I Watch Films: The Crow: City of Angels

It’s probably twenty years since I saw The Crow, a film perhaps best known for killing its star Brandon Lee. So I watched this with a very hazy memory of facepaint, black leather, wings and returning from the dead to exact revenge. Which could equally act as my summary for the sequel; The Crow: City of Angels.

A guy and his son are killed; a gothic tattoo artist is led by a crow to the docks where they were dumped and the guy returns from the dead. He goes pretty crazy. She paints his face and he puts on a black leather trenchcoat and goes after the drug gang who killed him, one of whom is Iggy Pop.

However the top drug guy is a student of the occult, and when the Crow goes after him on the Day of the Dead, he steals his power by drinking the blood of the crow (the flying one). This goes pretty well in the fight, until it doesn’t and then everyone dies.

So it’s very stylised. Vincent Perez, playing the Crow, moves between being completely crazy (due to returning from the dead) and just cool action hero. Everyone seems spaced out. It’s hazy and murky and depressing. I think I’m a little too old and cynical and poisoned by irony to take it seriously, and even if I weren’t I don’t think it would repay that.

Watch This: For a fairly cool nineties action film
Don’t Watch This: If lazy goth nonsense shoved on top of fights and shoots and explodes don’t do anything for you.
Also: I DID NOT KNOW there were two more sequels, Salvation and Wicked Prayer, both of which are pretty good names, better than City of Angels which is lazy and didn’t really do anything angel like.