The Crow

I either haven't seen that in a long time or I've never seen it. Either way it was cheesier than I remembered / expected. The story felt disjointed and a bit hard to follow too, especially to start off with. I think the fact that Brandon Lee wasn't available for reshoots might have hurt it there.

That being said, the movie finds its pace as it gets going. Brandon Lee was shockingly good in the title role, and the movie made several choices I approved of. Ernie Hudson surviving the film was great simply because honest black cops tend to be sacrificial lambs in these types of pictures. I also liked that the movie had a surprisingly mega happy ending, considering the dark subject matter. That should not have ended as a feel-good movie, considering both the premise and the production's troubled history, but damned if it didn't.

The troubled history DOES bother me. Every time Draven is shot I wince. Should they simply have canceled the entire movie? The fact that Draven is shot on-screen so much says that maybe they should have. But the fact that if they had, Lee would never have been able to share this great performance and one of his only two major roles before he died says releasing it was the right move after all. But it's not a clear-cut issue to me. I think the movie being released is both majorly disrespectful to him, and the only way to honor Lee's memory at the exact same time. Funny, but true.

Frankly, when I saw the stunt coordinators credited in the film, I was annoyed the cretins who utterly failed their jobs and got the poor guy killed with their sloppiness are being rewarded by having their names posted on this film for posterity. The credit claiming all animal action was strictly monitored for safety pissed me off for the same reason.

For the first half hour I thought the movie was cheesy and hard to follow. Not on the level of Spawn, but cheesy and hard to follow for the same reasons. Just not to the same degree. As the movie progressed and Lee was more present (it's clear the majority of his unfinished scenes were at the beginning) the movie became quite good. But the truth is it's not good all the way through for the reasons I said, so it's probably been overpraised over the years.. I feel bad for Brandon Lee dying too, but the fact that he died before production was entirely finished actually hurt the movie a little. Not irreparably. But it's not quite as great as people have raved over the years. The beginning is a mess. ****.