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79%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #996
...out of 20,725 movies
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A poetic guitarist Eric Draven is brought back to life by a crow a year after he and his fiancée are murdered. The crow guides him through the land of the living, and leads him to his killers: knife thrower Tin-tin, drugetic Funboy, car buff T-Bird, and the unsophisticated Skank. One by one, Eric gives these thugs a taste of their own medicine. However their leader Top-Dollar, a world-class crime lord who will dispatch his enemies with a Japanese sword and joke about it later, will soon learn the legend of the crow and the secret to the vigilante's invincibility.
--IMDb
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Review by Crispy
Added: February 2, 2008
A man and woman are in love, one or both of them are murdered, and then later rise from the dead to avenge the grisly act so they can finally rest in peace. Now, I'm sure you'd run out of fingers before you finished counting off the number of times a variant of this plot has been used; but even so, through its dark and gritty execution,The Crow has been able to secure a rock solid cult favorite status that continues to grow to this day. Now, a lot of people argue that this status is solely due to the untimely death of actor Brandon Lee (Bruce Lee's son) during filming; and while I'm sure that has entered into it, The Crow was more than strong enough to stand on its own merits.
The plot here is pretty straight forward. In an unnamed city, the night before Halloween has taken on the deadly tradition of Devil's Night, where the cases of arson number in the hundreds every year. As we survey the damage, a voice-over tells the legend of The Crow. Basically, when a person dies, a crow carries their soul to the afterlife, but sometimes the crow will bring the soul back to avenge its memory and finally have peace. Meanwhile, Eric Draven is living happily with his fiancé, Shelly Webster, in a loft apartment. After they receive an eviction notice, Shelly gets a petition started to fight it. The owner of the building deals with the petition by sending four thugs to the apartment to deal with the problem. Eric walks in to the sight of Shelly getting raped, and in his attempt to stop them he finds himself stabbed, shot repeatedly, and thrown out of a six story window. Shelly died the day after, after thirty hours in intensive care. The case was never solved, and on the anniversary of the murders, a crow lands on Eric's tombstone and two minutes later, his body crawls out of the grave and wanders back to his old apartment in a daze. Once there, he is assaulted by flashbacks and memories of his life with Shelly, finally culminating in reliving the murders. Now fueled by rage, he sets out with the crow to find the gang that destroyed his life.
Again, it's the execution, not the plot, that carries this movie. The movie has a very dark tone to it, and director Alex Proyas takes full advantage of that. His shots of Eric running across the rooftops or stalking his victims from the fire escapes are excellently done, they really emphasize the rage driving his quest for vengeance. This deadly focus wouldn't be fully appreciated without the stark contrast of his more emotional scenes. When he was alive, he and Shelly had befriended a young girl named Sarah, and his reunion with her as well as the conversations with Albrecht, the officer who handled his case, was amazingly efficient at keeping the character human. Instead of just enjoying the ride as we watch this guy systematically take out this gang, we've seen what happened to him, shared his pain as he lost everything, and it feels pretty damned good when we get to see him strike back.
For the most part, the acting here was pretty damned good across the board. In his final role, Lee was awesome, jumping back and forth from the sadistic glee he took in taking out the thugs, to the heartbreaking depression he was in while reflecting over his lost life, and even in the flashbacks, where we could see just how truly happy he was. It's a shame that he died during shooting here, as this surely would have kick-started his career into high gear. As Officer Albrecht, Ernie Hudson was just as good. While he didn't run the emotional gauntlet that Lee did, he still did a great job. Rounding out the trifecta here was Michael Wincott as the crime lord that runs the gangs in the city. He's usually typecast as the villain, which has left him well practiced in the role, and he was at the same par. Sofia Shinas was Sarah, and while her delivery was kind of stiff, her character was written as very stoic, which sidestepped the problem nicely. The four gang members also garnered no complaints from me; the most famous of which was David Patrick Kelly, who's piercing voice will forever be known for the line "Warriors, come out to play."
So yeah, I really can't recommend this movie enough. While it's definitely sad that Lee died while making this, at least there's some small condolence that his magnum opus was damned near perfect. 9.5/10.
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#1:
Big D
- added August 21, 2004 at 6:36pm
HA HA HA!!! The Crow rules!!!
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#2:
Crispy
- added October 11, 2004 at 2:03pm
Hands down my favorite movie of all time.
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#3:
wikkidpiggykilla
- added December 5, 2004 at 7:34pm
1 of the best movies ever
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#4:
Deadwired2
- added July 3, 2005 at 6:27am
One of the coolest movies ever.
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#5:
Ginose
- added September 9, 2005 at 5:40pm
Anyone else fell like they've heard this story
before... what was it... oh yeah! Spawn! This is a
very cool movie, but it lacks originality... and
atleast Spawn was a much more involved series.
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#6:
bluemeanie
- added October 18, 2005 at 9:50pm
I have always thought this film to be a little
overrated. The art direction is nice, and the
late Brandon Lee does give a nice performance, but
the only thing that made this film so popular is
the fact that Lee happened to have died while
filming it. 3/10.
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#7:
Crispy
- added February 5, 2006 at 11:17am
Granted, I hardly speak for the masses but I
walked away from this movie going "God damned that
was one of the best movies I've ever seen." I
didn't know he died until quite a few viewings
later.
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#8:
Alex P
- added September 26, 2006 at 5:45am
"Anyone else fell like they've heard this story
before... what was it... oh yeah! Spawn! This is a
very cool movie, but it lacks originality... and
atleast Spawn was a much more involved
series."
its too bad the Crow was
published in 1989 and Spawn first appeared in
1992. gg though.
and even if that
werent the case, to try and claim spawn is the
first 'come back from death for love' themed thing
in history is downright ricoculous.
id give this movie a 9/10 at the least. love
this movie.
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#9:
Crispy
- added January 25, 2007 at 11:10am
haha I still like the guy on IMDB saying that
Ghost Rider (debuted in 72) was a ripoff of Spawn
(debuted in 92)
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#10:
Kain
- added June 3, 2007 at 9:40pm
Ah this one... One of the first comic-to-movie
movies I had seen at the time and the first
comic-to-movie movie that I actually liked.
Whereas I agree MvMMDI that the acting was pretty
clean (if a bit hoakey, but hey, it is a comic
book flik, isn't that kinda the point?), but
admittedly, Ling Bai (the asian with the eye
fetish) was irritatingly fake, and I didn't overly
enjoy her part. Stylistically, this reminds me a
bit of a Burton film, and hell, who doesn't like
that. As is typical with this sort of films, it
carries that 'following' that those of us who are
capable of thinking for ourselves loathe, but no
reason to let that spoil our fun. I will,
however, argue that this film carries it's fans on
the shoulders of Brandon Lee's death. As far as
comic movies go, it truly is excellent, and as
macabre as they come. I know that I, for one, was
unaware that Lee had even perished until years
after my initial viewing of this particular slice
of cinema. Crazy, thank you for catching the
"Spawn" comment...no one but the ignorant could
argue this as a wholly original story, but Spawn??
Really?
Technically speaking, it
probably warrants something like a 7 or 8, but in
my ever so...unbiased...opinion, I offer it a 9 or
10. Little need be changed for me, as I enjoyed
the Chimps Testicles out of it.
-KAIN
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#11:
Ginose
- added January 21, 2008 at 10:30am
Oh, well kick my ass and call me Tammy Mae. Ah
well, I never did read "The Crow", the movie just
drug on far too much for me to be interested
enough to look it up. Either way, the "Come back
to life for love" story was done before "The
Crow", too. "Spawn" was just the first one that
came to mind because they have such similar feels
to them.
..."Spawn" still had a much
more involved story... and I'm talking that shitty
movie, too.
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#12:
Mörderwolf777
- added February 8, 2008 at 9:30pm
horribly cheesey cant stand it
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#13:
Mr. Mistoffelees
- added February 14, 2008 at 3:39pm
I really felt like this movie had a much more good
vs. evil thing going than Spawn, which was
anti-hero drama at its finest. I think the mere
fact that he was able to come back and avenge his
girlfriend's humiliation makes me feel much more
strongly for the character. 8/10 from me, I'd
kick their asses just as hard as he did.
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#14:
johannesfaust
- added February 27, 2009 at 7:52pm
yeah, maybe today it isn´t as interesting as
when I was 15, but it´s still a good movie:
dark and a bit sick...
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#15:
missbexxie
- added September 5, 2009 at 2:19pm
Ah, the score, the soundtrack... worth a 10/10 for
that alone. :)
This is one of my
all-time favourite movies, I just love everything
about it. 10/10.
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#16:
Rest Easy Soul
- added December 22, 2009 at 3:20pm
This was my favorite movie for the longest time.
The story, the atmosphere, the music, the
characters.. All so very brilliant. While it isn't
my all time favorite it's still in my top 10.
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#17:
Lucid Dreams
- added June 1, 2010 at 3:13pm
It was a bit overrated, but the movie still kicked
some ass. 8/10
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