Review of The Crow (1994) by Sean L — 11 Jan 2012

Like leafing through an old high school journal, this was difficult to get through without cringing at every bad line and self-absorbed thought. I'd recalled the dialog as being fairly pretentious, even through the rosy-red glasses of fond remembrance, but nothing could've prepared me for just how poorly the whole package had aged over the last decade and a half.

Try as he might, Brandon Lee never even comes close to getting over the hump as a serious dramatic actor, even in a mostly-action setting, and the half-baked revenge formula he plods through does little to challenge convention.

Though its unique visual identity is still a strong point and the soundtrack remains gigantic, there's really little else to celebrate about The Crow in a modern setting. For its time this was a fantastic comic book adaptation, but given the strides made in that field over the last ten years it really isn't even a fair fight any more.