Film Appreciation walks against the wind as Cody Hamman discusses the 1994 film The Crow.
I remember the day Brandon Lee died. I was at home with my father when my mom called from work to break the news to me. Although I was only 9 years old at the time, I was already a huge movie fan, and since my father almost exclusively watched action movies, always with me in the room with him, I was familiar with Lee from his roles in films like Showdown in Little Tokyo, and had also watched some of his father Bruce Lee's movies. It was very sad news to hear. Brandon Lee was only 28 at the time of his death, he was engaged to be married, and he was killed in an accident during the filming of The Crow that could have been avoided if only proper attention had been paid to the firearms being used on set. Lee was shot and killed while filming a scene for the movie, which shouldn't have been possible.
The accident happened because dummy rounds were shown being loaded into a revolver in close-ups, and when those rounds were removed no one noticed that the bullet from one of the rounds had come off and gotten lodged in the revolver's barrel. The next time that revolver was used on set, it was loaded with blank rounds for a scene in which Lee's character was going to be shot at. When the blank round was fired, the bullet in the barrel shot out and struck Lee. By inadvertently combining the blank round with the lodged bullet, they might as well have just fired a regular live round at him.
Lee only had three days of work left on The Crow when he died, and eventually the decision was made to rework the script a bit and complete the scenes that required Lee's character to be in them by having body doubles act them out, then place Lee's face over the face of the doubles with early CGI. Somehow, this isn't as noticeable as you would expect such effects to be in a movie from 1994.
The Crow reached theatres in May of 1994, about thirteen and a half months after Lee's death. I was there to see it opening weekend, drawn in by the subject matter, curious to see how the movie turned out after the accident, and interested in seeing Lee's final performance. As of that first viewing, The Crow instantly became one of my favorite movies. Every time I watch it, I'm sad and regretful that Lee was killed making this movie, but I'm also amazed by his beautiful, soulful, and badass performance. This is the greatest work he ever did. He shouldn't have had to give his life for the movie, but the finished film turned out to be an incredible tribute to him.
Based on a comic book by James O'Barr, The Crow tells a story that was born out of grief and pain, as O'Barr wrote the comic as a way to purge the intense emotions he was feeling while mourning the tragic death of his girlfriend. Scripted by David J. Schow and John Shirley, the film begins with Detroit police officer Albrecht (Ernie Hudson) investigating the scene of a double homicide that was committed on Devil's Night, the night before Halloween, when criminals set fires all through the city of Detroit. The people who were murdered were Shelly Webster (Sofia Shinas) and her fiancé, musician Eric Draven (Lee) - and we'll find out that they were killed by a gang consisting of T-Bird (David Patrick Kelly), Funboy (Michael Massee), Tin-Tin (Laurence Mason), and Skank (Angel David), under the orders of criminal kingpin Top Dollar (Michael Wincott), because Top Dollar was evicting the tenants of their apartment building and Shelly was leading the fight against the eviction.
A simple opening narration provided by Sarah (Rochelle Davis), a young girl Shelly and Eric were associated with, gives all the explanation necessary for what we're about to see: "People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right."
One year after Shelly and Eric were murdered, a crow visits Eric's grave... and the young man comes crawling out of the ground. Returning to his apartment, Eric relives the final moments of his and Shelly's lives, then - inspired by a clown mask he owned - he paints his face, giving himself an iconic look. Set loose on a mission of revenge, he hunts down the members of the gang that killed him and his fiancée, wiping them out one-by-one.
The Crow has terrific action sequences, but it's also packed with a whole lot of heart. The adaptation took some liberties with the story and characters, but the sadness in O'Barr's original work carried over into the film, and was amplified by the dramatic work of the cast - as well as the sadness that permeates every frame of the movie because Lee is no longer with us. Lee perfectly conveys the grief and the rage Eric feels over what happened to him and Shelly, and his connections with Sarah and Albrecht, who took a personal interest in what happened to Shelly, add more heart into the film. There's also a subplot in which Eric manages to improve Sarah's broken home life by getting her drug-addicted mother Darla (Anna Levine) to come to her senses and focus on her child.
Even with those touching dramatic scenes that we get in between the action, The Crow moves along at a very fast pace. Eric doesn't waste any time getting to work knocking off the gang members, and while he was brought back solely to get revenge on the four people directly responsible for killing him and Shelly, but it's not as simple and straightforward as that. He takes a moment to retrieve Shelly's engagement ring from the pawn shop Tin-Tin took it to, which adds some more action and emotion into the film, and Skank seeks refuge in Top Dollar's lair, which adds a whole lot more action into the mix. There is a huge shootout in Top Dollar's place that, along with the climactic shootout in the previous year's True Romance, struck me as one of the coolest things I had ever seen when I was a kid. Then even after Eric has accomplished his goal and starts to lose his crow-gifted regenerative abilities, he still has more villains to deal with.
The villains of the film are an appropriately detestable bunch. Skank is a total moron who brings in some laughs, Funboy is a scumbag who's dragging Darla down with him. Kelly's performance as T-Bird goes along with his performances in The Warriors and Commando to prove that he is a great bad guy. Jon Polito makes a memorable appearance as pawn shop owner Gideon, Wincott is fantastic as Top Dollar and is accompanied in his scenes by the legendary Tony Todd as his right hand man Grange and Bai Ling as his half-sister Myca. Just like the heroes in The Magnificent Seven and Young Guns had knife throwers in their gang, the villans here have their own knife thrower, Tin-Tin.
Adding another awful layer to the circumstances of Lee's death is the fact that the scene he was killed filming was originally meant to show Tin-Tin throwing a knife at him. The decision was made to replace the knife throw with Funboy shooting him. And that decision killed the actor. If Eric had gotten stabbed instead of shot, Lee may still be alive today... Or the bullet could have been fired from the gun during the filming of another scene and still hit Lee or someone else on the set. It's impossible to know. It is a shame that Michael Massee had to live with the pain of being the one who pulled the trigger and accidentally shot Lee. It wasn't his fault, but he was understandably traumatized and continued having nightmares about the event for more than a decade. As much as I enjoy The Crow, I have always found it impossible to keep things like that out of my mind while watching it.
Director Alex Proyas brought the story to the screen with a stunning visual style, and while he has made some high profile movies since The Crow, I have found most of them to be underwhelming compared to how much promise he showed on this film. Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski and the art department helped him create a very unique vision of Detroit - and it also helps that these visuals are paired with an awesome soundtrack that I listened to a lot, on both CD and cassette, over the years.
The Crow is a deeply emotionally engaging movie, a sad one to sit through, while also being very thrilling to watch. It's all carried on the shoulders of Brandon Lee, who is captivating as Eric Draven. I wish he were still around to see just how beloved this movie is, and to enjoy the career it would have led to, because there's no question he would have become a major star after this.
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