Dirs. Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor, 2009, US, 96 mins
Cast: Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Dwight Yoakam, Efren Ramirez
Review by
Martyn Bamber
Who would have guessed that Crank (2006), one of the daftest action films of recent years, would ever have spawned a follow-up? The last time we saw hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham), he was poisoned and racing against time to keep his heart rate high in order to stay alive. After falling from a helicopter and seemingly dying at the end of the last film, this sequel begins with Chev's body being scooped off the street, and then shows his heart being removed and replaced with an artificial model.
Escaping from his captors, Chev must find his real heart and get his doctor (Dwight Yoakam) to put it back in his body ASAP. Chev also sets out to discover who is after his heart and why, and he bumps into some friends and enemies (some new, some old) along the way. But once again Chev is up against time, and he has to keep his artificial heart electrically charged in various ways. These ways include creating static electricity by having sex (at a racetrack) with his girlfriend (Amy Smart), attaching jumper cables to his body, and stunning himself with a taser!
The first Crank film was like a cross between an OTT action film and an episode of Jackass, with Chev bouncing from one outrageous set piece to the next, ending up in the strangest of situations, suffering no end of indignities, or visiting various humiliations on other people. This sequel follows the same formula, but with more cartoon-style violence and pitch black humour. In fact, Crank – High Voltage seems to be on some kind of insane mission to create the most preposterous action film ever.
Every character in the film, no matter what race, gender or sexual orientation they are, is seemingly open to tongue-in-cheek mockery, with the directors throwing all manner of potentially offensive material into the mix. But this material is so stylised, surreal and deliberately stupid that none of it can be taken seriously. Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor are like a couple of kids who are being rude and unruly just to see what they can get away with. The film that results from their mischief may not be big or clever, but sometimes it's oddly interesting and very funny.
But while there are laughs to be had and a few memorable sequences, this sequel doesn't feel as deliriously inventive as its predecessor. Like the first film, Crank – High Voltage is amusingly ridiculous, but this time the wanton stupidity feels completely random; there's none of the earlier film's single-mindedness with regards to its plotting. It may seem foolish to take such a brazenly preposterous film so seriously, but even the dumbest of films has to convince at its most basic level, and while the first Crank kept its focus firmly on Chev's attempts to keep his heart rate up, this sequel frequently cuts away from him to focus on other characters and events we don't care about.
This new film has a surfeit of subplots, extraneous characters, excessive flashbacks, as well as copious amounts of nudity and gore, but much of it feels overextended or unnecessary. For example, a scene with Chev fighting a villain is staged as a Godzilla-like battle with both men as giants, but the scene goes on for far too long, and so the laughs it initially generates quickly dry up. It's as if Neveldine and Taylor sat down, made of list of 20 cool ideas, and then just threw them into the film at random intervals. It feels like the directors hardly bothered to stitch these ideas together, and the result is that a number of sequences have little or no sense of purpose or coherence.
The sequel's main strength is the presence of Statham, who is the glue that holds it all together. Statham throws himself into the film with gusto, and shows that he's game for a laugh and good at comedy, no matter what outlandish situation he finds himself in or whatever ludicrous (or lewd) act he ends up performing. Crank – High Voltage may be a shambolic, hit-and-miss film, but it has its moments, and is proof that Statham, alone among Hollywood action stars, is seemingly willing to do almost anything for his art!
© Martyn Bamber, April 2009
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