Starring: Bill Skarsgaard, FKA twigs, Danny Huston, Josette Simon, Laura Birn, Sami Bouajila, Jordan Bolger
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 111 mins. Reviewed in Sep 2024
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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Soulmates Eric and Shelly are brutally murdered. Given a chance to save the love of his life, Eric must sacrifice himself and traverse the worlds of the living and the dead, seeking revenge.
The Crow is based on comic novels by James O’Barr. The first film, in 1993, made quite an impact in the era before the success of the Marvel Universe and its glamorous superheroes. Eric Draven, guided by a Crow, is a very dark comic book hero. (And the film had some notoriety because of the accidental death of its star, Brandon Lee, during production). 1996 to 2005 there were three sequels, much less successful than the original. There was also a television series.
The present film has been in production discussion since 2008. It was finally directed by Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman, Ghost in the Shell). And, for the new incarnation of Eric, Skarsgaard (sinister as Pennywise in the two It films, villain in John Wick 4). All was set for a revival of the franchise – but this film was not well received.
For audiences who have been following the franchise with enthusiasm, they will probably be in favour of this version. However, for the ordinary audience, there will be need to express a word of caution. In an official synopsis of the plot, the word to describe many of the deaths throughout The Crow is ‘savage’. As we watch so many of the killings of Eric’s enemies, swords and knives, guns and physical attacks, ‘savage’ seems something of an understatement. They are particularly graphic, some visually brutal, alarming, and many audiences will feel they want to turn away.
With this caution, it can be said that O’Barr as created an intriguingly dark mythology, a young addict in rehabilitation (where all the inmates wear pink tracksuits – a bit of colour in the dark film) meets a young woman on the run from psychotic criminals and finds it safer to be in jail. They bond. They escape. They fall in love. They are tracked down – and murdered.
And here is the intriguing aspect. Eric comes to life again, in a strange purgatorial railyard, encounters Kronos (Bouajila), who enables him to go through experiences of death, violent assault deaths, but self-heal, not die. He has the task to rescue his fiancee from hell. He is commissioned to wreak revenge on the sinister villain Vincent Roeg, played in a gentlemanly but slick style by Huston, a man who has sold his soul to the devil long since, surviving by killing people, whispering in their ear to control them to self-destruction.
A revenge quest, a challenge to audience sympathies about Eric (with Skarsgard looking particularly young, too young? Even though he is in his early 30s). The violent culmination takes place during an opera; and is appropriately operatically violent.
While this film contributes to the legend of The Crow and an alternative hero to the glamorous superheroes, it reminds us that we live in a violent era.
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