Were it not for Brandon Lee's death on the set of The Crow
(Miramax, R)-he was killed by a gun that was supposed to be firing
blanks-the movie itself would be little more than your basic
heavy-metal occult revenge thriller, complete with rain-swept
futuristic dreamscapes right out of Blade Runner and Batman. The
truth, though, is that what happened to Lee (who was Bruce Lee's son)
lends this blood-spattered action fantasy a creepy resonance it
otherwise wouldn't have had. Based on a series of comic strips and
graphic novels by James O'Barr, The Crow tells the story of Eric
Draven (Lee), a small-time rock & roller who is murdered, along with
his fiancée, by a gang of punks and then mystically resurrected.
Haunted by memories of his death, and guided by a magical crow that
serves as his all-seeing mascot, he paints his face mime- white
(complete with a whiplash smile that recalls the Joker's) and spends
the rest of the film dishing out payback. He's the vigilante as
melancholy ghost, a forlorn spectre driven to brutality by the
agony of his nightmares.
Whenever this tormented character flashes back to the scene of his
death, the reality of Lee's own tragedy hovers just off screen. And
though it's difficult to gauge exactly what sort of actor he might
have turned out to be, in The Crow Lee displays a sweet, stricken
vulnerability. Hidden behind an androgynous rock-star mane, he brings
a James Dean quality of wounded adolescent passion to the sort of
role most actors (Bronson, Seagal, etc.) have used merely for
displays of robotic rage. Lee's performance is by far the best thing
about The Crow. Unfortunately, he's just good enough to make you wish
that the movie had had a whisper of storytelling invention to go
along with its showy visual design.
Director Alex Proyas keeps the pulsating retro-noir images-the
city as giant dark alleyway-rushing by with kaleidoscopic rock-video
fervor. It's like watching a Tony Scott film as edited by Sergei
Eisenstein. By now, though, we've been through this smoky urban
wasteland one too many times. (If I
never see that metropolis-on-fire opening shot from Blade Runner
imitated again, you won't hear me complaining.) The characters, too,
are all borrowed from other movies. There are the lascivious punk
hooligans with complicated facial hair who might have stepped out of
The Road Warrior and its descendants, as well as a skateboarding waif
who's like a grunge cousin to the girl from Aliens. The
scene-stealing rotter Michael Wincott is on hand as some sort of
kinky downtown Mr. Big, but he doesn't have witty enough dialogue to
prop up his smirking death's-head charisma. What the film comes down
to is Eric the hippie-Christ avenger offing one goon after another,
and in viciously unimaginative ways. Still, if The Crow is
forgettable entertainment, it can stand as an eerie epitaph for an
actor who looked like he was on the way to better things.
