The Crow
Not everything needs revived and sometimes it's best to leave well enough alone.
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“The Crow” (2024) (now in theaters) has been in various stages of development hell for over a decade and a half with filmmakers such as Stephen Norrington (“Blade”), Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (“28 Weeks Later”), F. Javier Gutiérrez (“Rings”) and Corin Hardy (“The Nun”) signed to direct and actors along the lines of Mark Wahlberg (“Say hi to your crow for me, OK?”), Bradley Cooper, Alexander Skarsgård, James McAvoy, Tom Hiddleston, Luke Evans, Jack Huston, Nicholas Hoult, Jack O’Connell and Jason Momoa either attached or rumored to star. The project even managed to withstand the bankruptcy of rights holders Relativity Media.
What we’ve wound up with comes 30 years after Alex Proyas’ original vision and is directed by Rupert Sanders (famed for sleeping with Kristen Stewart on the set of “Snow White and the Huntsman” and casting Scarlett Johansson as an Asian robot in “Ghost in the Shell”) and stars Bill Skarsgård (Alexander’s younger brother) as Eric Draven and Danny Huston (Jack’s uncle doing his prototypical bad guy shtick) as the villainous Vincent Roeg (this dude doesn’t hold a candle to Michael Wincott’s Top Dollar despite having an immortality clause with the Devil).
The script by Zach Baylin (experienced with sports pictures (“Creed III,” “Gran Turismo”), biopics (“Bob Marley: One Love”) or both (“King Richard”)) and newbie William Josef Schneider (he has a hand in Chrisophe Gans’ upcoming “Return to Silent Hill” … humorously enough, a poster of Gans’ directorial debut “Crying Freeman” turns up in the apartment of Eric’s tattoo artist Chance (Jordan Bolger)) differs greatly from its predecessor.
The picture’s first hour is dedicated to developing the romance between Eric and Shelly (FKA twigs), who meet in a rehabilitation facility and are only together for a week or so before being murdered by Roeg’s goons. There’s no child like Sarah (Rochelle Davis) for Eric and Shelly to take under their wings nor a police officer like Sgt. Albrecht (Ernie Hudson) for Eric to begrudgingly befriend. Eric feels pain when injured this time out and his injuries are graphically depicted healing through some whiz-bang practical and digital effects.
Proyas’ “The Crow” means a lot to me. I was granted admittance to a screening of the film back in May of 1994 despite only being 12 years old (I looked old for my age) and not being accompanied by a parent or guardian (just a dopey 11-year-old buddy of mine who’d also had a growth spurt). The movie blew me away. I had the soundtrack on cassette and listened to Stone Temple Pilots’ “Big Empty” on repeat.
Brandon Lee’s legacy means a lot to me. I’m not only a fan of his posthumous work on “The Crow,” but of his turns in Mark L. Lester’s “Showdown in Little Tokyo” and Dwight Little’s “Rapid Fire” as well. He was a talent taken from us way too soon.
Sanders’ “The Crow” is fine. Its high point is a sequence in which Eric works his way up a staircase in an opera house while brutally working his way through an army of Roeg’s lackeys. (It’s kind of funny to see Skarsgård’s Eric struggling his way up the stairs after his Marquis gave Keanu Reeves’ title character such a hard time with the same task in “John Wick: Chapter 4.”) Skarsgård is fine as Eric, but lacks Lee’s charisma and looks as though he should be hanging out with Pete Davidson and Machine Gun Kelly as opposed to being resurrected from the dead to make the wrong things right. Sanders’ film is good-looking, but nowhere near as good-looking as Proyas’. Its soundtrack is cool (I especially enjoyed needle drops from Joy Division and Gary Numan), but it ain’t nearly as cool as the original’s.
While I didn’t out-and-out dislike Sanders’ “The Crow” and liked it better than any of the similarly misguided sequels, it probably should’ve remained in development hell or not been bothered with in the first place. It appears to have been made mostly for mercenary reasons. A litany of executive producers are hilariously/strangely the first ones credited in the opening credits as Young Eric (Solo Uniake) mercifully slashes a horse’s throat with the barbed wire that’s trapped it. Sometimes it’s best to kill your darlings and not everything needs revived. It’s often advisable to leave well enough alone.