"It can't rain all the time."
Believe me when I say that, from all the quotes that stuck with me as a preteen, Brandon Lee's phrase in director Alex Proyas' second movie is one of the most heartbreaking and inspiring ones. This director adapted an exciting graphic novel of the late eighties to the ultimate revenge story of the nineties, almost without realizing it. What happens to us when we die? This question has haunted us since our beginnings and The Crow's themes partly answer this existentialist debate with one of the crudest stories ever.
I have always certainly believed that in order to be a successful director, one has to be extremely careful when narrating a story and trying to show the connection between the passion for what's being told and what the artist wants to express—and I state this as someone who has never directed anything and who refines his own stories with great detail. With this in mind, I stumbled upon this new adaptation—almost by chance—of an absolute classic of modern literature, starring Swedish Bill Skarsgård as Eric and singer FKA Twigs as Shelly. These actors play a couple murdered the night before Halloween. This thriller—if we can call it that—is not a real adaptation. Instead, the film is greatly inspired by popcorn flicks from the beginning of the century rather than by the story in which Eric's an immortal avenger searching for some peace.
As from the initial credits, we see a type of sickness which has increasingly been spreading faster in the film industry. Nowadays, the lack of ideas and imagination is destroying cinema. This is more evident in most sequels, remakes, prequels and any other by-product of an already existent production. The Crow's beginning is just a cheap slow-motion new version—I would even dare to say a replica—of the initial credits of David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Moreover, The Crow also presents broken characters and a revenge story, much like Fincher's work.
Of course, after finishing a movie I solely watched out of curiosity, I realized that everything was horribly executed. Initially, the intentions behind this "vision" from the mediocre director Rupert Sanders were decent. The film mixes gothic elements, good concept art for the world of death which seems to have been downloaded from Pinterest, extremely bloody brutality—which is the only good part of the movie—and amazingly choreographed action scenes. It's obvious the behind-the-scenes work got done, but these efforts still aren't solid nor effective overall.
To understand the movie's greater context, it's necessary to explain certain basic matters like what is this incredible and fantastic portrait of life and death about. James O'Barr's 1989 supernatural graphic novel narrates Eric Draven's story: a gang murders Eric, a young man, and his fianceé days before their wedding. A year after the incident, he comes back to life as The Crow, a ruthless immortal looking for revenge who stalks and kills one by one the members of the gang responsible for his tragedy.
In this new version, Eric and his fianceé are two outsiders with a dark past who meet in a rehabilitation center for drug addicts and establish a rapid connection in really inappropriate circumstances. Shelly is being chased by shady gangsters whose occupation isn't clearly explained, and when she decides that they should escape, the best—or worst—happens. The couple chooses to live a luxurious life in Shelly's friend's house, enjoy picnics and go out to different nightclubs with the excuse that their love is so immense that the grim reality around them blinds them. The script—which is incomparably predictable—also doesn't help the actors to exploit their full potential.
It seems the director believed that, because the main characters have painful backgrounds, the audience will immediately feel empathy for them. However, even though Bill Skarsgård deserves some credit for his portrayal of Eric, the story didn't make me feel empathy at all. The film tries to develop different plots and narratives without knowing exactly where it wants to go, since it goes from an extremely accelerated and clichéd romance to a revenge thriller in a matter of minutes. If there was something truly captivating about the 1994 cult classic, it was this love's plausibility and the gothic aesthetic present from the beginning, which set a proper tone and atmosphere.
The famous saying "rain before seven, clear before eleven" never applied to this story nor to the huge influence of Brandon Lee's work. His film defined an aesthetic pattern for most mid-nineties' thrillers and, still to this day, it's an inspiration in the genre. For example, we have Matt Reeves' Batman and Heath Ledger's Joker, which are important productions of this era. We can say that, in the disappointing 2024 version, the rain is there, and that Eric walks under it. Nonetheless, we can also affirm that the rain isn't intimidating nor heartbreaking. The Crow is a crazy revenge story like few others, but Sanders prefers to soften the main character until the last moment and, just when we think his insanity has been completely revealed, the director decides to leave us out.
Dear Rupert, I say this with the greatest respect: we aren't expecting a sequel, sorry. Stories make an impact in the present, not the future.
BY JERÓNIMO CASCO
Posted on SEPTEMBER 20, 2024, 13:54 PM | UTC-GMT -3
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