The Crow

It’s excessively violent, extremely dark and has more style than logic or narrative. It’s The Crow, one of the first official films of the summer. It’s also a primary example of the new wave of movies inspired by comic books (The Mask will deliver the second “graphic novel” punch later this summer). In its comic book state, The Crow is an underground classic. The film version has already stirred controversy with its nihilistic vision and is looking to blast its way into the pop culture mainstream.

Assuming it could ever get to the theaters, that is.

“They had to trim back the violence,” explained James O’Barr, the creator of The Crow comics. “They got an NC-17 (rating) four times before they finally got a cut of the film that could receive an R.”

O’Barr is one of the hot artist/writers of the modern comic book/graphic novel form. The Crow is based on his two-volume epic about a man who returns from the dead to heap revenge upon the gang that murdered him and his fiancée. It’s a hyper exercise in purgatorial storytelling, set against a nightmarish recreation of Detroit as a burned-out urban shell brimming with squalor and despair. The movie is as unrelenting as the comics in its sense of madness and brutality. Even the tale of personal redemption offered at the movie’s conclusion comes off as way too little, way too late.

“I’m not as angst-ridden as people are trying to portray me,” sighed O’Barr, in a voice laden with the slow intonations of a manic depressive in a downward mood swing. But he also admitted that it took him a while to find a publisher for The Crow – “They couldn’t understand the depressed quality of the work.”

O’Barr claims that, at the age of 33, he feels more mellow, but that he still carries baggage from a childhood of orphanages and foster homes. But it was the death of a girlfriend that spurred him to create The Crow.

“It’s all been a long, dark ride.” He mused.

Add to O’Barr’s angst the accidental death of The Crow’s star, Brandon Lee (son of the prematurely dead Bruce Lee), and you’ve got a movie so enveloped in morbidity that Valium could be served along with the popcorn. But the movie’s very emotional darkness is also what works for it. Like it or not, The Crow’s feverish degree of pain and its highly disturbing visuals imprint itself on your mind.

“The filmmakers didn’t feel the need to pander to 10-year-olds,” said O’Barr. “The Crow isn’t meant for them.”