The Crow (1994)
Directed by Alex Proyas
Exactly one year after young rock guitarist Eric Draven and his fiancée are brutally killed by a ruthless gang of criminals, Draven, watched over by a hypnotic crow, returns from the grave to exact revenge.
4 connections found
View:
4 films that influenced The Crow
What critics say influenced The Crow
The Halloween night city of "The Crow"-a comic film noir parody of Detroit-also resembles a cheaper, dirtier, funkier MTV version of the Gothic Gotham City Anton Furst designed for Tim Burton's "Batman."
Based on the underground comic book by James O'Barr, The Crow is like a cruder, ruder version of Batman.
The "Batman" movies were probably the first to transfer the new style in doom-and-gloom comic book fantasias to the screen, but "The Crow" makes those films seem happy-go-lucky.
All this spookiness may obscure the fact that "The Crow" is one of the most beautiful, atmospheric productions (at least initially) that Hollywood has produced since "Batman," which it resembles.
Were it not for Brandon Lee's death on the set of The Crow?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.
Still, it's got the best of the neo-gothic design and rainswept, oilslick sheen from the Batman series, a heartfelt romantic core and some handsome, acrobatic action sequences that do justice to Lee's undoubted martial mastery.
With his knife-like features and morose gloomy eyes, Wincott, who played the crazed druggie in Oliver Stone's "Talk Radio," is a great heavy metal heavy.
He goes after each member of the gang responsible for the slaughter with a hyperbolic vengeance; we're encouraged to relish the killings, "Death Wish"-style.
The director, Alex Proyas , and his technical team have created a world that will remind you of the forlorn urban wasteland in " Blade Runner " and of the Gothic extravagances in " Batman ," yet this world is grungier and more forbidding than either.
It's almost unremittingly grungy and overwrought--"Blade Runner" with a hangover--with an eardrum-blasting industrial rock score to go with its eyeball-popping industrial rock look.
With a view of Detroit that is every bit as bleak and dazzling as the urban panoramas presented in Batman and Blade Runner, this film makes it clear from the outset that wherever its flaws may lie, they will not be in the realm of visual presentation.
Were it not for Brandon Lee's death on the set of The Crow?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.