Film Reviews by sb

Remaking a beloved cult classic is a tricky thing to pull off well, even if to be honest I have always felt the original Crow has been elevated beyond its actual merits by the on set death of star Brandon Lee. Sadly this long gestating version should have stayed in the oven cooking for another few years. Bafflingly this new Crow strips back the original film’s lore and introduces new elements (like a visualisation of purgatory) that either add little, or simply make no sense.  The actual Crow of the title is little more than mall-goth window dressing here, no explanation is given for the twink hero. Suddenly developing martial arts skills in the last act, and the villains are so paperthin that the make the original’s Fun Boy look like a Shakespeare character. Apparently the film was shot without a finished screenplay, and it shows. The lead actors are given nothing to work with, bad enough for an experienced actor like Bill Skarsgaard, but a disaster for pop singer FKA Twigs who flounders despite having a unique screen presence and dancer’s physicality. 

The film leans surprisingly hard into 18 cert gore, but the action is blighted by obvious CGI blood, and there basically isn’t any until the last act. It looks fabulous, especially in 4k, but when the material is this flimsy… so what?

Clearly intended as a contemporary allegory for atrocities in the Vietnam war and based on a horrific real life massacre of native Americans by US Cavalry, this is exploitation masquerading as an issue film. If it was actually interested in the historical crushing of indigenous Americans in the name of 'manifest destiny' then it might have avoided the insulting casting of mexican actors in principle native american roles. Whilst bookended by two sequences of carnage, the majority of the film is a limp romance between a simpering dolt of a soldier played with a Haight AShbury haircut by Peter Strauss, and Candice Bergan's liberated free spirit. The finale is a 15 minute massacre sequence with US cavalry raining first artillery fire then charging a mostly defenceless Cheyenne encampment. It is still shocking to this day due to the sexualised violence and killing of children, but it's graphic nature is undercut by the use of thick Hammer Horror blood and director Ralph Nelson is a journeyman and absolutely no Sam Peckinpah (a Peckinpah version of this story could have been the most unwatchable film ever made and does not bear thinking about. 

Rent Arthur Penn's Little Big Man for more complex and thoughtful exploration of these themes.