[Warning: Major Spoilers ahead!!]

The movie begins with a rather twisted main title sequence in which a dead crow appears on a table top in an ever expanding pool of blood. The bird is about to be stuffed by a mysterious figure with a hideous scar on his arm .  Then the scene cuts to a prison where an innocent man named Alex Corvis is about to be executed for the murder of his girlfriend Lauren Randall. No one but Alex's lawyer believes in his story  that a man with a scar on his arm killed his true love (and if that wasn't bad enough, he is about to die on his twenty first birthday - poor guy!!).  Alex is then taken to the electric chair and is killed - but not before he pleads his innocence to Lauren's father (William Atherton) and sister (Kirsten Dunst) and catches a glimpse of a mysterious figure in the background taunting him with an ugly scar on his arm.  Then of course, a lightning bolt strikes the execution facility which causes the electric chair to go haywire and turn Alex a little extra crispy (Don't you hate when that happens?). He awakens in the prison morgue, resurrected by the crow and more than a little pissed off.  This particular scene is not for those who have a weak stomach because Alex begins to peel the burned flesh off of his face to reveal fresh skin underneath -the 'Crow' war paint burned across his eyes and mouth. There is a pretty suspenseful prison break that follows with everything you could hope for in one of these films (guns, searchlights, hands that heal after clawing across a barbed wire fence!). 

 The rest of the film goes from promising to kind of a let down. 

Alex finds out that Lauren had uncovered a secret involving corrupt cops and that they were the ones responsible for her death.  He spends the rest of the movie seeking out the man with the 'scar' and slaughtering one dirty cop after another. He also spends the rest of the movie trying to convince Lauren's younger sister Erin Randall that he is innocent and that life truly is "worth living".

Now here's the problem. Kirsten Dunst is a bad actress!!  She seems to force out the tears and makes every melodramatic line seem so, well...corny.  Her scenes with Eric Mabius make you realize what a good actor he is!  Other problems are the plot holes you could drive a semi truck through.  In one scene near the end of the film, the evil police captain played with great malevolence by Fred Ward sees a broken mirror in the morgue in the shape of the crow and says: 

"We have a dead man on our hands!  The dead can come back you know, if they have sufficient reason!"

How the hell does he know??!!  Did he just happen to take 'Crow mythology: 101' in college!  The audience I saw the film with complained about the same thing.  Also, there is a new twist on defeating a crow - if you can convice them that their mission is over then they lose their power.  So the Captain decides to give Alex the man with the scar by planting a false arm in a night club.  Alex is later fighting a bunch of cops at the night club and slams one of them through a gas pipe which causes the building to explode when a gun is fired.

Surviving the inferno,  Alex sees the arm with the scar lying on the ground in flames.  He then stares and says: "Its over."

How did they expect him to find the arm?  Did they know the building was going to blow up?  All that plus a pretty corny (not to mention confusing) ending made this film a bit uncomfortable to watch.  Not nearly as uncomfortable as the 'teeth pulling' experience of 'The Crow: City Of Angels', but still unpleasant. 

The 'Movie' people said the film was still a work in progress but it seemed complete along with opening and ending credits as well as some great special effects and  a pretty haunting score by Marco Beltrami who did the music for 'Scream'.  Speaking of soundtracks, the only big music names I could remember from the movie were songs by Tricky, Stabbing Westward, and a new version of 'Living Dead Girl' by Rob Zombie.  Anyway, this isn't a bad film, it has some great action and special effects scenes (including one where Alex puts a gun in his mouth and blows out the back of his head, then we get to watch it regenerate from the interior of his mouth!!).  The film is very sleek and stylish, excellent cinematography and an almost perfect (Kirsten sucks!! Kirsten sucks!!) cast makes this film worth the price of admission.