The Crow (2024)

Leaden direction stops soulless ‘The Crow’ remake from ever taking off. An aimless rehash of the 1994 cult classic that was marked by a tragic real-life death, ‘The Crow’ can’t find its own identity and settles for mediocrity.

Here’s a little secret: this writer has never been a huge fan of the original 1994 movie ‘The Crow.’ At the time, it seemed dreary, gratuitous, and largely a case of style over substance, with simplistic characters and a reactionary, nihilistic narrative. But the death of lead actor Brandon Lee -- who was accidentally shot on the set and died later from his injuries, just a few days before the end of filming -- cast an unmistakably somber pall over the film that one would have to be a robot not to feel. Lee is great despite the movie around him, but there is also a ghostly aura around his presence onscreen that permeates the entire movie and lifts an otherwise ho-hum revenge thriller into a different light that has since made it a cult classic