Some time ago, Ashe Corven and his son Danny were killed when they stumbled across a pack of drug dealers murdering a fellow dealer. The dealers work for Los Angeles drug kingpin Judah Earl. Local tattoo artist Sarah, who has great knowledge of the crow legend because of what happened with her late friend Eric Draven, has been having dreams about Ashe and Danny. One night when a crow leads her to the scene of the murders of Ashe and Danny, Ashe appears before her. The crow has resurrected Ashe, so Ashe can go after Judah and his right hand man Curve. With the guidance of the crow, Ashe starts killing off Judah's men one by one, on his way to Judah. The spirit of the Crow resurrects another man seeking revenge for the murder of his son. I consider myself to be one of the biggest fans of The crow starring Brandon Lee and Michael Wincott. However, when I saw this so-called sequel to it i was left depressed. First off, the acting in City of Angels is simply horrendous. The main villain of the movie, Judah, was a horrible character to begin with and as for Iggy Pop starring in the movie… let's just say he should stick to his musical career. The best actor of the movie was Mia Kirshner who played Sarah. This is pretty sad because when your main character lacks acting skills your movie is simply going to flop. One thing I liked about the movie was that it resembled the original Crow but still had something in it's storyline to keep you from walking out of the movie. One thing I liked was that the movie was partly based on Sarah when she grows up. This was good because I myself wanted to know what happened to her afterwards. So in conclusion, the movie had the makings to live up to its prequel but the horrible acting made it die out like a drowning rat in a public restroom toilet stall. Just one of the pretentious, would-be meaningful lines peppering this 1996 Tim Pope movie. City of Angels is a watchable sequel yet lacks the potency or voyeuristic qualities of its predecessor.<br/><br/>That is, the most controversial element of the original and perversely the most crowd pulling was that its star was killed during filming. While the death is understandably not seen on screen, the film was completed after Brandon Lee's tragic demise and does add a macabre plus that this sequel does not have. What it does have in the way of unique plusses is a chance to see rock stars Iggy Pop and Ian Dury in fairly large acting roles. Pop gets the bigger part, but it's Dury who's the real find as sole likeable character Noah. An accomplished lyricist, he sadly died in March 2000 and this is just one of over 15 acting roles he undertook. I was quite surprised by this element of his career, not realising he had taken on acting jobs, particularly in high-profile (if not actually any good) movies like Judge Dredd and Split Second.<br/><br/>The Crow, a sort of Batman for Goths, is a strong character, a soul drawn back from the dead to avenge his murder. This sequel is really just a retelling, a rehash of the first story with different characters and a different lead, rather than a direct follow-on. Yet City of Angels crucially lacks the style needed to carry off it's adult content, lending the harsh violence a vicious edge. A predilection for gouged eyes runs throughout, though this does fit in with the series' skewed "eye for an eye" philosophies. So too the leader of the gang, Judah (Richard Brooks), has his characterisation etched in by watching unpleasantly directed S and M.<br/><br/>Where the original was stunning because of it's direction by Alex Proyas, (where we saw events from the actual crow's POV, something overlooked here) this sequel manages to look cheaper than the original, despite it's $13 million budget being over twice that of Lee's vehicle. Pope cannot be fully faulted, although the graphic novel leanings of the architecture do look remarkably fake this time around. Though while Pope's only other directorial work prior to this was a concert movie for the Cure, he is not helped by a script that is often unsubtle. Witness the overstated symbolism of the "Jesus Saves" neon sign with burnt-out letters causing it to read "save us". This religious analogy is a vague undercurrent (The Crow is a resurrection after all), and many of the character names are biblical, from the afore-mentioned Noah and Judah to Beverley Mitchell's Grace. In one of the truly remarkable scenes, the crow is crucified, causing The Crow (i.e. the man not the bird) to fall from the side of a building. This is a nice vertigo-inducing scene, and the animatronics are superb. In fact, I half suspected they'd offed a real crow before I saw the end credits.<br/><br/>The Christ analogy being a subtext is one way in which it perhaps scores over the first movie, which had it fully signposted. Even Brandon Lee's cat was called "Gabriel" in the 94 version. Yet, while mildly pretentious, the original Crow possessed a high-reaching ambition and irresistible style. City of Angels, while not awful, only reaches as far as a TV Movie.
Betfild replied
295 weeks ago