Review: "The Crow" is a dark, downbeat supernatural revenge thriller that takes way too long to get moving
Director Rupert Sanders’ adaptation of James O’Barr’s comic book “The Crow” is a slow slog through some dark territory — a movie that’s narratively, cinematically and morally murky.
In an unnamed and regularly rain-soaked city, Shelly (played by the English musician-actor FKA twigs) is in fear for her life, after a friend sends her a video clip that features the tycoon Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston) doing something gruesome and illegal. Roeg — who makes vague comments about having been alive for centuries — sends his goons, led by the icy killer Marion (played by Finnish actor Laura Birn), on her scent.
To evade Marion’s minions, Shelly gets herself arrested for drug possession and lands in a rehab facility. It’s there that Shelly meets Eric (Bill Skarsgård), and the two outcasts quickly fall in love. When Marion and her goons show up at the rehab center, Shelly and Eric slip off their ankle monitors and jump the razor-wire fence to escape. But Marion and her minions quickly track the pair and kill them.
It tells you a lot about this movie’s supernatural inklings that the is not the end of the movie. Instead, Eric wakes up in a train station overwhelmed by plant life and a mysterious man (Sami Bouajila) who informs Eric that both he and Shelly are dead — but, because Eric’s soul is unsettled, he has the chance to hang around and seek revenge on the people responsible for Shelly’s death.
It takes Sanders and screenwriters Zach Baylin and William Josef Schneider about 45 minutes to get to that point, something the trailers — and the advance knowledge provided to anyone who saw director Alex Proyas’ infamous 1994 version, in which star Brandon Lee was killed during filming by a badly handled prop weapon — could have told them in far less time.
Around the midpoint, shortly after Eric’s arrival in purgatory, the movie shifts gears and delivers some of the bloody action sequences that viewers were promised. The highlight is a balletic and blood-drenched set piece where the seemingly undying Eric takes a samurai sword and slices and dices a bunch of armed gunmen. The splashes of red are the only real color that cuts through the dark grays shown in every frame.
Getting to that point takes a ridiculously long time, though that’s filled nicely with some artfully staged romantic scenes between Skarsgård and twigs. The mythology, of the undead but undying, is never adequately explained, and the moral conundrum presented by Roeg’s evil wizardry is presented as a crucial turning point but it never gets its full airing. “The Crow” flies unsteadily, and with a dismaying lack of speed, toward a destination that’s all too familiar.
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‘The Crow’
★★1/2
Opens Friday, August 23, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, language, sexuality/nudity, and drug use. Running time: 111 minutes.