The Crow (1994)

In 1994 I was sort of in my prime (or at my worst, depending on how you look at it), and I was a little bit obsessed with this movie. It was so dark, so violent, and had such a great soundtrack (two decades later I would probably still identify this as my favorite soundtrack), and was based on a cult comic book that I had loved. And of course the spectre of Brandon Lee hung heavy over it. It’s one of the epochal movies of my life, really.
Now that I can look back on it with a bit more maturity and more experience of how good movies can be, I don’t love it quite as much as I used to, but you know what? I do still love it. It isn’t perfect. It isn’t even as close to perfect as I used to think it was, but it’s still a damned good picture. I love the Detroit that Alex Proyas and his design team have created; it’s a very proto-Dark City, a hint of what they would eventually be capable of. And while the fire effects may look a little dated now, the city itself is utterly gorgeous. Every set in this movie is so carefully and beautifully constructed. If I had a house, I would set aside one room that was wallpapered just with stills of the sets in this film.
Lee was young and inexperienced, but certainly had a presence to him. And Proyas knew exactly what to do when making a movie centered on an inexperienced lead actor: surround him with a cast of solid character actors, who will support but not overwhelm him. The supporting cast in this movie is tremendous, especially Ernie Hudson as Albrecht. He never really got the parts he deserved (picked a bad time to be black in Hollywood, I guess), but he was never better than he is here. That man was born to play a world-weary cop with a heart of gold, I guess. Michael Wincott is extremely memorable (if occasionally a little over-the-top) as the Big Bad, Top Dollar. He has some clunky lines to deliver, but also a few great ones (“I think we broke this one” always appealed to me), and is one of my very favorite film villains. I’ve always hated child actors, but Rochelle Davis (Sarah) completely fails to annoy me; I actually find myself wishing she had kept acting.
Anna Thomson is good as Sarah’s mother; she’s always had a knack for playing weak women who are fundamentally decent but a bit overrun by the wickedness of the world. It’s a strange sort of role to specialize in, but nobody does it better. Tony Todd (Grange) probably started being scary in junior high school and just keeps getting better at it, and Jon Polito is as good as sleazy back-alley characters ever get.
And then there’s the murderous gang. Laurence Mason and Michael Massee, as Tin Tin and Funboy, have some nice moments, and Angel David is very entertaining, if a bit unhinged, as Skank. His “I feel like a little worm on a big fuckin’ hook” is a good line, and his memorial soliloquy for T-Bird (David Patrick Kelly) is one of the movie’s best bits. I like to think, watching Top Dollar just staring and grinning at him, that the reaction is Wincott’s genuine bemusement at his behavior. And of course Kelly is one of my all-time favorite actors. I’ve always loved him in everything he’s done, and he has the most memorable moment of this movie:

I knew I knew you, I knew I knew you. But you ain't you. You can't be you. We put you through the window. There ain't no coming back. This is the really real world, there ain't no coming back. We killed you dead, there ain't no coming back! There ain't no coming back! There ain't no coming back!

As I mentioned, the soundtrack is deservedly legendary. You’ve got Trent Reznor, in his first step towards becoming an Oscar-winning composer, covering a Joy Division classic. You’ve got the best songs that Stone Temple Pilots, Medicine, and Thrill Kill Kult ever did (and in the case of the latter, that’s really saying something). The Cure’s “Burn” is an archetypal movie song, and excellent contributions are made by The Jesus & Mary Chain and others. Even For Love Not Lisa is great here. The last song, the closing credits song, “It Won’t Rain All the Time,” is terrible, but otherwise it’s a tremendous collection of music.
It can be hard to see the movies that have mattered in my life through other eyes. I was watching this and trying to imagine what I would think of it if I’d never seen it before, and it wasn’t easy. I finally decided that I would have been torn between 6-7/10. The pluses are a very strong cast, decent action sequences, atmosphere, and music. The minuses are a script that, while it has sparkling moments, is grotesquely heavy-handed in places (Wincott being the main victim here), a leading man who wasn’t bad but wasn’t great, and Bai Ling hanging around with nothing much to do but be pretty and menacing (and not always succeeding).
But you know what? I’m not watching this for the first time. I watched it for the first time in 1994, and it meant something to me, and it still does. I’m not blind to its flaws, I don’t give it ten stars or even nine, though I’m tempted, but it remains very much a favorite.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: When Albrecht has his gun on Eric and says, “You move and you’re dead!” and Eric answers, “I’m dead and I move.” Of all the clever lines in the film (and there are many), that was always my favorite.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Wincott’s impression of the wounded crow (“Caw caw BANG fuck I’m dead!”) always aggravated me. They gave him some crap lines in this, and that’s the worst of them.

SCORE: 8/10, and a high eight, at that.

LISTS: #20 on my Favorites of the Nineties