Mike the Boss - Films of 2010 - Film the Third: Crank 2: High Voltage

Crank 2: High Voltage (2009) (dir: M. Neveldine, B. Taylor)

Master of the Dude movie, madkevin, told me I really needed to see this film even though I hated, hated, hated the first one. I ignored him until I saw that it had made Slate's, Ten great movies of 2009 you haven't seen list. The list has a reasonable pedigree to it so I decided to take the plunge (not knowing that Miss Wendy would also be watching it this week). I have to say that this film is dumber that the first Crank, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Jason Statham is back as Chev Chelios. Having survived his fall from the sky in the first movie, he has now had his heart stolen and replaced with a mechanical one that needs to be electrically charged on a regular basis. Strangely enough, not only can you charge this heart with pretty much any kind of electricity (stun guns, high voltage wires, friction from sex) but size of the charge also makes Chev stronger and faster. Like I said, dumber concept than the first.

However, the movie embraces this stupidity and Chev runs around looking for his heart doing increasingly more ridiculous things in order to keep his heart charged up. Any pretext of seriousness or reality has been removed to the film and we are basically treated to a live action Road Runner cartoon. The utter insanity of the situations is hilarious all the way through to the credits. If the first film had this sense of humour, I would have been in far less pain when I watched it.

The final verdict is that madkevin was correct: this is a great Dude movie. You have to turn off your brain to enjoy it properly but if you can manage to do that, Crank 2: High Voltage is some kinda fun.

Wendy's Films of 2010 #2: Crank 2 (2009)

That's right. After watching Crank, my friend Catherine and I looked at each other and determined that the second film must be devoured as soon as humanly possible. So Gaelan obliged and we stuck in Crank: High Voltage (2009).



With the most epic tagline: "He was dead... But he got better," we are launched into a second, even more absurd display of over-the-top action madness. Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) must seek out the man that stole his "fucking strawberry tart" - known to most of humanity (in various languages of course) as "the heart" - and in order to keep the battery inside his body pumping blood me must repeatedly electrocute himself with everything he can possibly find. Friction with other humans (excellent, time for sex on a horse racing track!), high voltage systems, tasers and any other form of electricity. Add to this even more crazy characters, even more bare boobs and an "let's make this as insane as possible" attitude, and you've got a film that might just be too much for the regular viewer. But then again, perhaps not. Check it out if you want to see what tantalizing adventures Chelios gets into and what happens to his fucking strawberry tart.

Wendy's First Film of 2010!

When I read reviews, I generally prefer them to be short and sweet so that I get an impression of what's to come without having my opinion determined for me by another with a gargantuan description of the best, worst, improvable and completely lost parts of a film. As such, I will adhere to my own inclinations and keep my reviews short, but hopefully sweet as well as useful.

As such, I present to you Wendy's "First" Film Review of 2010*:

I could cheat and say Yellow Submarine was my first film of 2010, but seeing as I fell at asleep about halfway through it at about 3am on January 1st, I wouldn't be entirely honest. I could also choose The Beatles Anthology, which I began around 4pm later that day, but I sadly only saw the first of several parts. Then those I was with began watching a Nirvana concert on DVD at about 5:30, but I sort of zoned out for that one and started drawing flowers. As such, my first official film viewing experience of this new year came around 7pm in the form of the awesome, action-packed ride of insanity:



Crank (2006). As the tagline notes, the hero of this "adrenaline-fueled thrill ride," Chev Chelios, has "Poison in his veins. Vengeance in his heart," and it only gets better from there. This is a colourful, hilarious and diverting excursion for those in the mood for a little vacation from the intense, meaningful dramas that are so popular during awards season. Not for the faint of heart, this is for fans of mindless action madness, so unplug the Beatles Rockband and stick in this gem if you're feeling a little too lethargic.


* I say "First" because I already published a list of my top 10 films on this blog a few days ago, so this isn't technically my first film review, even if it is the first film I watched this year.

Dude Movies: Crank 2: High Voltage

What's it about?
In the best sequel idea since Chow Yun Fat played his own previously unmentioned twin brother in A Better Tomorrow II, Jason "Chev Chelios" Statham wakes up on an operating table (after having survived a fall that would have liquefied any non-Statham) to find his heart being replaced with a big-ass battery.* Hey, we've all been there, right?

Any chicks in the movie?
Amy Smart returns as his girlfriend, and the deeply unpleasant Bai Ling shows up as the World's Most Irritating Prostitute. How Bai Ling gets work in movies is beyond me. She's got a body that looks like somebody stapled her head on top of a rubber novelty chicken.

Awesomeness Factor?
Stratospheric. Crank 2 is like the Platonic ideal of an action movie, profoundly unconcerned with the pedestrian narrative concerns that plague other sadder, lesser movies that don't have the balls to be Crank 2**. It's a movie that is more than willing - eager, you might say - to cut away from a scene to show you a ferret's ball-sack or the massive man-shaft of a thoroughbred racehorse for no real reason. It's a movie that gets real-life Bible-thumpin' moron Corey "I'm Still Alive?" Haim to not only play a mulleted loser pimp but then has Amy Smart beat the ever-living shit out of him for laughs. Technically, it has the elements of what would constitute a normal motion picture, like a plot and characters, but then tosses them away so that Chev Chelios can jack himself with a power grid transformer or shoot up a strip club full of people who had the extreme misfortune of not being Jason Statham. Meanwhile the insane perverts behind the camera throw enough avant-garde film treatments and camera trickery at you to fuel a thousand student film festivals, unable to focus their attention on anything for longer than a few seconds without trying to either blow it up, fuck it, or both. If DVD rental places had any balls at all, they would replace all the Criterion Collection discs with burned copies of Crank 2 instead and, when you opened the case, Statham's fist would jump through time and space and punch you in the face.

Mitigated by?
The only mitigating factor is that maybe Crank 2 didn't make enough money for there to be a Crank 3, but I refuse to live in a universe where there is no Crank 3. My guess for the next one: He's just, like, on fire all the time. TRADEMARKED!

* In this incredible ability to resurrect himself Statham is like Jesus, if Jesus wasn't such a fucking pussy.

** Like, I don't know, Schindler's List. That movie would have been like twenty seconds long if Statham was Liam Neeson.