For Vengeance. For Justice. For Love

Salvation was the third film in the series, and at the time of its production the film was highly anticipated by fans. It seemed that the studio was attempting to make up for the disappointment related to "City of Angels", and had put a lot of time and effort into pre-production and casting. Unfortunately, like CoA, the film became a victim of the attitudes of its distributor, Miramax/Dimension Films. While Miramax didn't interfere in the film's production to the extent it had with CoA, it decided to play games with its release.

A young man named Alex Corvis is wrongly convicted for the brutal murder of his girlfriend, Lauren Randall, and is executed for the crime. However, the call of justice brings Alex back as the newest incarnation of the Crow. After his rebirth Alex is reunited with Erin, the sister of the murdered Lauren, and together they seek their common goal of putting the wrong things right. Not an easy task, as those responsible for the cover-up conspiracy dwell not in lowly alleys, but in some of the city's highest offices.

This film is less straightforward than the previous 2 films, as Alex must discover exactly who the masterminds were behind the death of Lauren Randall. Director Bharat Nalluri sums it up saying "Structurally, it's very different," he explains. "This movie is more of a mystery. Our hero comes back not knowing who's responsible for his girlfriend's death, so he has to be a detective of sorts before he can find vengeance."

I've written a review which is pretty much spoiler free. You can also read a superb and detailed review of the film by long-time fan, Cole Corven. It, also, is free of any spoilers.

Director: Bharat Nalluri
Story/Co-Producer: Matt Greenburg
Adapted by: Chip Johannessen
Producers: Ed Pressman and Jeff Most
Executive Producers: Harvey Weinstien, Moritz Borman, Chris Sievernich, and Bob Weinstein
Production Designer: Miljen Kreka Kljakovic
Assistant Director: Dave Halls
Editor: Luis Colina

This film in no way resembles the treatment that had been put together by the former head of the project Rob Zombie, which was called "The CROW: 2037" contained strong horror/supernatural themes.

The expected cost of the film was around the $10 million range, but ended up close to $25 million. Salvation began filming in February of 1999 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and wrapped in March 99.

The original expected release was targeted for Fall/Winter of 1999, a date which was pushed back to March of 2000, then to April, and May. During the summer and fall of 2000, there were several limited screenings, which took place at Dragon*Con 2000 in Atlanta, Georgia, the San Diego Comic-Con, and in Spokane, Washington. These screenings were supposedly being used to test the films suitability for a theatrical release. Unfortunately, in the fall of 2000, Miramax finally announced that the film would not receive a theatrical release at all, and it would instead be released direct to video/cable/DVD. That release finally took place on March 20th, 2001.

For quite a while, the reasons for that decision seemed to make little sense. Evidently, Miramax did not consider Salvation capable of drawing a profit at the box-office. In fact, this attitude seems to have been prevalent from the very beginning. One Miramax executive, Mark Gill, stated the reason they opted to pick up Salvation was "for its value on video and cable."

Instead of being honest and forthcoming, Miramax jerked the fans around, and said nothing as one release date after another passed by. Their dishonesty was finally revealed in the fall of 2000 when a very disappointed Ed Pressman stated that Salvation could have been a sacrificial lamb due to the Federal Trade Commission report on violent films and videos, which was at the time a short-lived political witch-hunt designed to scare Hollywood "straight". In his reply to Pressman, Mr. Gill said "There is utterly no basis for that. This decision was made nine months ago." This statement revealed that Miramax had been duplicitous, and that the "test-screenings" were nothing more than token gestures, possibly designed to make it look as if Miramax had tried, and Salvation had simply failed.

Just as annoying, were certain statements made in press releases at the time. Josh Chetwynd and Andy Seiler of USA Today went on to claim that the film had failed, saying "the action picture was dead on arrival, grossing a minuscule $1,019 in its first weekend", and they also went on to state "Not one of the one-week wonders (speaking of other films receiving the same one-shot treatment) has been popular enough to earn a larger release". However, the article totally failed to acknowledge the fact that Miramax had basically put no advertising money into promoting Salvation. They bought no TV ads, nor any radio spots to promote the special 1-week engagement. All they did was purchase one small ad in the local paper. Most people found out about it via the promotion efforts made by crowfans.com, and word of mouth. The AMC Cinema where Salvation was shown also put some money into some additional promotion, however, it was not enough.

If you don't spend any money to advertise a film, it's gonna flop. And newspaper ads really don't cut it when you consider that few people read newspapers anymore, especially when taking the target age-group for a film like Salvation into account. However, when you look back and find that the studio never intended to release the film in the first place, its easy to see why they didn't pony up any scratch to promote the screenings. And as mentioned previously, Miramax finally released the film to DVD as they had intended. But even that move was a half-hearted one, because the studio opted to put almost no effort into promoting the release, and the reasons for that likely had something to do with the attitude towards violent films that was prevalent in Washington at the time. So, Pressman was probably right in a way.

In the end, Miramax pissed off quite a few people. They irritated and disappointed a lot of fans, Pressman films, the cast and crew of Salvation, and I doubt the people over at Koch Records were very happy, considering that a direct to cable/video release probably hurt the sales of the Salvation soundtrack. I was so angered by the whole thing, I boycotted the Studio's productions for over a year. All in all, it was a low-point for the Crow franchise.