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Draven and his fiancée were caring for a young orphan named Sarah (Rochelle Davis), who finds herself alone again after their deaths. The kindly police officer (Ernie Hudson as Sergeant Albrecht) who investigates the homicide takes her under his wing and becomes involved with Draven when the vengeful wraith tracks his fiancée’s engagement ring to the pawn shop where one of their killers hawked it. Brandon Lee was himself engaged to be married at the time and the coiled, righteous wrath with which he dispenses his judgment appears to come naturally.

Draven is motivated by the most profound love a man can know and it isn’t hard to believe that Lee was, as well. This isn’t just a story about revenge, it’s also about commitment. Draven is shown to be an attentive person, but is clearly someone who regrets not fully taking advantage of the time he was given. At one point in the film he laments to Albrecht on his occasional insensitivity toward his lost love by remarking: “Nothing is trivial.” The line was ad libbed by Lee and in that moment, the seriousness with which Lee took his own commitments becomes an indelible part of Eric Draven. Suddenly, the wanton cruelty of his reprisals seems entirely justified and in the end, he changes almost as many lives as he claims.

Speaking of Brandon Lee, it is impossible to discuss The Crow without making mention of his untimely demise. Considering the subject matter of the film – love, grief, loss and recovery – it is difficult not to mark the irony and even harder for it not to color your perception of what you’re seeing. The movie’s ruminations on the aftermath of tragedy take on additional weight in light of the senseless accident that took Lee’s life, and in a way this allows the film to become something that it oddly might never have been had its star lived. It’s a terrible conundrum but while the cuts and rewrites that became necessary after Lee’s passing took a great deal of context from the story, they elevated the beauty and intensity of the material to a level rarely seen in an action film.

What was originally an even darker, more brooding meditation on death and vengeance became – despite a great deal of violence – an enduring and emotionally powerful love story about two people who refuse to be apart, despite the handicap of mortality. I’ve found over the years that despite the wanton level of brutality in this film, the darkly romantic subplot lends it appeal beyond the usual geek/dork/fanboy demographic. I originally watched The Crow in theater with someone I cared about very much, and being a pair of stupid kids, we originally disagreed about seeing it. But I got the requisite dose of ultra-violence I craved, and she was moved by Eric Draven’s devotion to his beloved – and so was I. The film’s closing words had an impact on us both at the time, but in retrospect they seem all the more poignant, especially considering how things with this person eventually turned out:

“If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever.”

If it seems unlikely that a simple story about a man who returns from the dead to avenge the death of the woman he loves could carry such weight, remember that the story was conceived by a person who grappled with the very same feelings and brought to life by a person who sacrificed himself to put it on screen. A lot of cult films lean toward violent subject matter, and it may be because by nature we are violent creatures and our attempts to stifle it makes us forget that it’s there. This is something that controversial films commonly explore and to most of us, this is probably a little unsettling. But while violence committed in the name of love is not something we should condone, in the context of a fictional story it can be one of the most profound expressions of the most significant part of our emotional palette. And when you add The Cure, Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine, it just gets really, really damn cool.

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