It Can't Rain All The Time...

...Or why "The Crow" is, in fact, the perfect movie for Valentine's Day.

No, this is not going to be some bitter and twisted singleton's post about how much I hate Valentine's Day, how it reeks of commercialism and how you don't need one day to show someone how much you love them (although all of the above is, in fact, true - seventy five quid for a bunch of flowers in Tesco; I ask you!)  Instead it's my attempt to prove to people - well, mainly to the GBF, since he maintains watching a film this violent on the day of Love is tantamount to needing a quick side-trip to a padded cell - that actually my annual ritual for V-Day is entirely appropriate...

For those of you who haven't seen the film, what's wrong with you?  Hang your heads in shame and go immediately to your nearest DVD outlet to rent/purchase it immediately.  Ok, ok, I'll help you out.  The film starts in an apartment in Detroit on Devils Night, the night before Halloween.  A young woman is severely injured and later dies in hospital; her fiance, a musician, lies dead outside having taken a swan dive through the window.  No one is caught and the murders remain unsolved.  A year later the musician, Eric Draven, is brought back from the Land of the Dead by a crow and sets about systematically targeting everyone responsible for the death of his beloved Shelly and his own murder, being helped along the way by a friendly cop and Sarah, a young girl befriended by Eric and Shelly when they were still alive.  The film ends with Eric returning to his grave, where he is reunited with Shelly.

Yes, The Crow is violent. There's no getting away from that - a variety of people get beaten up and killed in various nasty ways throughout the film, and of course the wonderful Brandon Lee died as the result of a tragic accident during the making of the movie.  The Bad Guys get got in this one, and its violence - while justified in the context of the story - can at times seem a little disturbing. The film is absolutely about violence and vengeance, but at the core of the film - at the core of the story - is love.  And what could be more appropriate on this day of Love than that?  The love between Eric Draven and Shelly Webster is the beating heart of this movie; love that goes beyond the grave; the kind of love you read about in sappy chick-lit books or see in the 'great' love stories of classic film history - and no amount of violence can ever take that away from it...

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone...