The Crow: Wicked Prayer

In the third sequel to Alex Proyas’ cult favorite we find ourselves in a little town where racial tensions between the local Indian tribe and the workers of the town’s mining facility have reached a boiling point. The Indian tribe wants to close down the mines and open a casino resort, which would leave everyone at the mines without work. Enter three members of the local satanic gang known as The Four Horseman, War, Famine and Pestilence. These three sabotage the mines causing demonstrators on both sides to begin rioting. Then the three take off to meet up with their boss Death (David Boreanaz), aka Luc Crash, who has just been freed from a chain gang by his girlfriend, Lola Byrne (Tara Reid). Ha, ha, Crash and Byrne . . . get it? Ugh. Meanwhile we are introduced to Jimmy Cuervo (Edward Furlong), who apparently got out of jail recently and is somewhat of an outcast in the small town, accused of being an “Injun-Killer”. The only person in town who believes in Jimmy is his girlfriend Lily Ignites The Dawn, much to the chagrin of her preacher father (Danny Trejo) and her brother, a local policeman. Jimmy and Lily have planned to leave town since Jimmy’s parole will be up at midnight that night. Unfortunately when Jimmy goes to meet Lily at the trading post where she works he finds Crash and the rest of his gang waiting. The gang prepare to hang Jimmy and Lily but not before cutting out Lily’s eyes (which will apparently leave her wandering the spiritual plane). They make Jimmy watch as they hang Lily. Jimmy swears vengeance on Crash just before being hung and having his heart cut out. This was all done in order to perform a satanic ritual, which will allow the devil himself to inhabit Crash’s body. After the gang dumps the bodies, Jimmy is returned to life by The Crow and sets out to avenge Lily’s death, all the while having to avoid Lily’s father, brother and their friends, who believe that Jimmy himself is responsible for Lily’s death.

I’ve been looking forward to this movie ever since I first heard about it a little over a year ago. Not necessarily because it was a Crow movie, though I certainly loved the first movie. No, it had more to do with director Lance Mungia who was responsible for another of my favorite cult classics, Six String Samurai. This is Mungia’s first film since Six String Samurai. And after watching Wicked Prayer I’m kind of hoping it will be his last.

The story, which seems simple enough at first, quickly becomes entangled in way too many disparate plot points. Besides the angle of the Crow searching for vengeance, which itself suffers a lot of hiccups along the way, you’ve got the mysteries of Jimmy Cuervo’s past, the very confusing story of Luc Crash trying to become the devil, Crash’s own search for vengeance against the man who killed his father, the past of everyone in The Four Horseman gang and of course the racial war going on between the Indians and the mine workers (and everyone else not an Indian apparently).

The mysteries of Jimmy Cuervo’s past are set up right from the start, but as the movie trudges on it seems less and less important that we know exactly what they are. After a while you just don’t care whom he killed to end up in jail or why he killed them. And once you find out it’s a bit anticlimactic. And as for his relationship with Crash and why he and his girlfriend are chosen as victims? Well, the only thing you find out about that is Jimmy and Crash did time together. Pretty weak for something that seemed to have a lot more behind it.

It is never fully explained why Crash seeks to become the devil or what the point of his becoming the devil really is. It’s just something that is happening in the movie without much rhyme or reason, aside from creating a villain that The Crow has to stop. It also seems there simply to serve as a reason for the characters to move from one place as the bad guys try to gather ingredients for their satanic ritual and generally raise hell.

Luc Crash’s own quest for vengeance against the man who killed his father seems rather out of place and tacked on. It’s possible that the filmmakers were trying to use this as an explanation for Crash’s satanic tendencies as his father was a preacher but this is never explored fully enough to be anything more than a distracting side-story that seems more like filler than anything else.

The Four Horseman gang is just not interesting, or likeable enough, to warrant having their pasts explained. They could have simply been bad guys following crash and that would have worked. And in the end they really just aren’t evil enough. More wishy-washy than anything else, switching from cold feet at the prospect of killing strangers to blowing away innocent children at the drop of a hat. If you were going to have a satanic gang in your movie, especially if you’re rooting for the good guy to take vengeance on them, why in the world would you make them tame and downright non-threatening?

And the whole background plot involving the Indian tribe trying to open a casino and being hated for it is pointless. It gives Crash and his gang a centralized group to target on their rampage (if you can call it that) but comes off as manufactured and forced storytelling. The Four Horsemen, supposedly being evil Satanists, could have attacked just about anybody so it seems unnecessary to have created this baffling racist angle for them to act upon. Besides being there in the end to perform their “Crow Dance” (yeah, apparently there’s a Crow Dance) which helps revive our hero . . . somehow, I saw absolutely no reason to have so much of the plot revolve around the Indian tribe.

As for the acting, well, it’s bad. Just what you’d expect from a straight-to-DVD B-movie, except there are some actual stars in this movie. Not big ones, or even very talented ones, but stars nonetheless.

Edward Furlong looks cool as The Crow, but that’s about it. He tries to emulate Brandon Lee and fails miserably. Imagine Furlong trying to play super-cool badass loner guy with chip on shoulder and a heart of gold. Yeah, I can’t see it either. And really, he seems a very reluctant Crow, constantly doubting himself and wondering what he’s doing and railing on about being a monster. Well if he’s that reluctant why the hell was he brought back in the first place? Must have been a slow day at the office for that bird.

David Boreanez really tries, but seems not to really understand what his character is trying to accomplish (hell, I didn’t know what his character was trying to accomplish) and so becomes a very flat, boring and not too menacing antagonist. He basically just acts the part of crazy, funny, evil guy (much like his turn as Angelus in Angel and Buffy) and after about twenty minutes it gets very old and really annoying. Not to mention the fact that his character inexplicably sabotages his own plan at almost every turn even after being told repeatedly not to do so.

Tara Reid turns out another dazzlingly second-rate performance. And her character flip-flops more than anyone else in the movie. One minute she’s all keen on the whole devil-possessing-her-boyfriend jag, the next minute she’s trying to convince him to skip town with her and forget all this Satan jive. God, just kill her already! And who keeps getting this girl work anyway? All she brings to the table at this point is her boob job.

Let’s not forget the weirdest and most pointless cameos I’ve seen in a while with Macy Gray as a prostitute and Dennis Hopper as El Nino (what?), a pimp running his racket out of an old church. Oh, and don’t forget, he’s also a satanic priest. Still he is Dennis Hopper and he’s always fun to watch. Danny Trejo is also there as the Indian preacher who carries a bible in one hand and a shotgun in the other. And can’t act. Sorry Danny.

There are many more things about this movie that don’t make any sense.

Where the hell did the Crow costume come from? At least the other movies tried to give various different reasons for having the title character appear similar. But apparently this is just some costume Cuervo wore one time and decided it looked like something he wanted to wear while killing people.

Characters continually spout dialogue and reference quotes that have no real place in the movie. I assume the script was trying to make them seem deep or crazy cool, but it just came off as incoherent babbling.

The deaths of the Four Horsemen are so weak as to be instantly forgotten seconds after they happen. I mean did you know you could kill somebody with a bug-zapper? I didn’t. And in the end Tara Reid’s character doesn’t even die! She gets arrested! And she’s the one that cut out Cuervo’s girlfriend’s eyes!

Nobody seems too terribly surprised when Cuervo returns from the grave to wreak semi-bloody revenge. They just kind of go with the flow. Those that do seem surprised have no real right to be as they weren’t even aware he was dead in the first place. In the end it seems like everyone in this movie had seen the original movie because they all seem to know the story of The Crow and repeat it ad-nauseum.

So let’s sum it all up shall we? This movie is crap. With a capital C-R-A-P. Which is unfortunate since I was really looking forward to certain aspects of it. I believe a majority of the story (barring all the nonsensical detours from the main plot) had a lot of potential but in the end was too big for what appears to be an obviously low budget film. Either that or the filmmakers just didn’t try hard enough to make the story elements work.
I suppose I’ll have to accept that there won’t ever be a really good sequel to the Crow.

On the plus side, the soundtrack was good.

TWO out of Ten Stars

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