Now “City of Angels” tries to be two different things. It tries to demonstrate some originality with its new story, but also relies on devices that hearken back to the 1994 original that shows the studios and Goyer really don’t have much faith in what they’re doing and want people to remember Lee’s film and invest just as much emotion in its imagery. Instead of a flaming crow there’s a crow formed out of shattered glass, and instead of devising new face paint for the main character, the protagonist Sarah paints him to look almost exactly like Eric Draven. And even Gabriel makes a few appearances! That wacky cat! While the story tries to chalk the face paint up to her obsession with Draven and the crow, this instead looks just derivative. There’s a considerable cowardice and exploitative undertone here that the Weinsteins rely on to try and keep this franchise in motion.
The character of Sarah is a beautiful woman who is a tattoo artist who can not get the image of the Crow’s form out of her mind and even goes so far as creating the form when drawing tattoos that have nothing to do with the bird, so why couldn’t they have taken that ability and had Sarah paint that on Ashe’s face? Either way, the film is much more about redemption and purgatory than actual vengeance and the city which we set down on often looks like the bowels of hell much like the city that engaged in Devil’s Night every Halloween. There’s barely anyone on the streets and the light that seeps in through the city’s landmarks are dim and grimy.
There’s not a lot of explanation why Sarah has now become the aide to the crow but she tends to act as a device for Goyer to explain things in case this new audience didn’t quite see or understand the original movie. Let’s be honest, she’s there just to link back to the original movie to remind us why the original was so great and why this isn’t.
When the Crow works it seeks out Sarah for reasons that are never quite indicated throughout the course of the story. Why is Sarah so special? Why is she linked specifically to the crow and not her mother or Albrecht? Why did she leave her home? Why is she a tattoo artist? What significance does the symbolism hold to her power of the crow? Either way Goyer struggles to turn her in to someone beyond human who can interact with the crow.
They have a love hate relationship. The crow constantly bothers and mocks her and she endures it for as much as she can while also living with the abuse she takes in her life while also struggling to make ends meet as a tattoo artist painting on the bodies of people who obviously aren’t the highest of class. There’s no real evidence on why the crow seeks her out in the entire film. I kept asking why the crow found her so unique aside from her gorgeous eyes. She’s not spiritual and isn’t religious and doesn’t hold a lot of powers beyond being able to dream about the victims the crow chooses. There’s not a lot of reason for Sarah except, as stated above, to point out things that the audience might be too dumb to realize for themselves. When Ashe emerges from death she explains what he is, why he is, and what he’s supposed to do while also pointing out the obvious plot elements.
She can’t explain why he died, because through his flashbacks he learns that. She can’t explain who killed him because through his flashbacks he knows that. She can’t explain that his son was murdered because he knows that. In fact she’s rendered pretty useless throughout a greater portion of the film and Goyer looks for ways to use her in the narrative. As for Vincent Perez, he takes on the mantle that was pretty much impossible to fill once Brandon Lee died. I feel bad for Perez because he is a good looking guy with a lot of menace and psychotic tendencies who has to basically fill the shoes of Lee whether he likes it or not, so his task of this role is an immense one.
As mentioned before the writers and creators don’t seem to want to stray too far, so obviously Perez does resemble Brandon Lee in some instances. He has long curly dark brown hair much like Lee, his face is bold like Lee’s and he’s painted to look exactly like him, thus he can’t be appreciated on his own terms and right. Perez’s performance is different from Lee and often times so over the top. When he emerges from his watery grave there are the obvious Christ-like allusions but then when he begins stalking the people who murdered him and his son, he comes off like a clown throwing himself around, shouting in a rather comical tone, and when he begins remembering his son’s death it’s pretty inadvertently humorous as he whimpers and kicks himself around and almost resembles a bad mime performance.
Many things about this sequel are stale and carbon copy and it’s a shame because the story is pretty interesting. Ashe is an average bike mechanic whose son and he form an intense bond with one another. They’re all each other have. But his son interrupts a vicious beating being given by a local gang and they end up at the wrong place at the wrong time. The crime that ensues just lacks any of the viciousness and anarchy that Draven’s murder did. There’s not a lot of emphasis on the violence that ensues. They’re taunted and beaten, but Pope shies away from the inevitably disturbing visions of the little boy being hurt, so it’s dodged and merely hinted at throughout the course of the story. And in an effort to switch things up the gang brings them to the local dock and drowns them side by side.
So there isn’t much of a look at what they did to them, thus we don’t feel the impact of their misery. Perez tries his hardest to convey to the audience the amount of suffering and torment they were subjected to but it’s all in vain, sadly. The death is merely glossed over and never quite pounded in to the audiences mind. We never quite get to know Ashe’s son, we never know what their back story is, thus they’re just strangers, mere plot devices to get us to the action. Once Ashe begins stalking and murdering his enemies it’s all so fleeting and skimmed over and never as effective as what we saw in the original, because the performances range from bland to terrible.