The Crow

We all know that the film The Crow was based on a comic of the same name and that it was Brandon Lee’s final film after dying on set. I’ve decided to go back and watch the film and see what I think about it now, many years after the tragedy and see if the emotion over Brandon Lee’s death is what turned this film into a good movie or if the story holds up to the test of time and really is as brilliant as I remember it.

The film opens on devils night, a Detroit tradition that precedes Halloween, a night where the city is lit on fire by the citizens of the city. This sets the mood for the story very well because the story revolves around death, chaos and pain. Eric Draven is killed by some gang members, of the organized crime variety not the Tupac variety, as they rape and kill his fiancé.

Eric rises from the dead, with the help of a crow, one year later to the day and seeks his revenge on those that had killed him and his fiancé, leading all the way up to the crime boss who ordered the hit.

Put in these terms the film sounds rather simplistic and monolayered, how ever, it is vastly different from your typical super hero story.

In Batman, for instance, Bruce Wayne’s parents are killed in front of his eyes and he uses revenge as his motivation but once the bad guy is caught he continues to clean up the streets of his home city, Gotham. In The Crow, Eric Draven is dead and comes back to kill those that killed him. Once he does so, he is done. He saves his living friend, Sarah, and kills the head bad guy but knows that there will continue to be death and violence in the world. He isn’t trying to save the world but rather to, as the film says, set the wrong things right.

The films central premise is of death so it is interesting that the living characters have the most interesting stories. The reason behind this is because it isn’t about dying, but rather about losing someone who has died. It’s about not being able to let go and to live with your mourning.

Sarah, the little girl that Eric and his fiancé take care of sometimes, is the central character, in my view, because it is she that carries on the memories of the deaths of her friends and also interacts with the lone policeman who cares about the death of the two young lovers.

Eric finally confronts the head of the crime family and it is with the memories of Officer Albrecht sitting in the hospital caring for the woman he didn’t even know, that Eric finishes off the crime lord. Memories and Guilt are the weapons of this superhero. He taunts each of the bad guys he confronts with what they had done in their past. He dresses up as a clown because of something from his own past and lives in the loft that he and his lover shared.

The director of The Crow wanted to create the grimmest world possible so they used filters and such on the camera to create a strong black and white contrast, which mimics the art style of the original comic book though the film does a poor job of adapting the comic. The hero in the comic books does not have a name and is not fighting for the same revenge. Also the film is missing a central character, The Skull Cowboy, who had been written into the script but was removed before the film was made.

So is The Crow as good as I remember? Better even. I think. While the emotional attachment to Brandon Lee is still obvious and tugs at my heart strings it is the story that really resonates. It is a fitting testament to Brandon Lee’s life but it is more than that. It is a film that will help heal the wounds of death for many for years to come by reminding us that death is part of life and that how we mourn and how we live with grief is what really matters.