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Yar, you be here: The Crow > Customer Reviews The Crow Customer Reviews (49 - 51 of 51 Reviews)EXCELLENT
This is a wonderful film. Make sure you check out the comic book that inspired it. It's fantastic too. Quoth the Raven, "Awesome Movie!"
Tragically, this film has been dismissed by many critics as an excessively violent movie designed to play to an audience of teenage Goths and vampire wannabees harboring a morbid fascination with death. Equally tragic is the fact that the star of the film never got to see the completed picture, as he died in an on-set accident near the end of principal photography. With his widow's consent, the filmmakers persevered and completed the film, intercutting doubles and digital reinsertions of Brandon Lee into the film. Based on James O'Barr's graphic novel, the film was a groundbreaking entry into the realm of adult "comic book" fiction, using a non-traditional superhero (in many ways, an anti-hero) as its protagonist. This dark film showed studio execs the power and profit waiting to be mined from graphic novel/comic book fiction. Without the overwhelming success of The Crow, the dark heroes in Spawn, Blade, Road to Perdition, LXG, and the forthcoming Constantine and Hellboy might never have made it to the silver screen. The film has always had the following aspects I found appealing: 1. The delicious characterization of the antagonists in the film. Although some border on caricature, the villans are all uniquely evil, and all receive retribution commensurate for their crimes. Particularly juicy are David Patrick Kelly's Milton-quoting "T-Bird" and Michael Wincott's "Top Dollar," who has it all but wants even more. 2. The poetic justice of the villans (usually) having their own vices turned against them. Particularly impressive is the death of T-Bird, whose tendencies toward arson are rewarded with his incendiary demise behind the wheel of his eponymous vehicle, and the Crow's subsequent "signature," left in flaming accelerant at the scene of the crime. 3. The unique way in which a theme that has been done frequently (love is stronger than death) is handled throughout the film. 4. The stunning incorporation of music. Alex Proyas has been unfairly criticized for turning the film into one long music video. Certainly, the combination of Proyas' visual sense with the dark, nihilistic music of NIN, STP, The Cure, Rollins Band, Helmet, and Violent Femmes (just to name a few) displays his roots in directing music videos, but the film seamlessly oscillates between Graeme Revell's tender, melodic score and the film's heavy, alternative soundtrack at just the right moments. Although the ill-advised sequels failed to live up to the visual (or box office) power of the original, The Crow offers a mournfully tragic, yet redeeming story if the viewer can look past the violence and strong language to the beauty of the story of eternal love and justice that lies beneath.
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