The other piece of Old Shit I’m reviewing is The Crow: City of Angels. I’d started looking into the Crow franchise again after Beka admitted to never even having heard of The Crow, which struck me as deeply wrong. The original Crow movie was something I watched when I was an impressionable little teenygoth, and years later, I still find it powerful and moving.
The sequel, though… Just because I found a Crow: City of Angels shirt on sale one day when I was in high school and wore it religiously didn’t make me a fan. Far from it, in fact — it was a beautiful image on the shirt (Vincent Perez in Crow makeup with the crow silhouette superimposed on it), and I loved the mythology of the series, but plot-wise, I was unimpressed. Oh, the movie had style — it oozed style out of every pore, but it was completely lacking in substance, leaving me with the distinct impression that it was just a tired old retread of familiar ground.
Still, I’ve decided to give it a rewatch, just for the sake of finding out just how crappy it really is, over ten years later. The rest of this post is part review and part running commentary, written as I watch.
First, let me just say that I’m delighted to have a Spanish (okay, half-Spanish) main character. Maybe someday we’ll have a movie adaptation of The Crow: Dead Time with its Native American protagonist (though it’ll probably suck), and a bit more of my ancestry will be covered, but until then, Vincent Pérez as Ashe will have to do. And I love his accent.
The fact that his kid has no trace of accent and appears not Spanish at all is less delightful, but maybe he’s adopted. Maybe the Spanish Pretty didn’t get passed on. Who knows? If I ever did, I don’t remember it now.
Look, Sarah’s back from the first movie, all grown up and unable to act! She’s very pretty, though, and I love the wings tattooed on her back.
And… Dude. That’s Richard Brooks, who, thanks to Firefly,, I’ll never be able to see as anyone but Jubal Early. He’s named Judah Earl this time around, which really makes me wonder about Joss Whedon’s taste in movies.
Richard Brooks is so good at playing them crazy and eerily calm. Also, he’s very pretty in this. I approve of prettiness, manskirts, nail polish, and what might just be a little bit of makeup. And the wonderful thing is none of this diminishes his masculinity. It’s almost impossible to deny that he’s very definitely male — he’s just pretty. And the world needs more manpretty.
And IGGY POP! Oh my GOD Iggy Pop. He makes this almost worth it, because he’s IGGY POP. …Why yes, I’m a squeeing fangirl. Moving on.
Pretty Kali is pretty. I haven’t seen her do much other than be pretty yet, sadly, but she’s doing that very well. This movie has a lot of pretty right now. Not much else going for it, but the pretty is there in abundance.
Also, would it not have been awesome, while they were going for continuity with the first movie, to have had the(?) Sybil (it’s hard to be sure whether it’s a name or a title with her) be Myca from the first movie, blind but somehow still alive, as opposed to another apparently-blind chick?
…Actually, it would have been horribly contrived, but I liked Myca and her creepy incest, damnit. And how many blind/blinded magic chicks does any franchise need?
Bai Ling had all our blinded magical chick needs covered, thank you.
Ashe’s resurrection was impressive, but his flaily flashbacks aren’t that good. He’s too stiff in all the wrong ways. I just don’t believe him, there.
Judah is still pretty, though. I rather like him, for all that he’s no Top Dollar. Still, Michael Wincott as Top Dollar is a tough act to follow, and Richard Brooks is doing quite well with what he’s got so far.
…Right. The harlequin makeup had personal significance to Eric. The only significance it could have in Ashe’s case, given the sexual nature of the scene in which Sarah paints his face, is that she wants him to be Eric, because she wants Eric. That’s not cute. That’s creepy and obsessive, and I really don’t want to think about the implications too much.
…Still hot, though.
And the fact that she’s using his dead son’s paints does give it some symbolic tie to him… Though it doesn’t make the implications of the style of face-paint any less sketchy.
But now we see Ashe with face paint that looks suspiciously like Eric’s, putting on an outfit that looks suspiciously like Eric’s, and, let’s be honest here… Vincent Pérez has nowhere near the grace Brandon Lee did when doing what was essentially the exact same scene. And the ‘woosh’ sound effects when he put his arms through the sleeves of the coat… Were those really necessary?
Though, again, Ashe on the motorcycle with the coat flapping behind him is some high-quality pretty. That’s just about the only thing this movie’s doing right.
But now that Ashe is getting his vengeance on… There’s none of the charm that we saw in Brandon Lee’s Eric, none of the morbid humor. The card tricks just made him come off as a second-rate Joker. (And here’s a creepy little thought — watch the original Crow, then watch The Dark Knight. There are a few disturbing similarities, especially when you consider the fates of Brandon Lee and Heath Ledger.)
And palm trees bursting into flame with the crow flies over them? Really? REALLY?
Head, meet desk.
And we’re briefly back to Iggy Pop, who does a beautiful job with some anvillicious symbolism. Again, as much as I hate to compare this to the first movie: Eric Draven left the image of the crow as a calling card. The fact that it appears in the tattoo would have been a nice bit of synchonicity, if not for the fact that, for Ashe, it’s magically appearing everywhere. This doesn’t add to the movie — it just makes it seem over-the-top and ridiculous.
Sarah gets a moment of asskicking! Yay Sarah!
But is it intentional that her boss’s accent keeps slipping? It’s distracting.
And now she has a moment of crazy. Way to ruin my happy feelings towards her, movie.
Okay, the peep show scene started off promising. “Do you want me… baby?” And then Ashe starts mangling quotations about blackbirds with absolutely no flair, and my heart sinks a little. “You always have a choice!” redeemed him a bit in my eyes, but not enough by this point. Not nearly enough.
The origami crow was nice, though. So is Ashe’s coat.
And now, the obligatory ‘drugs are bad’ scene. Yes, movie, we know. And it’s followed by the obligatory ‘spooky magic chick tells the Big Bad about the significance of that crow following our hero around’ scene. Let joy be unconfined.
More Iggy Pop — I mean Curve — and and Kali in a disturbing scene with a tattoo needle. Sweet. Then we cut to the scene of great sexual tension. Why is this even happening? Doesn’t Ashe have more important things to worry about?
…Oh, right — this isn’t about Ashe. It’s about Sarah’s obsession with Eric. How silly of me to have forgotten. At least Ashe appears to know he has more important things to worry about.
More important things, apparently, involve having more flashbacks of him and his son and their deaths. This is getting boring.
Sarah gets kidnapped. No one is surprised. That’s why she exists.
Even the fight with Kali is boring. This is going on far too long, and we didn’t need to see the same flashback we just saw two minutes ago again, thank you. And then we get more promising moments of psycho vengeance ruined by crappy line delivery, which makes me want to compare Vincent Pérez to Brandon Lee yet again… And not in any way that would flatter Mr. Pérez.
Oh look. Blood pooling in the shape of a crow with outstretched wings, again by Freaky Magical Coincidence.
…Really, movie? Really?
And then we switch to Curve at fetish night at the local club/Lair Of The Big Bad, with whippings and sex on the dance floor and him snorting whatever the drug of choice in the Dystopian Future is. Okay, I get it. It’s a dark, edgy movie. But not even happy, happy perverts and Iggy Pop together ease my suffering. I want this movie to be over with so, so badly.
Oh, hey! It’s the ‘arms spread in a crucified pose while our hero gets shot all to hell’ scene! It seems… familiar, somehow. Like I’ve seen it before. In another movie about leather-wearing guys with crows and facepaint who seek vengeance. What was it called, again?
…Though the motorcycle chase here is an improvement over the car chase in the original. But then, I hate car chases with a firey passion.
And I’ll admit, I love everything about Curve’s death (and not just because it’s Iggy Pop — it’s just a great scene, and Vincent Pérez remembers how to act for once in this movie), though I could have done without the Magical Crow Symbolism, especially since Curve had his tattooed on him already.
Judah explains his evil plot to Sarah while Richard Brooks forgets how to act, and does some mystical somethingorother in order to get the crow to come to Sarah. We also learn that our Blind Magic Chick had the Sight and clawed her eyes out to make the visions go away. Lovely.
The crow discovers Sarah is in trouble, and Ashe goes racing off to save her. In saving her, he’ll discover who was really behind the death of himself and his loved one… Again, strangely familiar.
The crow, however, is either under some pretty heavy compulsion, ir it’s the stupidest bird ever. It gets caught. With a cage, which was rigged to fall right on top of where it would land. I roll my eyes. Soon, soon my pain will end.
And Ashe suddenly is full of more awkwardness than ever before, and may be having a panic attack. I’m going to be kind and assume this is because his crow is trapped, but it’s disappointing to watch.
The scene in which Judah takes Ashe’s power… Of course he has electrical tape. OF COURSE he just happens to get his own version of the makeup by drinking the blood of the crow and smearing it on his eyes. Otherwise, it’s just, like, totally not symbolic enough, yanno?
Again, there’s a whole lot of pretty, but not much else.
Ashe’s son shows up to try and motivate him or emotionally manipulate him or something. Or perhaps he’s a hallucination. Perhaps I’ve stopped caring by now.
And Judah is suddenly Exposition Man. Seriously, did they think audiences were too dumb to understand what just happened? It’s horrible dialogue. Horrible. Why would anyone explain that? I think this is the point in the movie where Richard Brooks just gave up completely. Given what he had to work with, I don’t blame him.
And since Judah’s just absorbed all of Ashe’s power, there’s really no way for our heroes to kill him. Sarah dies trying, and I resist the urge to cheer. Judah’s face as he stabs her is lovely.
So that leaves the filmmakers with the deus ex machina option in which a shitton of special effects the souls of all those who came before Ashe — in crow form — fly through Ashe and at Judah until he vanishes.
Movie, could we have had a little bit less time spent rehashing the same details and a bit more setup for WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED? It would be appreciated.
And then the movie ends. I feel unclean.
…In short, there are some wonderful moments in this movie, and a hell of a lot of style, as well as quite a bit of imagery that borders on BDSM porn. (I leave whether that’s a good thing or not up to personal taste.) But overall, what elements of the plot aren’t stolen shamelessly from the first movie make no fucking sense. None. There’s very little real acting involved here, but, given what the actors have to work with, again, I can’t blame them. The writing’s atrocious.
I enjoyed the soundtrack, though, and several scenes that would have been unbearable otherwise were much improved by the music. To that end, if you want the experience without the pain (if, by some freak chance you’d like to see this and aren’t suffering from a severe case of Trainwreck Syndrome), I suggest you watch the movie with the sound muted and the soundtrack playing. All the pretty, all the good music, none of the dialogue. It’s just a very long music video.
And in that context, it might actually work.