Tuesday, August 20, 2024

My Review of The Crow: Salvation (2000)

 


Written by Chip Johannessen
Directed by Bharat Nalluri

Vincent: "What do you want?"
Alex Corvis: "I want Lauren. I want my life back. I want to know why!"

Following the failure of the second movie at the box office, a third installment in this franchise certainly pivoted in new and different direction. Well, the different being that this was a straight to DVD release.

The familiar being the motive in question. Yet again, we've got a Crow who's avenging a dead girlfriend. Here it's Alex Corvis (Eric Mabius), who got the chair after being framed for the murder of his lover, Lauren Randell (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe). Needless to say, death didn't agree with Alex.

Nope, shortly after his execution, he got revived by the Crow and proceeded to go after everyone connected to his girlfriend's death. On top of that, there was also the girlfriend's family to contend with.

There was Lauren's cop father, Nathan (William Atherton) who has his own guilt to contend with while Lauren's sister, Erin (Kirsten Dunst). At first, she blamed Alex for her sister's murder before teaming up with Alex to uncover the truth. While not a career highlight for Dunst, she's decent enough as Erin in this movie.

The villains this time aren't gang members but corrupt police officers, led by Book (Fred Ward) and Madden (Bruce McCarthy). As villains along with Secretary (Kelly Haren), they're fairly paint by the numbers,villain wise. Saying that there's something immensely satisfying in the way that Book himself was dealt with.

As another person to connect with the Crow, Alex fulfilled his mission, got his closure and reward. It's neatly wrapped up here with Erin being the one to deal with the fallout of her entire family being no more.

- There's some good supporting performances from Grant Shaud and Tim DeKay as Peter Walsh and Martin Toomey respectively. Walton Goggins also featured here.
- The Crow facial features on Alex are a lot more gruesome than the previous two movies. 
- In a different universe, this would've been a Rob Zombie movie. Let's just say we fared better here. 
- Chronology: Early 2000s in Salt Lake City for this movie.

As a horror/comic book franchise, I can't deny that these movies do diminish on each entry. The Crow: Salvation is a very pedestrian entry, reusing elements of the first movie but in a less compelling way.

Rating: 5 out of 10 

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