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"The Crow"
series. It started out so well, but has become so pathetic after just four
installments, that it almost makes you feel pity for the pour souls with the bad
luck to get involved in it. Each subsequent sequel has been worst than the
previous, their scripts little more than carbon copies of the first. "The
Crow: City of Angels" was the last entry to make it into theaters, back
when there was still life in the franchise, but even so the sequel was nothing
more than a pale imitation (script, plot, and even direction) of the Alex Proyas
directed, Brandon Lee starring original. "The
Crow: Salvation" was so bad, it will only be remembered for one thing:
it co-starred a young Kristen Dunst.
Which brings us to "The Crow: Wicked
Prayer", a movie that is so bad on so many levels that it makes my
critique of "Salvation" seem unfair. "Wicked Prayer"
stars ex-"T2"
kid Edward Furlong as the improbably named Jimmy Cuervo, who along with
his Indian girlfriend Lily (Emmanuelle Chriqui, "Wrong
Turn") is murdered by escaped convict Luc Crash (David
Boreanaz, late of the "Angel" TV series). Ol Crash and his
posse, including gun-toting blondie Lola Byrne (Tara Reid), plans to
resurrect demons or something supernatural like that. To this end,
they've extracted lovely Lily's eyes and poor Jimmy's heart as part of
some kind of ceremony or some such. It's all very black magic-ish. At
least as black magic-ish as it can get with Tara Reid chanting random
spells.
The most unfortunate thing about "Wicked
Prayer" is that it's actually a serviceable drama in the early
parts, when it just involved white trash Jimmy's romance with Indian
princess Lily, and the fact that Lily's family doesn't approve. Alas,
once the lovebirds are knocked off and Jimmy resurrected, things go
downhill from there. The main problem is that this new Crow is as
fearsome as, well, co-star Tara Reid playing a gun-toting badass.
Unfortunately young Eddie Furlong, long removed from battling evil
cyborgs from the future, makes for a poor Crow. It doesn't help that
Furlong's idea of playing a vengeance-fueled zombie avenger is to
constantly tilt to one side for some strange reason.
"Wicked Prayer" was directed by Lance
Mungia, who made a name for himself with the low-budget "Six-String
Samurai", an action-packed martial arts film shot entirely on
weekends, and was as nonsensical as action movies come. Coming off that
film, it's easy to see how Mungia could forget that this is supposed to
be a dark and somber revenge tale, not some chop socky kung fu flick,
which seems to be what Mungia is going for in-between scenes that he
probably felt compelled to shoot as this is, after all, a
"Crow" movie. Based off his work in "Wicked Prayer",
I'm not sure if ol Lance will ever work again on anything with a decent
budget.
The other nitpick involves the bad guys, the
supposed source of the Crow's hatred and rage, who are barely bad enough
to qualify as villains at all. Whenever they're about to kill someone,
these guys can't decide if they're cold-blooded killers or just poor
schmucks in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's possible Mungia and
his co-writers were attempting to make the bad guys seem slightly
sympathetic, perhaps going under the misguided assumption that we want
sympathetic villains in our "Crow" films. Um, no. It's a
little hard to get behind the whole, "Kill'em all and let God
sort'em out" mentality when you can't even be sure if the bad guys
are all that bad.
For someone who made his bones choreographing wild
action on a budget, Mungia shockingly disappoints with "Wicked
Prayer". How bad is Mungia's grasp of movie direction? At one
point, the Crow dispatches of a baddie with a baseball bat in a crowded
dance hall, then sits down to have a long, boring chat with Crash and
Tara Reid. Seriously. In that order. This, mind you, as "dance
goers" mill about in the background in the aftermath of the Crow
killing someone with a baseball bat. I kid you not. The rest of the
film is just as poorly directed, and the action never comes close to
matching (nay, meeting halfway) the action in "Six-String
Samurai". Hmm, I guess now we know who was really responsible for
"Six-String's" success as an action movie, don't we?
Nothing
about "Wicked Prayer" works. Even its first reveal of Furlong
as the Crow is barely serviceable, with not even one-tenth of the grand
entrance of Brandon Lee climbing out of his grave in a rain-soaked
night. Unfortunately the writers do manage to keep the most annoying
constant of the "Crow" films -- namely the bad guys' uncanny
ability (re: it's in the script, stupid) to figure out that the Crow's
power is dependent on the crow that follows him around. This is probably
one of the more contrived tropes of the "Crow" series, just
below the "spreading fire miraculously forms a Crow shape"
motif. Gee, it's not like every superhero is doing it now.
Is it any wonder "Wicked Prayer" is scheduled
for direct-to-video release? It's a poor film in almost every respect,
completely devoid of any of the mystique of the previous films (yes,
even the atrocious "Salvation"), and the Crow has never looked
more ordinary and unimpressive. Edward Furlong can't play tough to save
his life, and David Boreanaz, the film's potential saving grace, has
elected to crack wise throughout the film, turning what should have been
a menacing character into an unfunny jokester. Of the supporting cast,
only Yuji Okumoto, as the Japanese killer who likes to pretend he's a
cowboy, makes any sort of impression. And true to their misguided ways,
Mungia and company kills the cowboy off way too early, thus assuring
that the second half of "Wicked Prayer" will be entirely
entertainment-free.
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