The Crow: Salvation, the third movie in the Crow film series, adapts one of the spinoff novels (The Lazarus Heart).
Prisoner Alex Corvis (Eric Mabius) dies via electric chair on his twenty-first birthday, executed for the rape and murder of his girlfriend Lauren — even though he declares himself innocent of the crime up to his last words. The titular crow brings Corvis back from the dead so he can set things right, but Alex has only one clue as to who killed Lauren: the memory of a man with distinctive scars along his arm putting a key piece of evidence into Corvis' car. As Alex tries to work out who did the deed, he finds out that Lauren died because she discovered a secret about a group of Dirty Cops — one they didn't want anyone bringing to light.
This film contains examples of:
- Badass Longcoat: As tradition dictates, Alex acquires one from one of his victims.
- The Bad Guys Are Cops: And not just in a Hero Antagonist way. It turns out the real killers were police captain John and his brigade of raping and murdering officers.
- Big Bad: John, the police captain.
- Clear My Name: In a manner of speaking. Alex wants to show they executed an innocent man and bring the true killer(s) to justice.
- Continuity Nod: The Big Bad of the film mentions that there have been previous Crows before Alex.
- The crow in this movie seems to have learned from the mistakes of the predecessors, that is, the Big Bad always wounding the crow in order to weaken the revived human and remove his supernatural healing abilities. In this one, when it appears the bird has been shot, it slumps over slowly as if wounded or dead, giving Alex an opportunity to get the drop on the bad guys because they've let their guard down. Then the crow pops back up completely fine, revealing it was playing possum this whole time.
- Crusading Lawyer: Alex's lawyer counts as one, though he doesn't prevent his client from getting fried on the electric chair.
- Deadpan Snarker: Alex definitely comes off as more sarcastic and biting than the previous Crows.
- Dirty Cop: A whole squadron of them comes looking for Alex by the time things get going.
- Dull Surprise: Kirsten Dunst did not bring her A-game to this movie.
- The cop who watches Alex both shoot himself in the mouth and heal from the wound doesn't react much differently than when Alex first carjacked him.
- Get Back in the Closet: The film does away with The Lazarus Heart's LGBT related content.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Alex gets the traditional Crow make-up look from scars left after the electric chair mask burns his face. The man who framed him has scars on his arm created through the body-modification technique of putting screws in.
- Improbable Infant Survival: The corrupt cops execute a couple, but leave their baby alive.
- Lightning Can Do Anything: A well-timed lightning strike causes the voltage of the electric chair to go up much further than normal during Alex's electrocution.
- Psycho Knife Nut: Alex enjoys interrogating his victims with the very knife they used to set him up.
- Rape as Drama: As per usual in this series, this is once again the case. The hero's wife was raped and killed, and he was convicted for it.
- Stock Footage: Due to a limited budget, the filmmakers recycled some of the shots of the crow from the first movie.
- The Fashionista: The Big Bad's right hand woman is constantly doing her make-up and even paints Erin's toenails when they kidnap her.
