Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Crow, June 17, 2003
People fail to realize that Brandon Lee's character Eric Draven is not the crow but another person that is given the crow's powers. There have been many crow's before him and there will be many after. I think that this movie was great, it had a new look and feel to it that fit the story good. Its sad that Brando lost his life during the making of the first but why let a good franchise die with him. The Crow isnt a super hero that fights crime and saves the world. For a short period of time a perosn is given the powers of the crow to get revenge and once they get revenge they give up the powers and die. So what would be the point of having Brandon Lee play the Crow again if he fulfilled his mission in the first movie.I hear they are making the 4th movie in the series titled The Crow: Wicked Prayer. I hope this one is as good as the first 2. The 3rd one was decent but not as good as the first 2.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A New Crow Shall Rise..., June 28, 2005
After the huge success of "The Crow", no one knew for certain where this possible franchise would go. The tragic death of the original film's star, Brandon Lee, left a gaping hole in the future of this franchise, a hole that if this series was to continue, must be filled. So it was decided that all future Crow films would revolve around a new lead character. Many fans felt this was desecrating the memory of Brandon Lee and his incredible performance in the original film, while me personally, though I believe Brandon Lee has been the best Crow to date, the premise of changing Crow's works perfectly with the original storyline and the way the first film ended really didn't leave much room to maneuver and continue the story of Eric Draven. Thus, the franchise changed direction and in my opinion it was for the better.
The next film in the series, "The Crow: City of Angels" is set in what appears to be Los Angeles, and the character Sarah from the original film (this time played by Mia Kirshner) has moved from the city in the first film and appears to be constantly on the move and is currently residing in L.A. She also seems to be linked to the mystical Crow, that resurrects some victims of vicious crimes to exact vengeance. The new Crow is a man named Ashe (Vincent Perez), whose son and himself were murdered after witnessing a drug-related murder. Ashe returns to life, and Sarah guides him on his quest for vengeance that leads him to the drug kingpin that is flooding the streets with a new drug that is basically destroying the city one life at a time.
"The Crow: City of Angels" continues the legacy of the Crow in a unique way. By changing landscapes and characters you get a fresh perspective for the franchise so as not to get stale even though the basic story is the same. In most films having the same concept for sequels would result in a crappy film, but not this time. Many fans hate this film, because they feel it focuses too much on Sarah and the villains rather than explaining Ashe's character and his motives for returning. When truly if you actually watch the movie and get past the fact that it's not Brandon Lee, this film does an excellent job of showing the viewer exactly why Ashe has returned. In a few flashbacks, a common occurrence in both the movies and the comic books, the audience clearly understands that Ashe loved his son dearly, and were victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that is why he has returned to right the wrong of him and his son's murder.
Good story, maybe a little weaker than the original, but still a great sequel to further the legacy of the Crow. Solid performances by the actors and an eerie environment make for a very enjoyable revenge adventure.
"The Crow: City of Angels" is rated R for violence, language, and sexuality/nudity.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Crow sequel leaves bad aftertaste, May 27, 2002
While many of the images in "The Crow - City of Angels" will stay with you, viewers will come away from this pretentious sequel wishing that the director's/writer's better selves had taken the helm. This murky sequel to the entertaining "The Crow," starring the late Brandon Lee, has the dark gothic taste down pat. Unfortunately, images of torture, sexual orgies and sadism exploit fans of this genre lowering the series to the worst denominator.At times laughably bad and amazingly inept, "The Crow - City of Angels" subtitutes style and the unique with typical and has-been. Vincent Perez certainly looks the part of the brooding anti-hero, risen from the dead to avenge the murder of his son. And Mia Kirshner makes a fine heroine, a pseudo tatoo-artist mentor who leads Perez into his predictable odyssey through a Los Angeles futuristic netherworld of drug addicts, sexual deviants and homeless children. But where this sequel loses direction is in its glorification of brutality - from prisoners of the main villain, to innocent victims in the streets of this civilization where the sun never rises. Certainly the character of The Crow, an inspired combination of Batman, the Vampire Lestat and Ozzy Osbourne, is the stuff fueled by imaginative adolescent nightmares. This series will always have at least that going for it. Trenchcoats, motorcycles, smeared make-up, bad hair days - The Crow must rank as one of the hippest superheroes in history. And occasionaly director Tim Pope (obviously schooled at the MTV film institute) produces a strong image or two in spite of himself. The Crow lounging on the side of a building is the stuff of great blacklight posters. The Crow marching down a dark alleyway towards a retreating villain is an impressive portrait. But for all these visions, the viewer is force-fed the typical - the wooden Iggy Pop as a mannequin villain, the unexceptional Richard Brooks as a one-note ringleader of evil, the faceless Thuy Trang as a high-kicking murderess. Undoubtedly "The Crow - City of Angels" has been inspired by multiple films of Japanese cinema, popularized in Western culture by the works of John Woo and mimicked by Hollywood with "The Matrix," and there are times when squinting your eyes just right, you might be able to see English subtitles (I am kidding, of course). But then comes the predictable B-Movie scenes of brutality, the obvious symbolism of the Day of the Dead celebration, and the excessive servings of faceless murder. And the final conflict of this contrived drama, where what appears to be thousands of crows fly through the soul of the main villain, is about as lazy a resolution/triumph as you will ever see in a film. Darkness comes from a tortured soul, and it has far more depth than "The Crow - City of Angels" could ever hope to dream of. This film is indeed a nightmare, but for all the wrong reasons.
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