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FIR Movie Review : FIR is an effective, fast-paced thriller

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Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive . Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.

Submitting Souls 772 days ago

It's a pity that certain community is abused like this. From this movie we can understand that what media says is not always true

Subhabrata Saha 780 days ago

One of the worst movies in this world. Making and watching this movie is complete wastage of time money and energy. Horrible disgusting movie.

Vickey Vignesh 882 days ago

First half is ok but the last 45 minutes with some suspense and twists will gave rise to so many questions and last climax to portray one religion as good he victims another religion.

Royal Thumper 890 days ago

Tamil films need to go a long way. Looks very amateurish and low in production value.

User 893 days ago

Good movies... ��

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FIR Review: Fast-paced Thriller

Movie: FIR Rating: 2.75/5 Banner: VV Studioz and Abhishek Pictures Cast: Vishnu Vishal, Manjima Mohan, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Reba Monica John, Raiza Wilson, Vignesh Vijayan Music: Ashwath DOP: Arul Vincent Editor: Prasanna GK Director: Manu Anand Release Date: Feb 11, 2022

“FIR” is a Telugu dubbed version of a Tamil movie of the same name. The film stars Vishnu Vishal, a well-known Tamil star and husband of Gutta Jwala.

Actor Ravi Teja presenting the film in Telugu has created curiosity. 

Story: Irfan Ahmed is a chemical engineer from IIT. He lives in Vizag. He fails to get a job due to his name (Muslim identity) despite attending many interviews in the last three years.

He is frustrated for not getting a job worth his educational qualification. His mother is a police constable. Irfan Ahmed works in a local pharmaceutical company to earn some money. 

One day he heads to Hyderabad to check pharmaceutical orders his company placed. As he is returning to Vizag, he loses his mobile at the airport. 

Around the same time, a bomb blast happens in the parking lot of the airport. Suspecting his behavior, the National Intelligence Agency sets surveillance on him. The NIA team thinks he might be Abu Bakkar, the most-wanted terrorist.

Eventually, they take him into custody despite Irfan pleading innocence. Is Irfan really a terrorist? Or a victim of false investigation?

Artistes’ Performances: Vishnu Vishal plays the role of Irfan with so much sincerity. His convincing portrayal makes us get involved. Reba Monica John is a surprise package.

Manjima Mohan as a lawyer is okay. Gautham Vasudev Menon fits well in the role of National Security Advisor. 

Technical Excellence: The film has an able effort from the technical team – cinematographer, action director, editor, and music director. The fast-paced editing and background score are the major highlights. 

Highlights: The twist Vishnu Vishal’s acting Technical output

Drawback: The lawyer’s thread Mother sentiment scenes

Analysis If you have seen web dramas “The Family Man” or “Person of Interest”, you would easily enjoy this thriller “FIR”, which also offers many riveting moments.

The title “FIR” doesn’t stand for ‘First Information Report’, but for three Muslim names. The film’s protagonist is a Muslim. He faces suspicion from everyone in his day-to-day life due to his religious identity.

He also gets arrested for a simple mistake at the airport. But the film is not about a Muslim man questioning the system that stereotypes their religion. 

“FIR” is a taut patriotic thriller that focuses on how national investigative agencies hunt terrorists and avert possible attacks.

The film also looks into how agencies do surveillance and sit on a case for many months and years tracking the activities of the suspects. 

“FIR” is narrated in a fast-paced manner by moving the story from Vizag to Hyderabad and Colombo. Even the romantic thread is short.

It completely focuses on officers tracking down the activities of the terrorists and hero Vishnu Vishal is one of the suspects. His thread with lawyer Manjima Mohan doesn’t work much.

The film has its share of issues, like talking about many points at the same time, but everything culminates well in the end. The final twist changes the entire mood. At one time, we feel the film is going downhill, but the twist suffices everything. 

If you are ready to watch a thriller that doesn’t fall into the commercial format, this will work for you. A neat thriller!

Bottom line: Taut and racy 

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Tags: FIR FIR Review FIR Movie Review FIR Telugu Movie Review FIR Rating FIR Movie Rating

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Common Sense Media Review

Boy finds robot and forms a loving bond in "E.T." wannabe.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that F.R.E.D.I. is a kind of E.T.: The Extraterrestrial clone, featuring a smart robot (instead of a wise alien) who becomes a high school student's secret best friend. As the boy bonds with the sweet and protective portable robot, insensitive adults are the enemies, as in the…

Why Age 9+?

A greedy businessman uses a Taser device to shock people who get in his way. Gro

"Crap" and "jerk."

The eventuality of a sequel is suggested by final plot developments.

Any Positive Content?

James is an independent, level-headed kid who probably should have shared his si

Artificial intelligence has the potential to create machines that will benefit h

Violence & Scariness

A greedy businessman uses a Taser device to shock people who get in his way. Grown-ups chase kids trying to save a robot.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Positive role models.

James is an independent, level-headed kid who probably should have shared his situation with his father earlier. His dad proves to be reliable and supportive in difficult moments. A greedy entrepreneur wants to use innovative technology to create weapons rather than to protect humans.

Positive Messages

Artificial intelligence has the potential to create machines that will benefit humankind and simulate friendships. It's good to share difficult challenges with understanding parents, even if the parents are having troubles of their own.

Parents need to know that F.R.E.D.I. is a kind of E.T.: The Extraterrestrial clone, featuring a smart robot (instead of a wise alien) who becomes a high school student's secret best friend. As the boy bonds with the sweet and protective portable robot, insensitive adults are the enemies, as in the earlier film, and the boy and his friends do their best to protect the robot from being compromised by a greedy weapons manufacturer. The teens are earnest and honest. A parent is distracted however well-meaning, which leaves the boy on his own to cope with impending threats. Violence and threats are relatively mild and language is tame ("crap" and "jerk"). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (1)

Based on 2 parent reviews

This Is a good movie

Great family movie, what's the story.

F.R.E.D.I. is the acronym for an artificial intelligence robot project created to protect human beings in threatening situations. When Dr. Palmer (Kelly Hu) discovers that the head of her lab wants to corrupt her work and use it as a weapon, she takes the robot out of the facility and hides it in the woods. James (Lucius Hoyos), a teenage boy, discovers it and quickly develops a relationship with the remarkable machine. Hiding it from his dad, Randy (Tyler Christopher), who is dealing with the financial fallout of divorce, James attracts the malicious attention of Arachancorp's nefarious CEO (Angus Macfayden), who hunts him and the robot down. Physical threat is in the air from financially motivated adults, but one adult, the robot's inventor, wants to keep her work out of the CEO's hands. With James' help, she's able to reprogram F.R.E.D.I. and maintain her humanity-helping qualities by making her seem to self-destruct, a disintegration that causes weeping all around. At the end, as the robot reveals that the destruction was all a ruse to get Arachancorp to back off, she introduces a cliffhanger that clumsily sets up the possibility of a sequel.

Is It Any Good?

In light of the deeply moving scenario painstakingly set up in Steven Spielberg's E.T. , this movie presents a pale paint-by-numbers retread of the now-familiar plotline. This movie doesn't work to create deep relationships, nor does it ask much of its viewers emotionally. When James and his friends cry at F.R.E.D.I.'s disappearance, it's unlikely that any audience members will be crying along, as this go-round lacks the depth and thoughtfulness necessary to trigger true empathy in an audience. Older kids and tweens, however, may yearn for the adventure of finding a charming robot and protecting her from evildoers, which could make this a harmless-enough after-school entertainment.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the way that divorce can cause the kind of financial issues and emotional pain that can get in the way of proper parenting. James' father's preoccupation with selling his business and house may blind him to his son's worries and needs, but do you think the dad ultimately proves himself when given the chance?

How do James' friends show their loyalty?

Does F.R.E.D.I. feel like a rip-off of E.T. ? What are some similarities? What are some differences?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : October 9, 2018
• Cast : Kelly Hu , Lucius Hoyos , Tyler Christopher , Angus Macfadyen
• Director : Sean Olson
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Asian actors, Indigenous actors, Polynesian/Pacific Islander actors
• Studio : Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• Genre : Science Fiction
• Run time : 90 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : May 25, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

The Goonies

The BFG (1989)

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

Excellent adventure movies for family fun, adventure tv shows.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Currently available on 2 streaming services.

Original Title: எப்.ஐ.ஆர்

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Didn't find what you were looking for?

Let us notify you once it becomes available on more services.

We checked for updates on 248 streaming services on August 26, 2024 at 11:28:13 PM. Something wrong? Let us know!

FIR streaming: where to watch online?

Currently you are able to watch "FIR" streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads.

Irfan, an innocent Muslim chemical engineer with an ordinary life, is caught in inexplicable circumstances, when accused of being a most-wanted terrorist, that alter his life & everyone around him.

Videos: Trailers, Teasers, Featurettes

Where does FIR rank today? The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

FIR is 20694 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. The movie has moved up the charts by 21266 places since yesterday. In the United States, it is currently more popular than Ginny Weds Sunny but less popular than Cooked: Survival by Zip Code.

Streaming charts last updated: 9:22:55 PM, 08/27/2024

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Tuesday, August 27th, 2024 7:38 PM

The movie "A Fistful of Dynamite", from 1972, starring Terence Hill, does not exist!

If someone knows how to remove it, please do. This is the imdb.com page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22336544/?ref_=hm_rvi_tt_t_1

As I said in the title, this movie doesn't exist. The movie "A Fistful of Dynamite" is from 1971 and it stars James Coburn.

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Duck, You Sucker! (1971) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067140/reference/

2h 37min  Drama, War  07 Jul 1972 (USA)  Movie A low-life bandit and an I.R.A. explosives expert rebel against the government and become heroes of the Mexican Revolution. James Coburn ... John H. Mallory

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067140/trivia/?item=tr4718582

The theatrical release title of this film in the UK was " A Fistful of Dynamite ."

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Rotten Tomatoes vs IMDB Ratings

Whose ratings do you trust more or tend to be more aligned with once you see the movie? I've always been an IMDB-trusting person, but that's really because it was the first movie focused website I used. Still, I find that sometimes the ratings just seem off. I get it, they're all pretty much user ratings so you definitely have a lot of people who really don't understand movies or maybe don't even really like movies putting in their incredibly irrational two cents, but it's just like.... really ?

So sometimes I agree more with the Rotten Tomatoes ratings because they include ratings from professional critics who actually get what can make a movie really great. On the downside, pro critics are desensitized or they are pretending to be a movie buff, but when you read their articles you can tell they really don't get movies and probably just landed in that industry of writing by accident.

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IMDb vs. Rotten Tomatoes vs. Metacritic: Which Movie Ratings Site Is Best?

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These Are the Two Easy Ways I Transfer Books to My Kindle

I’m ditching all other streaming services, but i’m keeping this one, why cds are still worth buying in 2024 (yes, seriously).

Thanks to online ratings, it's easier than ever to know whether or not a movie is worth watching. A quick Google search brings up plenty of websites offering their opinions on the latest films.

The three most popular are IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic. But how do these sites differ, and which should you trust for information on movies? Here's everything you need to know.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is a gigantic compendium of movies, TV shows, and video games. Its primary use is to find detailed information about any actor, producer, or piece of media content.

When you pull up a movie, you'll see a synopsis, trailers, photos, a cast list, trivia, and much more. What makes IMDb so useful is its cross-referencing. Upon opening the page for an actor, you'll see their best-known roles. Thus, IMDb is great for those "what else have I seen her in?" moments.

The IMDb mobile app takes this a step further. If you create an account and give ratings to movies and other media, you'll see a You may know them from field on an actor's page if you've rated something they appeared in.

With a free IMDb account, you can also create a Watchlist of movies you want to see. Along with contributing to the 10-point rating scale with other users, IMDb has many other useful features to offer if you're interested.

Pros of IMDb

Unlike the other two sites, IMDb's reviews come solely from users. It only takes a minute to sign up for IMDb and leave a review, so there's little barrier to entry.

Thus, IMDb's biggest strength is that its scores gives you a good idea of what normal consumers think of it. Professional critics have no influence on IMDb scores.

IMDb has a weighted average system to prevent users from rigging the score, but the service doesn't make it clear exactly how this works. Click the review count next to the star icon on any movie's page to see a breakdown of how people rated it.

Below the overall star average, you can see how the ratings break down by a few demographics, including age and gender.

Cons of IMDb

IMDb's biggest problem is that like other platforms, most people only leave reviews if they love or hate a film. Thus, this skews the scores in favor of either fanboys or haters.

People who want to boost a movie's perception will likely rate the movie a 10, while those who didn't like it will give a rating of one. This means you should read a handful of reviews to get a full picture of the movie's quality.

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a trusted source for movie reviews sourced from critics. Every movie uses the "Tomatometer" to score the quality of a film. If the critic liked the movie, a red tomato appears by their review. When they don't like it, you'll see a green splat instead.

As long as 60 percent or more of critics like the movie, it earns an overall Fresh score with a red tomato. If under 60 percent of critics rate the movie favorably, it earns a Rotten score with a green splat.

Meanwhile, a Certified Fresh badge appears next to titles that are of particularly high quality. They must hold at least a 75 percent favorable score after 80 reviews, including at least five from top critics.

Open any movie's page, and you'll see the overall score plus its number of reviews at the top. Click See Score Details for a deeper breakdown. The Critics Consensus , present for most movies, is a great summary of why the movie received its score.

Rotten Tomatoes also providers a user score, shown by the popcorn bucket. When at least 60 percent of users rated it 3.5 stars (out of 5) or higher, it shows a full bucket. A tipped-over bucket represents that under 60 percent of users gave it under 3.5 stars. Since you can use half-star ratings, this is close to the IMDb score.

In 2019, Rotten Tomatoes made some changes to reduce "review bombing" of movies. There's no longer a Want to See percentage, and you'll also see a check next to user reviews where the site has confirmed that the person actually bought a ticket to the movie.

At the bottom of a movie's page, you can read excerpts from the critic reviews, filter by fresh or rotten, or only show top critics. Search for your favorite actors, and you can check the scores of films they appeared in.

Related: Sites Like Rotten Tomatoes to Find Average Ratings and Reviews for Anything

Pros of Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes has the advantage of sourcing its reviews from trusted critics. The Rotten Tomatoes criteria page explains that the site only takes reviews from trusted newspapers, podcasts, and websites. In theory, this means that only the opinions of the most-trusted movie critics influence the Rotten Tomatoes review.

The Top Critic designation lets you filter by the absolute best critics if you prefer. You can't get a more professional opinion than from these folks.

Overall, Rotten Tomatoes does a good job of letting you know at a glance whether or not a movie is worth your time. The easily identifiable icons, overall score, and consensus summary only take a moment to scan.

Cons of Rotten Tomatoes

The biggest issue with Rotten Tomatoes is that it breaks down complex opinions into a Yes or No score. It scores a critic who thought the movie was decent but had some flaws (say, a 59 percent rating) the same as one who thought the movie was absolute garbage (a zero percent score).

You'll notice this with the Average Rating under the score. Take Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle as an example. Of the 232 critic reviews, 177 of them are positive. This gives the movie a score of 76 percent. However, the critics rated the movie an average of 6.2/10---quite a bit under the 76 percent displayed on the page.

This doesn't mean the scores on Rotten Tomatoes are useless, of course. But it's important to remember that there's nuance in individual reviews, and the Fresh/Rotten system effectively turns every rating into a 100 or 0 score.

Metacritic aggregates reviews of movies and TV shows, plus video games and music albums. It's one of the best sites for gamers , but it can give you a good idea on the quality of movies too.

The site collects reviews from many sources and aggregates them into one "metascore" from 0 to 100. It displays a color and one-line indication of quality based on the overall score, with the following used for movies, TV, and albums:

• 81-100: Universal Acclaim (Green)
• 61-80: Generally Favorable Reviews (Green)
• 40-60: Mixed or Average Reviews (Yellow)
• 20-39: Generally Unfavorable Reviews (Red)
• 0-19: Overwhelming Dislike (Red)

Unlike Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic uses a weighted average system. Nobody knows the exact details, but the service assigns more importance to some sources than others. Like the other two sites, Metacritic also includes a separate user score, which does not influence the critic score.

The Pros of Metacritic

Metacritic avoids the Rotten Tomatoes problem of scoring every review as simply "good" or "bad." A review of 50 percent gets mixed in with the rest to create the metascore. Thus, the score you see on Metacritic is closer to the average review, as opposed to the percentage of critics who simply liked the movie on Rotten Tomatoes.

Additionally, among these three sites, Metacritic is the only one to feature full user reviews right next to critic reviews. This makes it easy to compare what the general public thinks compared to the professionals.

The Cons of Metacritic

While it's easy to translate a score from a five-star or 10-point scale, Metacritic's way of translating letter grade is questionable. We can see how this works on the About Metascores page :

While scoring an A as 100 percent makes sense, note the scores for B- and F , for instance. A 67 percent score for a B- seems a bit harsh. In most schools, a score of 67 percent is closer to an F than it is a B- .

And scoring an F as 0 percent seems unfair. Something like 20 percent for an F might be more appropriate. Because every site has different scales for scoring (some might not even use pluses and minuses), this could skew a reviewer's original meaning.

Also, unlike Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic seems to have few public standards. There's no detailed information on where it sources it critics from. Thus, the score potentially doesn't have as much weight behind it as Rotten Tomatoes does.

What Is the Best Movie Rating Website?

So we've now taken a look at IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic, and listed their major pros and cons. As you might have guessed, there's no one website that's best for everything.

However, we can recommend each of these sites for different reasons:

• IMDb is great for seeing what general audiences think of a movie. If you don't care what the critics say and want to see what people like yourself thought of a film, then you should use IMDb. Just be aware that fans often skew the vote with 10-star ratings, which may inflate scores somewhat.
• Rotten Tomatoes offers the best overall picture of whether a movie is worth seeing at a glance. If you only trust the opinions of top critics and just want to know if a movie is at least decent, you should use Rotten Tomatoes. While the Fresh/Rotten binary can oversimplify the often complex opinions of critics, it should still help you weed out lousy films.
• Metacritic offers the most balanced aggregate score. If you don't mind which critics' opinions go into the final score and prefer seeing a general average, then you should use Metacritic. Its standards are mostly unknown, but Metacritic makes it easy to compare professional and user reviews side-by-side.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with checking all three of these sites every time you're thinking of seeing a movie. Over time, you should figure out which site's tastes most match yours; then you'll know which is best for you personally.

Personal Taste Still Matters Most

Remember that movie scores aren't everything. All three of these sites don't, for instance, paint an accurate picture of movies that are so bad they're good. Because those movies are objectively terrible, they carry low scores even though they have ironic value.

Plus, it's impossible to sum up complex opinions from dozens of people into a single number. And no matter what the critics or general public think, your preferences might be totally different anyway. There's nothing wrong with enjoying a movie that most people find stupid. So while these sites are helpful, don't take them too seriously.

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Movie Review: ‘The Crow’ reimagined is stylish and operatic, but cannot outfly 1994 original

This image released by Lionsgate shows Bill Skarsgård in “The Crow”. (Larry Horricks/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Bill Skarsgård, left, and FKA twigs in “The Crow”. (Larry Horricks/Lionsgate via AP)

Bill Skarsgard attends “The Crow” world premiere at the Village East by Angelika on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Rupert Sanders, from left, FKA twigs, and Bill Skarsgard attend “The Crow” world premiere at the Village East by Angelika on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

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One of the first things you see in the reimagined “The Crow” is the sight of a fallen white horse in a muddy field, bleeding badly after becoming entangled in barbed wire. It’s a metaphor, of course, and a clunky one at that — a powerful image that doesn’t really fit well and is never explained.

That’s a hint that director Rupert Sanders will have a tendency to consistently pick the stylish option over the honest one in this film. In his attempt to give new life to the cult hero of comics and film, he’s given us plenty of beauty at the expense of depth or coherence.

The filmmakers have set their tale in a modern, generic Europe and made it very clear that this movie is based on the graphic novel by James O’Barr, but the 1994 film adaptation starring Brandon Lee hovers over it like, well, a stubborn crow.

Brandon, son of legendary actor and martial artist Bruce Lee, was just 28 when he died after being shot while filming a scene for “The Crow.” History seems always to repeat: The new adaptation lands as another on-set death remains in the headlines.

Lee’s “The Crow” was finished without him and he never got to see it enter Gen X memory in all its rain-drenched, gothic glory, influencing everything from alternative fashion to “Blade” to Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy.

Bill Skarsgård seizes Lee’s role of Eric Draven, a man so in love that he returns from the dead to revenge his and his sweetheart’s slayings in what can be best called a sort of supernatural, romantic murderfest. (The tagline, “True love never dies,” clumsily rips off Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera.”)

William Schneider, who co-wrote the screenplay with Zach Baylin, has given the story a near-operatic facelift, by introducing a devil, a Faustian bargain, blood-on-blood oaths and a godlike guide who monitors the limbo between heaven and hell, which looks like a disused, weed-covered railway station. “Kill the ones who killed you and you’ll get her back,” our hero is told.

The first half drags at it sets the table for the steady beat of limbs and necks being detached at the end. Eric and his love, Shelly (played by an uneven FKA Twigs), meet in a rehab prison for wayward youth that is so well lit and appointed that it looks more like an airport lounge where the cappuccinos are $19 but the Wi-Fi is complimentary.

Eric is a gentle loner — tortured by a past the writers don’t bother filling in, who likes to sketch in a book (universal cinema code signaling a sensitive soul) and is heavily tattooed (he’s often shirtless). His apartment has rows of mannequins with their heads covered in plastic and his new love calls him “brilliantly broken.” He’s like a Blink-182 lyric come to life.

Shelly is more complex, but that’s because the writers maybe gave up on giving her a real backstory. She has a tattoo that says “Laugh now, cry later,” reads serious literature and loves dancing in her underwear. She clearly comes from wealth and has had a falling out with her mom, but has also done an unimaginably horrible thing, which viewers will learn about at the end.

Part of the trouble is that the lead couple cast off very little electricity, offering a love affair that’s more teen-like than all-consuming. And this is a story that needs a love capable of transcending death.

There are lots of cool-looking moments — mostly Skarsgård in a trench coat, stomping around the desolate concrete jungle in the rain at night — until “The Crow” builds to one of the better action sequences this year, albeit another one of those heightened showdowns at the opera.

By this time, Eric has donned the Crow’s heavy eye and cheek makeup. He adds to this ensemble a katana and an inability to die. As he closes in on his target, mowing down tuxedoed bad guys as arias soar, the group movements on stage are echoed by the furious fighting backstage. A few severed heads might be considered over the top at curtain call, but subtlety isn’t being applauded here.

If the original was plot-light but visually delicious, the new one has a better story but suffers from ideas in the films built on its predecessor, stealing a little from “The Matrix,” “Joker” and “Kill Bill.” Why not create something entirely new?

“The Crow” isn’t bad — and it gets better as it goes — but it’s an exercise in folly. It cannot escape Lee and the 1994 original even as it builds a more allegorical scaffolding for the smartphone generation. To use that very first metaphor, it’s like the trapped white horse — held down by its own painful past, never free to gallop on its own.

“The Crow,” a Lionsgate release that hits theaters Friday, is rated R for “strong bloody violence, gore, language, sexuality/nudity and drug use.” Running time: 111 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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Where Kamala Harris Stands on the Issues: Abortion, Immigration and More

She wants to protect the right to abortion nationally. Here’s what else to know about her positions.

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By Maggie Astor

• Published July 21, 2024 Updated Aug. 24, 2024

With Vice President Kamala Harris having replaced President Biden on the Democratic ticket, her stances on key issues will be scrutinized by both parties and the nation’s voters.

She has a long record in politics: as district attorney of San Francisco, as attorney general of California, as a senator, as a presidential candidate and as vice president.

Here is an overview of where she stands.

Ms. Harris supports legislation that would protect the right to abortion nationally, as Roe v. Wade did before it was overturned in 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

After the Dobbs ruling, she became central to the Biden campaign’s efforts to keep the spotlight on abortion, given that Mr. Biden — with his personal discomfort with abortion and his support for restrictions earlier in his career — was a flawed messenger. In March, she made what was believed to be the first official visit to an abortion clinic by a president or vice president.

She consistently supported abortion rights during her time in the Senate, including cosponsoring legislation that would have banned common state-level restrictions, like requiring doctors to perform specific tests or have hospital admitting privileges in order to provide abortions.

As a presidential candidate in 2019, she argued that states with a history of restricting abortion rights in violation of Roe should be subject to what is known as pre-clearance for new abortion laws — those laws would have to be federally approved before they could take effect. That proposal is not viable now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe.

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