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Crank: High Voltage
In Crank: High Voltage, everyone's favorite follically-challenged action hero, Jason Statham, plays Chev Chelios, a man that manages to whoop a bunch of ass despite not having a heart. To fully enjoy this movie, you'll probably need to get rid of your brain, as well as any sense of logic or reason. But if you do so, High Voltage will provide a fun ride.
So why doesn't our boy Chev have a heart? Well, it turns out that the events of the first movie (where Chev managed to kill a bunch of gangsters after being poisoned) inspires an aging Triad boss, Poon Dong (David Carradine), to take out Chev's heart for transplant. Waking up after surgery, Chev finds himself with an artificial heart that needs to be continuously charged. With a deadline looming, Chev sets out to find Poon and get his heart back, by any means necessary.
Like the first movie, High Voltage is basically one long ridiculous action sequence. If you're looking for a riveting plot or deep characterization, then you'd better head elsewhere. From the start, with its' 8-bit graphics intro, High Voltage makes no qualms about basically being a live-action video game. The film is staged much like a game, where Chev must get through each "level" of thugs in order to get to the next power-up, which, in this case, are various ways to keep Chev's heart charged, like getting hooked up to a car battery or getting cops to use their tazers.
Even though High Voltage only runs about eighty-five minutes, the gimmick still would have the possiblity of running thin, but the film-makers wisely surround Chev with a colorful cast of characters that keep things fresh. Returning from the first movie are Chev's girlfriend (Amy Smart) and doctor (Dwight Yoakam), who are joined by a motley crew that includes a mullet-rocking redneck pimp ('80's teen idol Corey Haim) and a cracked-out whore (Bai Ling) whose badly-subtitled insults provide some of the biggest laughs in the movie.
Sure, in many parts, High Voltage is over-the-top, and almost treads to the point of exploitation, or just being plain disgusting for the sake of being disgusting. But in this day and age, where most so-called action films are watered-down PG-13 pablum, it's nice to see that there are at least a few film-makers out there with some balls and are capable of producing something other than CGI-filled wank-fests. RATING: 7 |
