NOTE: This analysis, written for RKO/Pavillion, offers a good representation of the professional coverage I provided for production companies. The coverage I provide for screenwriters omits the plot synopsis in favor of providing more in-depth comments.
SYNOPSIS
ELLY, a blond tenement kid of nine, collects the best flowers from around a cemetery and places them on the graves of Shelly Webster and Eric Draven. As she leaves, a crow lands on Eric's tombstone and begins picking at the granite, which seems to unleash a flow of blood into the ground. From his coffin, Eric emerges to see the bird perched on the hand of a skeletal figure whose clothing suggests a cowboy. Eric is understandably disoriented; the SKULL COWBOY informs him that if he needs answers, he must follow the crow, and then disappears.
Nearby, T-BIRD and SKANK, two thugs who work for local organized crime ringleader TOP DOLLAR, torch a supply office and abduct a woman working there. Pursued by the police, they dump their badly beaten victim out of a fast-moving car. She stumbles into Eric's arms and dies, but not before inspiring his first Flash -- i.e., when he touches some person or object, he receives a painful flash of memory, in this case of the beating the woman received.
T-Bird and Skank report on the successful completion of their mission to Top Dollar. The job had been contracted by the sinister LAO, who now wants other real estate burned. He insists the arson must take place on Halloween, which he terms The Devil's Night.
Following the crow, Eric soon learns the extent of his new powers: strength, agility, and invulnerability to physical harm. Returning to his apartment, he touches various objects, recalling flashes of the night he and Shelly were murdered by T-Bird, Skank, and two of Top Dollars other thugs. The Skull Cowboy appears again, saying, "Kill the men who killed you, and your anniversary will be your reunion."
Accepting the challenge, Eric tracks down TIN-TIN, one of his murderers. Tin-Tin's body, riddled with his own knives and lying beside an image of a crow daubed in blood, is later found by ALBRECHT, a police officer eager to bring down Top Dollar's gang.
Adopting an image to suit his new role, Eric makes his face up into a ghastly parody of his appearance when he died: pale white with a red Harlequin smile simulating the blood that ran from his mouth after he was shot and thrown from a window.
Presumably acting on information obtained before killing Tin-Tin, Eric goes to GIDEON'S PAWN SHOP and questions the owner. When Gideon tries to kill him, Eric torches the shop and only lets Gideon go after he reveals where to find T-Bird.
Leaving the blazing inferno, Eric is confronted by Officer Albrecht. Eric startles him by cutting open his own palm and using the blood to draw a crow before the wound miraculously heals itself. While the stunned Albrecht digest this -- and realizes this is the man who killed Tin-Tin -- Eric manages to sneak away.
Outside the nightclub Gideon mentioned as T-Bird's hangout, Eric happens upon Elly, whose mother works there. Though Elly is suspicious, she doesn't quite recognize her former friend through his makeup. However, she does mention that her mother is inside with a boyfriend nicknamed FUNBOY, who just happens to be another of Eric's murderers.
Eric breaks in on Darla and Funboy, who are injecting themselves with morphine. Funboy shoots Eric, but the wounds have no effect. Eric deflects another shot, which wounds Funboy himself. As the thug screams in pain, Eric injects him with a fatal overdose, then sternly reproaches Darla and sends her back to her daughter.
Eric appears to Albrecht and promises to rid the streets of Top Dollar and his gang. Albrecht is leery of cooperating with a vigilante; however, having gone through his old files, he now knows who -- and what -- Eric is, so he decides not to stand in the way of this supernatural avenger from the grave.
Eric next takes out T-Bird by tying him up in the car from which he takes his nickname and detonating it with one of T-Birds own arson devices. With his arson man dead, Top Dollar can no longer fulfill his contract with Lao. In any case, Lao has lost interest in his original plan. He seems to have surmised the truth about Eric and believes he knows a way to assimilate Erics powers.
After Lao leaves, Eric burst in through a window and finishes off Skank and the rest of the gang in a bloody shoot out. Having saved Top Dollar for last, Eric backs him against a wall and grabs his head. In a reverse of his other Flashes, Eric inflicts into Top Dollar the memory of all the pain that Eric and Shelly experienced as they were murdered. Under the onslaught, Top Dollar convulses and dies.
Responding to the shoot out, the SWAT team arrives. Eric barely manages to escape, with the help of Albrecht, who drives him to safety. Later, believing his task done, Eric eyes the cemetery, expecting his promised reunion with Shelly.
However, Lao has his men kidnap Elly and conceal her in a church. When Eric goes to save her, the Skull Cowboy halts him on the steps, warning that, if he goes inside, he will be vulnerable and there will be no reunion with Shelly. Entering the church anyway, Eric is surprised to find that his familiar, the crow, has not abandoned him.
When one of Lao's men shoots the bird with a tranquilizer dart, Eric reacts as if he were the one shot. Lao approaches the fallen Eric with a sacrificial knife that will supposedly transfer Erics powers to him. The sacrifice is interrupted by Albrecht, who barges in with guns blazing. As Lao's men bite the dust, Lao runs up the bell tower to where Elly is. Eric pursues him, with Albrecht trailing behind.
Eric and Lao confront each other on the steeple roof. While Eric is trying to prevent Elly from falling, Albrecht reaches the roof, where he is shot from behind by Lao. The revived crow scratches out Lao's eyes, but he still manages to get his knife into Eric's back. Eric grabs Lao and launches himself backward; the fall down the roof pushes the knife through his body and into Lao, who then falls over the edge to his death.
With Elly safely returned to her mother, who is taking her first steps toward rehabilitation, Eric returns to his grave. Just before the final fade out, we see the crow in the cemetery -- watching, waiting -- implying that one day Eric will return.
COMMENTS
If you prefer your comic book superheroes squeaky clean like Superman, then THE CROW is not for you. This script is completely determined in its efforts to emulate the current tone of many contemporary graphic novels, which are anything but comic. The grim, fatalistic tone is reminiscent of work by Frank Miller and Alan Moore; if this script were transferred intact to the screen, it would probably please fans, though wider mainstream audiences may be slightly put off by the grim atmosphere. On the other hand, the strength of the relationship between Eric and Shelly (implied in flashbacks), coupled with the terrible sense of loss, gives the story an emotional underpinning that makes it more than just a guy-flick revenge story, broadening the appeal to include women viewers as well.
The events of the story are, of course, completely fantastic, but the screenwriter never acknowledges this with a nudge or a wink toward viewers. The story-telling is completely deadpan and serious -- lean and well-paced, with just enough exposition to fill us in on whats happening.
The characterizations are fairly broad, but effective in context. Eric and the others are etched in stark details, with little room for sentiment. The dialogue is tight and manages not to stumble over many potential hurdles -- such as when, on separate occasions, Albrecht and Elly realize they are talking to a dead man. The rules governing Eric's powers are presented in quick, simple terms -- helping to avoid a typical shortcoming in stories of this kind, which often leave audiences wondering exactly what is and isn't possible within the fantasy context.
There are some weaknesses but not major ones. The reason Top Dollar had Shelly and Eric killed is only briefly alluded to -- it's an obvious plot device that doesnt really matter. We're never quite clear on what Eric's reunion with Shelly is supposed to be like, so when he sacrifices it by entering the church to save Elly, we don't really know what he is giving up.
Also, Eric is so powerful that the villains are little threat to him. To a certain extent, this is intentional: the script is based on a graphic novel (by James OBarr) that was -- lets face it -- a twisted, downbeat revenge fantasy, in which the hero snuffs out the villains like an exterminator squashing bugs. On the other hand, Lao (a character added for the screenplay version) is clearly intended to represent a real threat to Eric; but despite kidnapping Elly and killing Albrecht, he never really seems close to defeating Eric. It might help if we knew more about him and about how he figured out Eric's secret so easily. And that magical knife is awfully convenient -- did Lao obtain it on short notice, or was he carrying it around just in case such an opportunity presented itself?
Overall, this story is closer to DARKMAN than to BATMAN -- an R-rated comic book for adults, with plenty of action and violence. Screenwriter David Schow (who has written some well-liked fiction and non-fiction) brings a consistently downbeat but believable tone that is in keeping with the source material, and this works well on its own terms. The subject matter may not be for everyone, but the writing definitely shows talent worth considering.