The Crow: City of Angels - [No Tickets]

This dark and brooding sequel is an absolute pain to watch. Set twenty years after the original, The Crow: City of Angels, focuses upon the character of Ashe (Vincent Perez), a mechanic who accidentally witnesses a murder. He is killed, only to be raised from the dead by the Crow…brought back to seek revenge upon those who killed him. He meets Sarah (Mia Kirshner), the young girl from the first film, now all grown up, and she helps him seek out the members of the evil gang who killed him. Well, if you are at all familiar with the original film, you can see that there is nothing new here (oh, wait…he’s a mechanic, not a rock star…) The first film survived primarily on Brandon Lee (both his abilities and the mystique about his death on the set). However, stripped of him, the plot regurgitated in the sequel shows exactly how lifeless and pitiful it actually is. The first film at least had some creativity in its revenge (many of the deaths were in a “poetic justice” vein). City of Angels wastes its originality by hitting you over the head with its blatant symbolism, ranging from countless crow images to lingering several seconds too long on an old JESUS SAVES sign that now reads SAVE US. The action is pointless noise and bluster for its own sake. The films atmosphere is borrowed from Blade Runner and countless other films of its ilk (the primary set decoration seems to be trash…even otherwise clean apartment seem to be littered with ground debris). The dialogue is inane, and the acting can’t hope to rise above it. Die hard fans of the genre are the only ones who might be attracted to the film at all, but this awful film isn’t worth the time.