The Crow: City Of Angels

Revenge: 8/10

Face Paint: 4/10

Psychopomps: 7/10

Despite being extremely “Emo”, and one of those movies that I usually want to punch people in the face for quoting as their “favorite”, The Crow is a pretty bad-ass movie.  It stands out as one of the ultimate “man-has-nothing-to-lose” stories out there, and manages to set and sustain a dark and eerie mood all the way to the finish line.  Someone couldn’t leave well enough alone, and someone had to go and make a sequel called The Crow: City of Angels, where another guy gets the chance to come back to life and be invincible.  What’s the problem?  Someone was actually able to mess that up.

Ashe is a single dad with a kid, whom he loves as much as his motorcycle.  When he and his son witness a gangland murder, the kid is shot in the face, and Ashe goes sleeping with the fishes.  When his body, sitting Indian-style at the bottom of the harbor, is resurrected, he is greeted by a hot girl who has been having dreams about him.  She tells him that he has come back from the dead, and they both figure that it’s because he needs to take revenge for his son….or something like that, I’m not really sure.  I’m also not sure why she paints his face all white with black lining, but hey, it’s “The Crow”, he needs to have the look.

Then the revenge starts!  Like the first film, he starts with the little guys, has flashbacks to when they were involved with his murder, and then kills them in fun ways.  One guy gets burned alive in a drug warehouse, while another gets surprised at a peep show.  All the while, Iggy Pop(yeah, Iggy Pop….the creepy old-man abs guy) is running around all shirtless and old, trying to act tough but just coming across as creepy.  He informs the big crime boss(like the guy from the first movie, but black) about all of the people being killed, and the boss is intrigued.  His oracle(every crime boss should have a fortune-teller to help move the plot along) tells him the entire deal with the crow, which is apparently common knowledge at this point, and the boss gets an idea.

Too much mid-drift, man. And the feathered hair is totally last season.

Eat the crow!  He tastes of the crow’s blood and is able to steal Ashe’s crow-powers(crowers?).  With them, he beats the living hell out of Ashe and then plans to hang him from a light pole to show him who the new king in town really is…and who is the joker(also, who is the midnight toker).  Well, thanks to the help of Ashe’s girlfriend(their relationship status is kinda complicated, what with him being dead and all), the crime boss is distracted by a knife in the face, and Ashe has a chance to regroup.  He slams Mr. Druglord into a pipe, and then uses his crowers to summon all of the crows in the area to take his body apart.  With the power of their combined beaks(and the help of the worst After Effects editing I have ever seen), the crime boss’s body disappears, and Ashe is free to return to the underworld, or wherever it is that he came from.  Luckily, his girlfriend was stabbed in the chest during the battle, so they can be together in the afterword(nothing happens) forever and ever.  Aww.

It was really like they tried to copy the first movie, and they changed only the things that they thought wouldn’t really matter to the overall plot.  Thing is, nothing about this movie mattered to anything.  The character development is terrible, the relationships between characters are poor at best, and the effects are something that a first year intern with access to Photoshop could pull off during an all-nighter.  It’s obvious that they just wanted to cash in on all the kids that think watching The Crow and cutting themselves is cool, not really caring about making a movie with any real depth or meaning.  For shame, City of Angels, for shame.

Don’t be a fool, watch bad movies(and stay in school?)! 

PS: Bonus points to anyone who knows what a “psychopomp” is without looking it up!