This week remaindered in Poundland I found the late Brandon Lee

This week I am on holiday so have been continuing my exploration of cinema classics remaindered in Poundland by watching an old copy of “the Crow”.  Well, this DVD was so old it had an aspect ratio of 4:3 whereas I belive the original film was 1.85:1 so please bare in mind that despite watching the film from one end to the other I didn’t see the whole film – only about 60 per cent of it.   

However, I couldn’t help but notice the similarity between the makeup and general performance of Brandon Lee as the Crow and that of Heath Ledger as the Joker in that Batman film some years later.  I wondered if I was the only person who had pondered this and so googled it to find bitter arguments all over the internet disclaiming that there is any influence beyond the purely coincidental. 

The Crow is an avenger whereas the Joker is a psychopath someone says.  True, but there is none the less a similarity in the performance which may be a comic book thing or may be something more.  For a start, yes,  there’s the make-up...  But there’s also the fact they both appear to be sadists.  While the Joker is clearly a villain and the Crow a more morally ambiguous character they both come up with some clearly over-elaborate methods of killing people and signposting that they are going to do so to the audience and breaking – or nearly breaking - the 4^th wall as they do so...  Add to that the permanently dark comic book world and it would seem odd to me if the makers of the latter film had not been influenced at all by the earlier.  Then again maybe all this is a comic book thing…

It’s strange watching it all these years later.  It looks dated and yet the model work is meticulously done.  The sweeping camera shots are ahead of their time.  Of course fortunately the Crow was shot out of order because its star was – as I’m sure you all already know – shot 8 days before the wrap of production… yes I know that’s an awful pun but I couldn’t help it … honest.   

Watching it this time round I was more aware of where Lee is absent in the movie.  Somewhere between the final confrontation and end scene in the graveyard there’s a lot of running around where we don’t see Lee’s face and the more times one watches it the more clearly the Brandon shaped holes in the film can be seen.  Maybe one shouldn’t look too closely.

One other thing the film has going for it – perhaps also leading man death related – is its brisk running time of a 100 minutes rather than the 2 or more hours we’re forced to endure of everything else these days.  Please make some more shorter films someone.  And bring back cartoons before the main feature…

That’s all folks!