Film Review: A Murder of Crows (1998)
Winning an Oscar can’t inoculate you from making some bad career choices afterwards. Filmography of Cuba Gooding Jr. represents one such example. Shortly after his triumph in Jerry Maguire he appeared in A Murder of Crows, crime thriller written and directed by Rowdy Herrington.
Gooding plays Lawson Russell, successful New Orleans attorney whose legal skills helped many wealthy and powerful people to escape justice. But when he was supposed to provide similar service to Thurman Parks III (played by Eric Stoltz), his childhood friend accused of murder, Lawson suddenly discovered conscience and deliberately sabotaged his case. This results in Lawson being disbarred and forced to make ends meet as fisherman at Key West. There he meets Christopher Marlowe (played by Mark Pellegrino), elderly Englishman who gives him manuscript of his unpublished novel about lawyers being murdered in order to hear expert opinion. Russell is pleased with the manuscript but when he is about to return it, he finds an old man dead because of apparent heart attack. Knowing that there isn’t any copy left, he succumbs to temptation and publishes novel as his own. Lawson again gains fame and wealth, but later discovers that some of the murders in the novel aren’t exactly fiction – they were based on real events and details only the murderer could have known. When New Orleans police detective Clifford Dubose (played by Tom Berenger) learns about the book, he immediately sees Russell as prime suspect for the series of unsolved killings.
Gooding, who was also one of the producers, probably saw A Murder of Crows as good way to confirm himself as a star that can carry a film. The attempt ultimately failed, with a film ending as one of the more obscure titles of his career, appearing in many countries only on home video. The main reason for such failure is a script by Rowdy Herrington, director whose careers had ups and downs (with Road House being one of the most underrated films of 1980s). Film has likeable New Orleans locations and interesting cast - Gooding is joined by respectable names like Berenger and Marianne Jeanne-Baptiste as Lawson’s colleague, while Ashley Laurence, star of Hellraiser, provides some gratuitous sex and nudity in the role of Lawson’s book editor. Those efforts are of little help since Herrington’s screenplay happens to be one of the worst to be used in 1990s Hollywood films. Everyone trying to take A Murder of Crows seriously would have to face film’s unsolved problem. The main trap set for protagonist is unconvincing, yet also so predictable that a child with special needs could see through it. Herrington believes that someone who is supposed to be successful lawyer could fall for it and, to make things worse, believes that audience would accept it too. Almost all lawyers in this film are presented as bunch of idiots, but A Murder of Crows nevertheless delivers happy ending for its hero, which is easily telegraphed beforehand with Lawson’s narration. This film represents would represent complete waste of time for audience and its obscurity is quite justified.
RATING: 2/10 (-)
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