A timeless story of revenge.
What They Say:
The modern-gothic original that entranced audiences and critics alike, THE CROW tells the tale of a young musician brutally murdered alongside his beloved fiancée, only to rise from the grave by a mysterious crow. Seeking revenge, he battles a criminal underground that must answer for their crimes, in this supernatural superhero movie from director by Alex Proyas (DARK CITY), adapted from the comic book series, and starring Brandon Lee in his final, tragic performance.
4K UHD Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original mix for the film with it available using the DTS-HD MA lossless codec for the 5.1 design. Additional languages are included as well but are given just Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes. The film is one that uses its score well but it’s also something that’s not quite as strong as you’d think it would be. The action sequences definitely work well, you get some solid impact both in the physicality of the action but also the shootout sequences, and there’s a lot to like with the car chases. And certainly the dialogue is largely well-placed and clean and clear throughout so it was easy to understand and enjoy. But one of the biggest draws of the film was its music and that’s very much a forward soundstage kind of thing where it goes big but doesn’t wrap around you like some of the other elements. But what is always surprising in going back to this film as I’ve done over the years is just how quiet it is as well, with so many scenes just given a chance to breathe and for incidental sounds or a softer instrumental score to move the narrative forward.
Video:
Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 in 2160p using the HEVC / H.265 encoding, the 4K release of this film is definitely what I was hoping for. With it coming from a new 4K scan and handled by a great team that did the work, it’s just fantastic throughout with such a richness to it. The film retains the grain it needs to in the areas where it should be noticeable but once you hit the white credits and get the stability and solidity there and then onto the full film itself it definitely delights. This had a decent for the time budget of $23 million and it employs a lot of tricks that may not stand up well for some, such as the modeling and the like, and you can definitely tell its of its time and doing things in order to maximize its budget where it can. But the encoding captures all of this dark material, the hazy pieces from some of the flashbacks, and just the physicality of the sets and the tactile nature of it in a way that resonates so well. It’s the kind of encoding that doesn’t try to improve on what was originally done but rather showcases all of its dark beautifulness.
Packaging:
Having so many editions over the years I opted to go in for the steelbook edition for this release. I get why it’s not a favorite for many since they want the classic piece that’s been used since the original release but I like shaking things up a bit once in a while. With a plastic slipcover here that’s done in white with the crow illustration, it looks good across the case with the visual of Draven there and the mix of the lightness and rain for the steelbook itself. The winged element has its own neat effect as well when you have the cover off but it works for both of them. The back of the slipcover uses the familiar image in a new way and the color hue and theme for the set as a whole works for me. I get wanting it to be black and straightforward like that and I wouldn’t have had a problem with that either, but I like this steelbook edition and what it’s doing. The expectation of a nearly all-black cover to get this white slipcover and mix our lead into the space of the crow just hits right for me.
Extras:
With the extras from the previous release on the Blu-ray disc, there’s a lot here that I’ll be digging into for the next few months as the mood hits but also because we get new pieces looking back on the project all these years later. The only one I watched after the film was the piece with O’Barr because it had been so long since I saw this from when it was done back in 2000 and it just brought up all kinds of memories of the struggles of this creator and all that’s associated with it. It’s a fantastic if hard-to-watch 30-minute piece.
One of the best things my parents did for me as a teenager in the mid-1980s was to take me to one of the early direct-market comic stores we had in the area, Bop City Comics. This introduced me to the wider world of comics from the newsstand that I had been reading for years. As time went on and as I got a bit older, had a job and a car, I would go there twice a week to pick up new comics and see what was out. The 80s had a glut of black-and-white comics and so many independent companies popping up that there was always something new and fascinating to check out. I was interested in a lot of what Caliber Press put out in the late 80s as a late teenage guy with things like Deadworld and others, so when seeing the pages of The Crow within Caliber Presents I was hooked. It took a bit of time for it all to be compiled in single floppy issues and then trades but I had so many editions because there was so much artwork produced for it that it was easy to add more. The tragic nature of the story and that of its creator, which was naturally distorted a bit through the pre-internet grapevine, meant that it had a great hook for drawing in people who weren’t comic fans as well.
This 1994 film took that tragedy of the original work and it became something more because of the loss of Brandon Lee during the filming of it. Much has been written over the decades about it and now some thirty years later it’s another moment to lament the loss of someone who could have been such a talent. His death near the end of filming certainly made the film into a cult project just from that alone and it also introduced some editing problems that I think are either largely managed well or not even notable to most viewers when you watch it since there were still pickup scenes and some additional stuff to get done of varying degrees. None of it mattered in the end for most who wanted to see the film whose chance of release felt like it was certainly iffy at the time when the tragedy hit. It was something that certainly hit a lot of people in some very big ways, including original creator James O’Barr since the story itself was his dealing with the loss of his fiancee years earlier to a drunk driver. To have that cathartic project result in the death of someone else was certainly a shock.
Having owned this film in multiple editions as well, from a LaserDisc to DVD and then to Blu-ray, this edition is likely the going to be the definitive version until they can just put it directly in my mind. It is a simple revenge tale but it’s also one that does it with a certain kind of minimal style and approach to it that works. The trappings are there for a larger world and understanding of events but it doesn’t try to do any of that. It’s not trying to build something. It’s trying to tell a story of revenge, of a man who was killed and whose fiancee died after being attacked and raped by a group of criminals. A year after his death, a crow in service of the afterlife has given him the ability to crawl out from his grave and to deal with the four people directly responsible for it. Eric Draven isn’t given massive abilities beyond being impossible to kill at the moment and,. In fact, he’s susceptible to certain kinds of pain. Physical pain doesn’t do much to him but the emotional and mental scarring is very much there. It takes a bit of time for him to get his bearings and understand what’s going on but once he does, he’s all in on it. But even then, it’s not in this kind of devolved crazy way. There’s certainly some insanity to it in how he presents himself with the makeup mask, but it’s pretty much a straightforward thing of what most people would likely do in this situation if presented to them. It’s something that perhaps felt too over-the-top when it came out but in hindsight and having seen so many other revenge stories go so far to the ridiculous, this feels almost tame.
But what drives it home and keeps it fresh and works so well is that you connect with the threadbare story of the romance between Draven and his fiance Shelly, played by Sofia Shinas. She has so few lines in this and so few scenes overall but these flashbacks are done in such a strong evocative way from director Alex Proyas that it hits you hard. Much as it does Draven as he works through understanding being “alive” again and having a day or so to exact his revenge thanks to the crow. The dreamlike nature of the flashbacks helps a lot and they’re also the scenes that provide a bit more color, even it just muted in reds, than the rest of the film. It’s a very black-and-white film in so many ways but when you get these red-hued flashbacks, and the life and laughter that comes from how Shinas and Lee interact with each other as well as moments with the younger character of Sarah played by Rochelle Davis, it provides that grounding and reality. That accessible moment of humanity for the viewer to connect with.
With any film that has this kind of age to it, you’re going to feel that it’s quaint in some ways and it certainly is true here as well. The violence that felt much stronger back in its original release doesn’t hit the same way as newer films do for obvious reasons, including just general desensitization. I’m utterly fascinated by how quiet it feels throughout and the slower pacing that comes from it. We get some good establishing setting stuff early on but it takes a while before it starts getting into what it really wants to be about. We’ve seen sequels and the like since that opt for the action right out from the gate and then flash back to what caused it all, but the pacing and style of this film is just so different from what came after it that you can tell that a lot of people learned the wrong lessons from it. Proyas, for example, went on to Dark City after this and it works in largely the same way. But so many other revenge films and action works just have to hit you hard from the start for fear of losing your attention. The Crow makes out by mostly easing you into it in a quiet and tragic way.
This film also came out originally at an interesting time for me personally as I was a few years out of high school and truly discovering my love of film as well as finding what “my” music was. A teenager in suburbia in the 1980s, you basically had MTV and top 40 radio and not much else. But the 90s is when I started to get introduced to a lot of stuff, had more freedom to find new things, and the soundtrack for this film was an absolute banger. Not a lot of it made it into the film itself but the soundtrack had some great stuff and was my first introduction to Nine Inch Nails and Stone Temple Pilots. It was also something where I found Jane Siberry to be amazing and that lead me down a path to a slew of other artists. The music for this film, and its score, are just fantastic across the board. It delivers something wholly of the moment and very much what the film needed and was a masterful blend of incorporating your songs into the film without it being just a tacked-on bit like so many films do these days.
In Summary:
The Crow holds a lot of special memories for me beyond the tragedy of the production and the original work. The film was the first comic book movie that I took my mother to see as an adult and a way to show her what could be done with the medium. All she knew of before that were the Batman and Superman movies and had no interest in any of that. While she encouraged my comic book reading and collecting side because it fostered imagination and reading skills, it wasn’t a medium she could get into – though she now regales me with stories of buying comics in the 1940s as a kid. Seeing this movie with here in 1994 and the way the story of it still makes an impact on her now – and that it all comes back to her even as her memory is slowly failing at her age – provides an important connection between us.
Paramount’s release of it here for the anniversary is hugely welcome. They’ve largely done just about everything right here in their treatment of it. It’s a fantastic encoding that treats the original materials right. There are no updates and fixes or CG enhancements to improve upon it. It gives us the film as we saw in the best quality possible and lets us enjoy the story and execution of it all. The tragedy that got us the comic and the tragedy of the production of the film is almost just as much of the story here as what the film is and the combination of it all makes it something unique and special in its own right. I’ve seen it many times over the years in many formats and each time it’s still just as powerful and has you putting everything aside to engage with it because of how it’s told.
Features:
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit), German: Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1, French: Dolby Digital 5.1, Italian: Dolby Digital 2.0, Multiple Subtitle Options, Audio Commentaries, Behind-The-Scenes, James O’Barr Profile, Deleted Footage, Extended Scenes, Trailer
Content Grade: A
Audio Grade: A-
Video Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A-
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: A+
Released By: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: May 7th, 2024
MSRP: $39.99
Running Time: 141 Minutes
Review Equipment:
Fire QL75F601A 75″ QLED 4K HDTV, Sony PlayStation5, VIZIO V-Series 5.1 Home Theater Sound Bar V51x-J6
