The Crow: City of Angels (1996) review

Dir. Tim Pope

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★

Following the tragic death of Brandon Lee and the subsequent success of The Crow — the film he sadly didn’t live to finish shooting — the Weinstein brothers had one of their biggest successes on their hands and weren’t going to let this cow go unmilked.

Which is why, barely two years later, we got The Crow: City of Angels, a vastly inferior sequel to a grimly moody, effective thriller. Rather than admirably take a different route from its predecessor, like Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 would do just a few years later, City of Angels goes for a re-deux, and was apparently lobotomized in post-production when the Weinsteins took directorial control away from Tim Pope.

I intend to learn, study, and write about film for many, many more decades, but I don’t think I will ever understand why any studio or their respective investors would be keen on self-sabotaging their multi-million dollar investment. File this film as another corpse in the mile-high/mile-wide morgue of other misbegotten projects committed to celluloid that were ostensibly engineered to please nobody.

None of this blame should fall on Pope nor screenwriter David S. Goyer, who apparently went above and beyond to make this sequel stand on its own rather than trying to replicate the performance or make a grand statement on Lee. The changes came from the Weinsteins’ Dimension Films, which remixed the film to mirror the original, even going as far as to turn important story beats into flashbacks to recall the original film. Utterly asinine.

The story itself begins with the murder of Ashe (Vincent Perez in a perfectly adequate performance) and his son at the hand of violent, vile goons. Sarah (Mia Kirschner), a tattoo artist by day and painter by night, uses both of her trades to resurrect Ashe, and give him a makeup job to reflect the spirit of “The Crow,” a person resurrected after passing away. Ashe intends to exact revenge on those involved in his murder, including a notorious drug kingpin named Judah (Richard Brooks) and “Curve” (Iggy Pop).

City of Angels‘ cinematographer can only be described as piss-colored. Everything is colored in sepia, as if to distract from the comparably minimal budget, and consequently gives the look and impression of a nu metal music video that doesn’t command your fullest intention. Flat characters and a discombobulated narrative further compound these issues to the point where if there were positives to accentuate within, I’d have to reserve the right to revisit this film in a few years before I consider a potential apologist piece. Today is not that day. Today is the day to do what many have already done; pretend that City of Angels doesn’t exist.

My review of The Crow (1994)
My review of The Crow: Salvation
My review of The Crow: Wicked Prayer
My review of The Crow (2024)

Starring: Vincent Perez, Mira Kirschner, Richard Brooks, Thuy Tang, and Iggy Pop. Directed by: Tim Pope.