One of the first things you see in the reimagined version of ‘The Crow’ is the sight of a fallen white horse in a muddy field, bleeding profusely after becoming tangled in barbed wire. It’s a metaphor, of course, and a clumsy one at that: a powerful image that doesn’t really fit well and is never explained.
That’s an indication that director Rupert Sanders will tend to consistently choose the classy option over the honest one in this film. In his attempt to revive the cult hero of comics and film, he has given us a lot of beauty at the expense of depth or coherence.
The filmmakers have set their story in a modern, generic Europe and made it very clear that this film is based on James O’Barr’s graphic novel, but the 1994 film adaptation starring Brandon Lee hovers over it like a stubborn crow . .
Brandon, son of legendary actor and martial artist Bruce Lee, was just 28 when he died after being shot while filming a scene for “The Crow.” History always seems to repeat itself: the new adaptation lands while another death on set remains in the headlines.
Lee’s ‘The Crow’ was finished without him and he never saw it enter the minds of Gen trilogy by Christopher Nolan.
Bill Skarsgård seizes Lee’s role as Eric Draven, a man so in love that he returns from the dead to avenge the murders of him and his lover in what can best be called a kind of supernatural, romantic murderfest. (The tagline “True love never dies” is a clumsy abbreviation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera.”)
William Schneider, who co-wrote the screenplay with Zach Baylin, has given the story an almost operatic facelift by introducing a devil, a Faustian bargain, blood-on-blood oaths, and a divine guide who explores the limbo between heaven and hell. keeps an eye on. , which looks like a disused, weed-covered train station. “Kill those who killed you and you will get her back,” our hero is told.
The first half drags along, setting the table for the steady rhythm of limbs and necks being released at the end. Eric and his love, Shelly (played by an uneven FKA Twigs), meet in a drug rehabilitation prison for wayward youth that is so well lit and decorated that it looks more like an airport lounge, where the cappuccino costs $19 but the Wi-Fi is free .
Eric is a mild-mannered loner – haunted by a past the writers don’t want to fill in, who likes to sketch in a book (universal cinema code signaling a sensitive soul) and is heavily tattooed (he is often shirtless). His apartment has rows of mannequins with their heads covered in plastic and his new love calls him “brilliantly broken.” He’s like a Blink-182 text coming to life.
Shelly is more complex, but that’s because perhaps the writers stopped giving her any real backstory. She has a tattoo that says “Laugh now, cry later,” reads serious literature and loves to dance in her underwear. She clearly comes from wealth and has had a falling out with her mother, but has also done something unimaginably terrible, which viewers will learn about at the end.
Part of the problem is that the main couple gives off very little electricity, creating a love affair that’s more teeny than all-consuming. And this is a story that needs a love that can transcend death.
There are plenty of cool-looking moments – mostly Skarsgård in a trench coat, stomping through the deserted concrete jungle at night in the rain – until “The Crow” evolves into one of the better action scenes this year, albeit another one of those heightened confrontations in the opera.
By this time, Eric has applied the Crow’s heavy eye and cheek makeup. He adds to this ensemble a katana and an inability to die. As he closes in on his target and mows down bad guys in tuxedos while arias fly into the air, the group movements on stage are mirrored by the furious fighting backstage. A few severed heads might be considered overkill at the curtain call, but subtlety is not welcomed here.
If the original was smooth but visually delightful, the new one has a better story but suffers from the ideas in the films that build on its predecessor, stealing a bit from ‘The Matrix’, ‘Joker’ and ‘Kill Bill’. Why not create something completely new?
“The Crow” isn’t bad – and it gets better as it goes along – but it’s an exercise in folly. It can’t escape Lee and the 1994 original, even as it builds a more allegorical foundation for the smartphone generation. To use that very first metaphor, it is like the captured white horse – held captive by its own painful past, never free to gallop under its own power.
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“The Crow,” a Lionsgate release that opens in theaters Friday, is rated R for “strong gore, gory violence, language, sexuality/nudity and drug use.” Running time: 111 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
