| The Crow: City of Angels | |
| Director: | Tim Pope |
| Producer: | |
| Screenplay: | David S. Goyer |
| Starring: |
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| Music: | Graeme Revell |
| Cinematography: | Jean-Yves Escoffier |
| Editing: |
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| Studio: | Dimension Films |
| Distributor: | Miramax Films |
| Runtime: | 84 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Gross: | $25.3 million[1] |
The Crow: City of Angels is a 1996 American superhero film directed by Tim Pope from a screenplay by David S. Goyer, and sequel to the 1994 film The Crow[2] in addition to the second installment in The Crow film series. The film stars Vincent Pérez, Mia Kirshner, Richard Brooks, Iggy Pop, Thomas Jane and Thuy Trang.
In Los Angeles, drug kingpin Judah Earl murders mechanic Ashe Corven and his eight-year-old son Danny after they witness a gang of Judah's henchmen murdering a fellow drug dealer, with his gang dumping Ashe and Danny's bodies into the harbor.
The now adult Sarah Mohr works in a tattoo parlor by day and paints surreal images of death and resurrection in her apartment at night. She is haunted by disturbing dreams about Ashe and Danny. After a day's work in the tattoo parlor, Sarah is visited in her apartment by a large crow as she contemplates a ring that Eric Draven gave her.
Sarah follows the crow to the harbor at night on All Saints' Day, and witnesses Ashe's resurrection and frantic escape from his watery grave before taking him to her apartment. When Sarah tells Ashe he is dead, he panics and runs screaming into the night, ending up at his own home, where he relives the final moments of his life.
Sarah arrives there to find Ashe brooding, and she explains that the Crow resurrected him so that he can exact revenge on the criminals who killed him and Danny. Guided by the crow, Ashe starts killing Judah's henchmen, one by one. Ashe first visits Spider-Monkey in a drug warehouse and interrogates him as to who else was involved in the murders before killing him by blowing up the building. Another of Judah's lackeys, Nemo, is spending the night at a peeping booth. Ashe appears in the booth and kills him, leaving a doll stuffed in his pants and a paper crow in his mouth.
Judah has employed a blind prophetess named Sybil who is able to ascertain Ashe's link to Sarah and to the crow that is the source of his powers. Judah captures Sarah in order to draw Ashe to him and steal his power.
One of the murderers, Kali, goes to Sarah's apartment to draw Ashe out. While battling her, Ashe realizes that Kali is the one who killed Danny; enraged, he throws her against a wall that breaks her leg, and then out a window to her death, leaving a crow-shaped blood pattern. Ashe then pursues Judah's right-hand-man, Curve, in a motorcycle chase. Ashe shoots Curve's motorcycle, which blows up and throws Curve onto the road. Ashe then drags Curve into the nearby river, leaving him to die as parishioners cast down flower petals in the shape of a crow.
During the Day of the Dead festival, Judah captures the crow and impales its wings with knives before killing it. He then ingests the crow's blood, stealing Ashe's power. Suddenly mortal, Ashe nearly dies from the shock, but is revived after seeing a vision of Danny telling him to keep fighting. Ashe attempts to rescue Sarah by seeking out Judah in his lair, an abandoned church. Judah overpowers the weakened Ashe in the ensuing fight, tying a rope around him and savagely whipping him, intending to hang him.
Sarah rushes up and stabs Judah in the forehead, causing Judah to drop Ashe. Judah pulls out the knife and starts moving toward Ashe. When Sarah intervenes, Judah stabs her in the stomach. Ashe gets up and impales Judah on a metal pipe, which fails to kill him. Ashe calls upon a murder of crows that devour Judah. Sarah dies from her stab wound, a tableau reminiscent of a painting she completed earlier. Ashe returns to death, knowing that he can rest in peace with Sarah, and his son.
See main article: The Crow: City of Angels (soundtrack).
After the success of the first film, producer Edward R. Pressman and Miramax saw the franchise potential of the film with David S. Goyer tasked with writing a sequel featuring a new protagonist.[3]
During editing, producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein took the film away from Tim Pope with the intention of making it more like the first one.[4] According to Pope, the Weinsteins directed the editors to structure the film like its predecessor to the point scenes were repurposed as "flashbacks" despite not originally intended to be.[4] After Pope returned to the UK, he was contacted by the Weinstein's who had constructed a "director's cut", with which he was not involved, and Pope refused to see it or contribute to any commentary on the home media releases.[4] Pope's experience making The Crow: City of Angels was unpleasant enough that Pope avoided returning to feature films for over two decades.[5]
The Crow: City of Angels opened at number 1 at the U.S. and Canada box office grossing $9,785,111 during its opening weekend, a record for the Labor Day Weekend.[6] Its weekend accounted for 54.6% of its total gross. It also opened at number 1 in the UK.[7] The final US and Canadian gross was $17.9 million.[8]
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 14% approval rating based on 37 reviews, with an average rating of 3.5/10. The site's consensus states: "The Crow: City of Angels is a sloppy pretender that captures neither the mood nor energy of the original."[9]
Joe Leydon of Variety called it "Stunningly awful."[10] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave it grade "D" and wrote: "Even for teens hooked on the grandiloquence of death-metal masochism, the movie may seem closer to an endless Sunday in church."[11]
On October 7, 2014, City of Angels was released on DVD by Lionsgate in a triple feature edition with the other two Crow sequels.[12]
A video game tie-in The Crow: City of Angels was made for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and Microsoft Windows. The game was to be initially released around the same time as the film[13] but instead released in early 1997.