Man, it’s like “Relive the 1990s” day on the movie news circuit. First Scream (“Hey young Elisabeth, remember your crush on Jerry O’Connell?”) and now The Crow. (“Hey, remember the New Year’s Eve you spent watching this with your sister’s friends? You couldn’t wait to be grown up and done with this shit.”) I feel old.
The Crow has been remaking itself in fits and starts for a year or two now. It wasn’t something to really be excited about until Nick Cave said “Sure, I’ll write that!” Then it went from annoyance to a goddamn, that could actually be good.
Now there’s a casting rumor, and it’s all right. Bloody-Disgusting reports that Mark Wahlberg has been offered the role — not accepted, mind you, just offered. He strikes me as a fairly ordinary choice. When he’s good, he can be pretty damn good. When he’s bad, he’s just boring. With a gloomy and Gothic story like this, he could simply spend the entire movie glowering under face paint. It would be like sitting through Max Payne again, only with a dash more morbidity. (And saying that discredits Cave, who I feel would probably give it more weight.)
We’ll see who signs, and report back to you. I could see Wahlberg passing (particularly now that he’s discovered his comedic chops), but he really dug playing Max Payne. Maybe he needs to get more angst out of his system, and relive the 1990s in his own way. Visit the path not taken into a Goth phase ….