Monday, April 25, 2011

THE CROW (1994)

I was not expecting such a below average potboiler from Alex Proyas, the man who made ‘Dark City’. It has a mediocre plot without an iota of spin or twist. A dead man returns from his grave to take revenge of his raped and murdered girlfriend on Halloween night by bunch of baddies. A vigilante crow works as a link for him between dead and living. You have nothing to miss here if you have dieted low budget B genre action thrillers of 80s and 90s. Brandon Lee as the dead man had close resemblance with Joker of ‘The Dark Knight’; maybe inspiration behind Heath Ledger’s get up; however unlike his legendary father Jr. Lee was a quite letdown here. There was one unfortunate similarity between Ledger and Lee; both of them died unusually at very young age soon after their acts playing Joker face. Brandon Lee was died on set of the film where accidentally loaded gun’s bullet while shooting destroyed his spinal chord. Shot on alow budget, it grossed heavy profit at box office due to Lee fans; a big reason why it has imdb ratings of more than 7. The only thing worth to notice is the use of fine cinematography capturing the scan of seedy city at night like those great B&W noirs. It’s world where drugs, sex and bad guys rules the city street.

Quite a letdown.

Ratings-5/10

4 comments:

Luv said...

Come on now, its based on a comic! Its the style that matters here.

By the way, here is another reason I think the look of The Dark City came from Batman graphics.

HIREN DAVE said...

So you're reading this! Agreed with you but i was expecting something intriguing here after watching Proyas' Dark City, instead it's plain vanilla!

Stylistically it has shades of noir and Batman's Gotham and it's really treat to watch it.

Luv said...

ahem. I read almost every review you put up...

Why the surprise? I missed something?

HIREN DAVE said...

My pleasure dude :-)It's that not reading comments so often from yourside...