The Crow: Salvation

The Crow: Salvation is a 2000 American superhero film directed by Bharat Nalluri. Starring Eric Mabius as Alex Corvis and the third installment of The Crow film series, based on the comic book character of the same name by James O'Barr. After its distributor cancelled the intended wide theatrical release due to The Crow: City of Angels' negative critical reception, The Crow: Salvation was released direct-to-video after a limited theatrical run.

Plot
In Salt Lake City, Alexander "Alex" Frederick Corvis is framed for the murder of his girlfriend, Lauren Randall, and sentenced to death. Three years later he is executed in the electric chair, suffering a painful death due to lightning overloading the energy of the chair.

The Crow resurrects Alex and gives him supernatural abilities that would allow him to avenge Lauren's death. Alex follows the crow and finds evidence that Lauren was killed by a group of corrupt cops, including one that has a scar on his arm that match the one he saw just before his execution. Later he encounters Erin, Lauren's sister, who believes that he is guilty but Alex tells her that he will prove his innocence.

Later, Alex finds a witness in the trial who was bribed to give perjured testimony and forces him to confess that four members of the police force killed Lauren. Unbeknownst to him, there were actually five: Detective Madden, Martin Toomey, Vincent Erlich, Stan Roberts and Phillip Dutton.

Alex begins his road to vengeance killing Dutton while saving two young girls from being raped by him. He then confronts Erlich and hijacks and crashes his car, blowing both the car and Erlich up, while also blowing up a police helicopter in the process. Alex drops the list of the cops he is after and it is later found by Roberts and Toomey. With evidence found in Erlich's car, Alex and Erin find out that Nathan Randall, Erin and Lauren's father, is in business with the corrupt cops and is indirectly responsible for her death when Lauren uncovered the truth. Erin runs in horror from Nathan when she is confronted with the truth.

Erin confesses to Alex that she felt guilty for Lauren's murder because she told the cops where they could find her, thinking that they would only arrest Alex. With his powers, Alex shows Erin that Lauren fought off her attackers and that Erin should forgive herself. When she returns home, she finds her father has killed himself out of remorse. Later, Alex finds out from his lawyer, Peter Walsh, that one of Nathan's businesses was revealed to be a front for a drug smuggling operation and Lauren had witnessed Roberts killing a man in the Key Club, leading to her death.

Book and Madden kill Walsh and kidnap Erin. Alex starts a shootout at the Key Club. He impales Roberts with a pipe he breaks off the ceiling and kills the remaining police. Madden shows up and tries to kill Alex, but his shot accidentally shoots a broken gas pipe. The explosion kills Toomey. Alex walks out of the fire and sees an arm hanging out of the rubble with the zig-zag scar on it. The Crow leaves Alex after he feels he has "fulfilled his duty".

From a clue left by Walsh, Alex deduces that the 'King' is still alive. He heads to the police station to kill Book but, without his powers, he is stabbed by Book and dies from his wounds. In agony, Alex begins to believe he caused Lauren's death, accepting his demise. Book brings Alex's body to a room where Erin is tied with her mouth stitched shut and the body of Walsh is shown hanging and missing an arm. Erin manages to drop Lauren's locket and the Crow drops it next to Alex, being a promise of love and truth. It revives Alex, allowing him to set Erin free and kill both Madden and the secretary while Book runs after Erin. Alex catches up with them and exposes Book's arm, showing the actual zig-zag scar Alex saw during the attack the night of Lauren's murder, therefore revealing Book as the corrupt cop/crime boss who ultimately ordered the murders of Lauren, the guy Lauren witnessed get murdered, and also of Alex himself; ordering him to be framed for murder by the cops on his payroll.

Alex and Erin take Book to the electric chair and electrocute him to the point of cremation in the chair. Alex's soul is finally released to reunite with Lauren and Erin keeps Lauren's necklace with her.

Production
Following the critical and commercial under performance of The Crow: City of Angels, series producers Edward R. Pressman and Jeff Most set their sights on producing a third film in the hopes of salvaging the property. Initial development on a third Crow film was announced in August 1997, when it was announced Rob Zombie would be making his directorial debut with The Crow: 2037. White Zombie covered the KC and the Sunshine Band hit "I'm Your Boogie Man" for the soundtrack of The Crow: City of Angels, and after seeing Rob Zombie's work on the video he produced for the song, Edward Pressman offered Zombie the opportunity to helm the third Crow film. Had the film been made, Zombie planned to shift focus in tone from the revenge angle of the previous two entries, to a more horror based approach. The film would've began in 2010, when a young boy and his mother are murdered on Halloween night by a Satanic priest. A year later, the boy is resurrected as the Crow. Twenty-seven years later, and unaware of his past, he has become a bounty hunter on a collision course with his now all-powerful killer. While producers responded favorably to Zombie's proposal for a third "The Crow" film, producers Pressman and Most ultimately decided it wasn't the best fit for a Crow film and was better served as a standalone work. Zombie himself spoke of his frustration with experience spending 18 months working on the film often dealing with the indecisiveness of the producers who according to him would change their mind as to what they wanted on any given day which ultimately lead to Zombie leaving the project.

On the suggestion of Most, it was decided that the third film would focus on a younger incarnation of The Crow which would also make the film more appealing to a teen target audience. In September 1998, it was announced Bharat Nalluri would serve as director of the third film in The Crow series with the script being provided by Chip Johannessen. In October 1998, it was announced Kirsten Dunst had joined the cast. In November 1998, it was announced Eric Mabius was in negotiations to star as the lead in the film. Mabius had auditioned for the role of Eric Draven in The Crow that ultimately went to Brandon Lee as Mabius was deemed too young for the role, and also auditioned for Michael Massee's role as Funboy who fired the dummy cartridge that killed Lee. Unlike the previous two films, The Crow: Salvation did not use miniaturized cityscapes to create its setting.

Dimension had intended to release the film theatrically for a Halloween 1999 release. However, the film was only given some preview screenings in Sacramento and San Antonio in the Summer of 2000 before being released direct-to-video in January the following year.

Reception
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an 18% approval rating based on 11 reviews, only 2 being positive.

Lisa Nesselson of Variety responded positively to the film, opining that it was "a reasonably suspenseful, adequately made programmer" with a "calmly and wryly effective" protagonist and "efficient f/x artillery." JoBlo's Berge Garabedian awarded The Crow: Salvation a score of 4/10, and concluded, "The film itself was definitely a little more entertaining than the second installment with some pretty slick gory death scenes, a loud but cool soundtrack, and a lead who doesn't throw you off with a cheesy accent. In fact, I credit Mabius for pulling off a decent outing despite my initial skepticism (A teen Crow? Never!). Unfortunately, you don't really care about ANY of the characters, especially the bad guys or the family left behind, so all you're basically left with is a low-rent Crow retread with a decent lead, a nice look, but plenty of bad dialogue, zero originality or depth." David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews had a similarly middling response to the film, giving it a score of 2/5, criticizing its casting and anemic violence, and writing, "While Salvation certainly isn't as bad as that first sequel, it still doesn't come near the sheer coolness of the first one."

Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club lambasted the film as "a repugnant exercise in emptily stylish ultraviolence that plays like the longest, most expensive Rammstein video ever made" and closed his review of it with, "Dour and humorless even as its over-the-top violence and awful dialogue propel it to the realm of high camp, The Crow: Salvation marks a nadir for a series that was never especially good to begin with." Jonathan Barkan of Bloody Disgusting counted The Crow: Salvation and The Crow: Wicked Prayer as being among the worst horror films that he had ever seen, calling them "deplorable" before going on to say, "Both of them felt like lazy, slapdash, thoughtless, cash cows and that feeling permeates in every scene, oozing out of the celluloid like some damn viscous disease." Nick Perkins of Coming Soon was similarly derisive of the film, ranking it as the worst in the series, and writing, "In theory, it's a good story. It should be, as it was written by Crow creator, James O'Barr. It's just the execution that left a lot to be desired. Mabius absolutely lacked the charisma that Brandon Lee possessed in spades. And though Kirsten Dunst also starred in this film, the supporting characters were generally as bland as the lead."

Home media
On September 9, 2014, Lionsgate re-released the film on DVD. On October 7, 2014, it was released on DVD by Lionsgate in a triple feature edition with the other Crow sequels, The Crow: City of Angels and The Crow: Wicked Prayer.

The Crow: Salvation performed well upon its release on home video.