As a moody teenager, I was quite infatuated with the Crow, a comic book about death and vengeance, anger and pain. Metalheads and goths adopted the character as their own, the Kiss for a new generation, but I was neither . James O’Barr’s iconic imagery of leather-clad gothic clown resonated with me as an artist and a fanboy. It was really when the movie was in production that my attention was brought to the character and the comic. Back in 1993, anything based of a comic book was pretty rare and somehow worth paying more attention to. When Brandon Lee tragically died on set while filming it went from being a rather small release to a minor blockbuster by way of curiosity.
I watched the film in the theatre and I guess you could say I was already a fan. I had consumed the graphic novel a couple times over (upgrading from the regular edition to the super-deluxe-hardcover-slipcase edition) and it’s not a lie to say that the soundtrack was one of my most listened to CDs that year. There was also some CD-Rom thing I bought which I never could properly consume (the home computer at the time wasn’t powerful enough to run it, and by the time we upgraded the ROM was outdated and wouldn’t play). As a result, I’m sure I gave the film much more praise and leeway than it maybe earned on its own merits. I probably also watched the film a couple times on laserdisc, and in 2001, I bought a copy of the special edition DVD which, honestly, I have never even watched…
…until today. Honestly, the film holds up. There’s a very narrow focus to the film, good versus evil, vengeance and justice, which the elaborate but confined set design of streets and rooftops keeps it contained. The action is, by today’s standards, unglamorous, lacking spectacle or showiness, looking more like TV (eg. Angel) than blockbuster film (eg. Batman Begins). As a superhero-revenge-drama, it’s still got plenty of excitement, plenty of cool, but there’s a air of sadness that never leaves the film when you watch it, and it’s something I’m sure director Alex Proyas intended, with his permanently dark and rainy visual landscape, but is ever so heightened by the death of Brandon Lee, who you can tell would have emerged from the role a near superstar, a few notches above his direct-to-video status at least, freeing himself from his father’s shadow. I’m happy that it’s still an entertaining movie with solid performances, since Lee’s legacy is so small and not great, it’s good that he has at least one worth remembering.