Powerful

Overrated

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

I don't think we as an audience appreciate just how disastrously wrong The Crow could have gone. The Crow is one of those stories with such dark subject matter and such brooding visuals that in the hands of lesser filmmakers it could have gone horribly wrong and ended up as some dark bitter mess like Batman Returns. Thankfully the right people were involved and we got the movie we did. And then they made a sequel. Now I'm not one of those people who thinks that 'The Crow' shouldn't have a sequel. The idea that there are other lost souls who must return to earth to right some wrong is not a bad one. But not like this. This movie fails across the board, the story goes on way too long and is hopelessly convoluted despite a pretty simple set up, the music is almost none stop grunge punk rock that adds nothing to the scenes. But the biggest problem with this movie is the way it looks. The director is a man named Tim Pope. Never heard of him? Well before this movie he directed music videos and do you know what he made after this movie? More music videos! This movie is shot like a music video, the camera is too close, the shots are all framed wrong, the angles are weird and the editing is nauseating. Of course this style could be forgiven if it wasn't for the fact this is the ugliest movie I have ever seen in my life. Gone is the smooth neo-Gothic look of the first movie. In its place is hideously ugly punk grunge look with bright colours and nauseating shades that are actually difficult to look at half the time. The music video style directing and editing only makes it worse and I'm sure those with weaker stomachs might actually throw up watching this film. To make all this even worse the story goes out of its way to be dark and gritty adding even more nauseating imagery to this already stomach turning movie. But even the worst movie can be saved by the performances, sadly the performances in this movie only serve as the icing on the garbage cake. The script is ridiculously cheesy and grimy and the actors they picked to say it are dreadful; Vincent Perez doesn't have the aura of menace Brandon Lee had and so he just comes off as sulky half the time and the other half he spends pretending to be intimidating, Richard Brooks's performance as the villain Judas Earl is terrible as none of his lines are delivered properly, they all come off as either bored or forced. This is one of the absolute worst movie I've ever seen. This is a joyless grungy mess that no on should ever have to watch even for the sake of curiosity. I would tell you to destroy it but that would involve buying it and I don't want that. Instead I want no one to buy it. I want all the copies to sit on stores shelves for years and years and years until the company has no choice but to take them all out in the middle of nowhere and bury them in big pit so they can slowly biodegrade until there is nothing left but a grungy patch of earth where nothing can grow. I hate this movie.

Plays most of the same notes as the original, but not half as well. Vincent Perez - playing an entirely different character - still seems to be doing his best Brandon Lee impression, which sadly isn't very good. Only the hauntingly beautiful Mia Kirshner manages to transcend her paint by numbers role. In truth, I'd rather have seen her as The Crow.'City of Angels' was reportedly heavily edited by Miramax (no surprise there if you know anything about their butchery practices) and has subsequently been disowned by director Tim Pope and screenwriter David Goyer. At 86 minutes with credits, it definitely feels chopped up. A so-called "Second Coming" edit of the film apparently exists, and perhaps it's better as some claim, but there's an inherent artistic failure here that no amount of "more" can fix.

I really enjoyed the first one. It was an exceptional movie with a unique plot and great action sequences. This one however is just a big mess compared to the first. It's not the change in characters that bothered me at all, or how different it was from the first, it was just a messy film with mediocre action sequences and flat, boring dialogue.I was really hoping that this movie would be just as good as the first one, but the second one was a huge disappointment on my part and is a lot worse than the original. If the action sequences would be more refined, and the dialogue would not suck so bad, this movie would have hopefully been great. But it's not.If you like the film, that's totally okay, I respect your opinions. I just didn't really like this.

Ah, 1996's "The Crow: City of Angels"- the first sequel in the downfall of a once-promising franchise. Directed by Tim Pope and written by David S. Goyer (whom both went on to disown the film due to studio re-edits that destroyed it), this is the tragic misstep that destroyed the series after the incredible 1994 debut.Vincent Perez stars as Ashe, a man whom was murdered, along with his child, after witnessing a gang-related hit. Some time later (it's never exactly established, but I think it's a short time later), Ashe is brought back by the power of a crow, to seek vengeance. He is helped along the way by Sarah... yes, the same Sarah from the first film, now all grown up and quite stunning (portrayed by the sexy Mia Kirshner). She uses Eric Draven's influence on her to paint the iconic crow makeup onto Ashe and send him on his way, also acting as a slight love interest in the rushed narrative.Ashe is after Judah (Richard Brooks), the drug lord of Los Angelas, who is sort of responsible for the loss of his own life and that of his child. Judah's men (including Thomas Jane, Iggy Pop and the late and great Thuy Trang) are the ones who murdered him. Through a bizarre series of events that just don't "gel" together properly, Judah forms a plan to steal the powers of the crow to make himself invincible, and Ashe must stop him at all costs.To give credit where it is due, there are some good aspects to the film. For starters, Pope's direction is quite nice, on the whole. He went for what seems to be the exact opposite of what Alex Proyas did with the first film. The movie is all in shades of red, orange, purple, etc. It's much harsher and more angry, and camera-work is generally good. Graeme Revell also returns to score the film, and he utilizes a fantastic combination of new themes with musical cues from the prior film. It helps ground them both in the same universe. And the performances aren't bad.However, it stops there. The films really, truly suffers from the studio re-edits. Rumor has it that the original cut of the film was much longer and significantly different, but Miramax, wanting to cash in on the success of the first film, had more than an hour of footage cut, and many scenes re-arranged in the narrative, in order to make it more like the original. And it shows. The pacing is sloppy and characters are left completely undeveloped. In addition, the tragedy and connection to the characters is also severed, and the ending (without spoiling anything) makes no sense whatsoever.The film feels like it's missing the backbone to the story, and what's left after these studio edits feels like an empty shell. It's barely watchable as-is, and isn't very enjoyable.Here's to hoping that one day, we may get the original cut of the film (which isn't the DVD Director's Cut, don't be fooled), and see this film in the best possible way, as the original cut does sound far superior.As it stands, "The Crow: City of Angels" gets a 3 out of 10. It's a worse version of the original film, and should be skipped over by all but die-hard fans who feel they need to see it.