A Murder of Crows (1999). Directed by Rowdy Herrington from his own script ; starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Tom Berenger, Eric Stoltz, Marriane Jean-Baptiste, Marc Pellegrino, and Ashley Laurence.
A Murder of Crows is an underrated, gimmicky mystery/thriller that’s mostly been forgotten. Directed by Rowdy Herrington, (whose best-known film is the 1989 Patrick Swayze B-grade classic Road House), it deserves another look. While not a masterpiece, this film does have an intriguing premise and slick production values. It’s a nice way to spend an evening if you're looking for sheer entertainment that doesn’t require a lot of thought.
Cuba Gooding Jr. plays a high-powered New Orleans criminal defense attorney named Lawson Russell, who isn’t especially choosy about his clients. His latest big trial involves defending a creepy sleaze-ball (played by Eric Stoltz) accused of murdering a lap-dancer. Russell knows his client is guilty but doesn’t care -- until nearly the end of the trial. Then he deliberately sabotages his own client’s case and is subsequently disbarred for client malpractice.
Russell’s got inherited money from his deceased father -- a prominent jurist -- so he exiles himself to his family vacation home in Florida, intent upon writing a novel. The main hitch to this plan is that he can’t write. Not a bit.
While slacking about in Florida, he meets an eccentric, elderly man who also aspires to be a novelist. The old man loans him a draft of his own novel to read. Russell reads it in one day — it’s a gripping masterpiece about a serial killer who targets corrupt lawyers. A certain bestseller. However, when he returns the draft, he finds police at the old man’s cottage, and is told the geezer died of a sudden heart attack. He’s also told that the geezer had no heirs and that his estate would go to the government.
Russell decides to keep the novel and publish it under his own name, destroying the original draft so there's no evidence of his fraud. It becomes a massive bestseller and Russell suddenly is rich and famous. He has a torrid affair with his publisher, a spoiled, kinky rich girl played by Ashley Laurence, in a kind of low-rent version of Catherine Trammell from Basic Instinct.
Russell looks like he’s on easy street but there’s a catch: the novel is based on five actual, unsolved murders of lawyers, and contains details about the crimes that only the killer would know. Someone mails a copy of the book to the police detective (Tom Berenger) who investigated some of the crimes. And then the detective comes a-callin’ after reading the book.
Russell, of course, goes on the run while trying to clear his name, with help from his devoted colleague, Elizabeth (Jean-Baptiste), who loves him. Their investigation leads to an eccentric college professor named Corvus (played by Marc Pellegrino, aka the best Lucifer from the Supernatural cable series.)
The authentic locations in N'awlins and Florida are great; the atmosphere is moody and noirish. Gooding does well with the lead, except for the Raymond Chandler-style voiceover, which highlights his whiny little voice in an unflattering way. (Let's just say, he ain’t no world-weary William Holden in Sunset Blvd.).
The characters played by Stolz and Laurence are cardboardy, but that kind of comes with the territory for this type of film. Berenger turns in a generic performance as the detective, but again, that’s expected for the genre. IMDb gives this film a 6.4 out of 10; I'd rate it a little higher at 6.6. (I would have bumped it all the way up to 7 if they'd dumped Cuba's whiny-ass voiceover).
