Most films grow into their cult status over time, but a handful seem destined to be born cult from the second it arrives kicking and brooding on screen. Blade Runner. Evil Dead. Moon. The greatest cult movies are great movies that far too few people see, and they all have something very particular and special that sets them apart. With The Crow this can be explained by four words:
The Crow is myth.
This sentence is so full of interpretive possibilities it could replace all the ghosts of Halloween with its legend alone. Symbolism and truth run hard and true through the narrative and the real world with The Crow. The tragic events of Brandon Lee's death, framed within the story of a resurrected Devil's Night victim, form a harrowing meta-mirror that loads the film with a severe depth of fateful significance.
I first watched The Crow when I was 14 (sorry mum) and it's been at least a decade since I've last seen it, which made it ripe for a re-watch. It's a credit to the original vision that despite some definite early-90's effects so many aspects have survived the intervening twenty years. For an early teen it was one of those surprising moments where a film somehow nails an entire sense of time and place - anger, melancholy, vindication, punk - and in a pre-internet era where the primary purpose of a PC was Encarta, the stories that followed it like whispers served only to enhance it's reputation and embelish its legend, stories of death, of tragedy, vengeance even. Most unfounded. Others tragically true.
Reflecting upon a film you last saw a dozen years ago is an interesting experience and a perfect example of the lasting effects of film. Some specfic, striking images can be recalled, but mostly you feel the film - you feel the emotions, the places, the environments; the rain on the docks, the shattered glass on the floor. You see the lights, the colours, the shapes in the darkness. The Crow has an ageless quality that in many moments defies its period, and creates a brooding atmosphere pregnant with tension, discord and dread. A few telling moments aside it is the definition of quality on a budget.
With a running time of a hundred minutes it's also swift. The set up is brief, and after a short opening monologue on the legend of the crow, our avenging hero, former happily engaged rock star Eric Draven played by the late Brandon Lee, is awoken from his grave cold and confused, by said mythical crow, and within minutes he returns home, is subjected to brutal flashbacks of his former life and death and sets upon finding the Devils Night rioters responsible for his and his bride to be's ultimate demise. The tactic of building the set up into the story as memories allows a far more focussed narrative and a quicker pace. Each member of the muderous crew is hunted and killed - as Draven understands his mystical abilities including insta-heal - in ever more inventive and specific ways. (The flaming crow symbol left at one death scene has always been a stand out image) It then veers suddenly into an ajoining sub-plot of gangsters and drug kingpins which is both refreshing and jarring - refreshing in the courage to expand a simple revenge plot into something more, jarring for it's lack of context and strained connection to the main plot.
Never matter, though, as the film explodes into one of the greatest gun fights in cinema, seemingly made purely to blow young teenagers minds. It's classily done - the sheer volume of bullets matched only by the crescendo of shattered glass, windows and lights and vases, and a shower of cash stash, all under the heavy glow of moonlight. This is, in the end, a film about overcoming, of not just revenge but rest, and as Draven powers his way literally through a phalanx of lead opposition, his purpose is fulfilled. And through all the violence and revenge the human depth is never lost. The avenging crow myth may be poetic, but the torture of his burdensome memories is a more powerful emotion that grounds his actions and makes us feel his pain.
Lets have a quick reality check though. The dialogue is often ridiculously fantastic ("Move and you're dead"..."I'm dead...so I move...") though it swings wildly between cheesy and classic. Unfortunately so does Lee's performance, and while he has the grunge-metal wallow down pat, lest I speak ill of the dead let's just say levity is not his strong suit, though it's also actually far more darkly funny than I remembered. Many effects are dated, though these are few. And what's with the guitar playing? Draven seems to take to his nest and string out a solo as a kind of victory cry everytime he offs a baddie as if he has all the time in the world that just ends up looking like an outtake from a Guns N Roses video.
It's nowhere near a perfect film, but so many of it's elements fit so well together it's hard to criticise too harshly. The supporting characters are colourful enough, all have distinct looks and personalities which, like some of the shots, seem lifted straight from the graphic novel source. Michael Wincott makes a terrific villan and it's a crime he hasn't appeared in more visible roles in is career outside this and Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, and in Ernie Hudson, the most underrated Ghostbuster, adds a steel heart to the honourable beat cop present for both Draven's murder and his resurgence. Alex Proyas has suffered diminishing returns across the few feature films he has directed, but as a debut piece it showed great vision and promise and it's a shame he hasn't been offered more directing roles in the yers since.
Ultimately, though, The Crow will always be linked to Lee and the accident that caused his death. As the son of one of the most famous and revered screen icons in history his career was always going to be watched closely. That Bruce Lee passed suddenly and so mysteriously makes what happened more poignant. The legend was he died in a hail of machine gun fire from a prop gun swapped by a mafia plot. The truth is is less inventive but the sequence of events no less complicated. The wrong prop, used by different people, too many times, in different situations. A mix up. A blockage. An accident. A tragedy. The truth is complex.
The real truth is a legacy, and a memory. You could say a myth.
And myths live forever.
