because there’s a goal audiences can latch onto. He still deeply cares about Shelly, even if the video Roeg doesn’t want public is problematic for Eric’s lover, and will never give up to avenge her death.
In that regard, the violence presented here is unflinchingly brutal. Sanders doesn’t hold anything back, and it’s perhaps the most sadistic The Crow has ever been in any of the film adaptations of O’Barr’s oeuvre. While the violence in the original film felt a bit cartoonish and exaggerated, fitting well with its outlandish sense of style and scope, Sanders’ approach to the material is blunt and gut-churning. Each action sequence increases in intensity, with more subdued, but raw battle scenes in its opening moments that slowly get more vicious until a climax that turns the aesthetic it established to its head with a darkly funny tone, making Eric’s relentless killing spree into an elongated, playful action sequence.
Directly citing Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Crow’s centerpiece climax is set inside an opera house, and cross-cuts to the performance itself and the operatic gestures of Eric Draven, which brutally exacts one bodyguard after another in a quasi-slapstick fashion. Needless to say it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but Sanders has never been this playful in how he represents action and is having tons of fun figuring out elaborately comedic ways to kill people. Wielding a Katana, Eric kills a bodyguard through his neck as he’s about to put a toothpick in his mouth, or shooting himself is the back to kill the bodyguard slicing Eric with his sword.
Each kill is precisely calculated, and often produces hilarious results that are perfectly timed and cathartic. It’s even funnier when Eric goes up on stage after the performance has ended with the heads of Roeg’s henchmen, bowing at his masterpiece fully-realized in horrendously excessive ways. Skarsgård is no Brandon Lee, but he holds his own throughout, and his experience at descending into Hell is far more intriguing from a psychological perspective than Lee’s Draven, who experienced a sudden shift before exacting revenge. Skarsgård’s path is much slower and deliberate, but pays off more satisfyingly than Lee’s take on the character, even if the late actor’s turn is superior in every way.
But Sanders knows how to play with Skarsgård’s strengths, especially during action scenes. He’s immortal, sure, but that doesn’t mean his fighting skills are refined. It’s especially intriguing to see him navigate through claustrophobic settings. He’s not a fighter, and knows it, but plows through nonetheless, because the pain in his heart is too much to subdue, and the only way he can hope for any form of appeasement is if he makes the individuals responsible for Shelly’s death pay. As Roeg, Huston isn’t as interesting as, say, Michael Wincott’s Top Dollar (or Tony Todd’s Grange) in the 1994 film.
However, the repositioning of its antagonist as an already immortal crime lord is interesting from the get-go, especially in how he uses his voice to corrupt the souls into committing sinful acts. Unfortunately, Sanders (and screenwriters Zach Baylin and Will Schneider) don’t go deep enough into the antagonist’s plight, which renders a compelling foe incredibly undercooked. Huston channels his inner Udo Kier from The Adventures of Pinocchio with his portrayal of Roeg, which makes him semi-absorbing but not enough to warrant our full attention, though he’s a massive improvement over the unwatchable villains the franchise has been getting ever since it became direct-to-video fodder for Dimension Films.
And yet, even with apparent, glaring flaws, The Crow still works. Its visual language is calculated and enveloping, while Skarsgård knows exactly how to reinterpret Eric Draven so that it doesn’t feel like a Brandon Lee pastiche, but a singular, effective portrayal of a character who loses his sense of self and gets reborn through the blood he spills. It’s an interesting re-mythologization of an already iconic character with a decidedly modern twist that fits into our collective sensibilities. With darkly funny, cathartic action, The Crow seems like an easy way to win people over. It may stray far from the baroque style of Alex Proyas’ film, but there’s no denying that Rupert Sanders’ contemporary take on the material is his most compelling film yet.