On 16 June 2021, my evening's movie watch was one of the freebie DVDs that I'd picked up (literally!) yesterday morning at a car boot sale where they'd been discarded. Namely, Crank, a comedy/action movie starring Jason Statham, which I'd been wanting to see for ages – and what a great movie it was!
Directed and written by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, Crank was released by Lionsgate in 2006, and its central theme is rather like a human version of the vehicle in the Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock movie Speed. The lead character, played by Jason, is LA-based London-originating hitman Chev Chelios, who wakes up one morning to discover to his understandable alarm that he had been knocked unconscious the previous night and then injected by one of his criminal foes with a synthetic Chinese drug that inhibits adrenaline production, so that the victim's heart soon stops beating, permanently.
Chev learns from physician acquaintance Doc Miles (played by C&W singer Dwight Yoakam) that the only way to stay alive is to for him to keep active, extremely active, in order to stimulate enhanced adrenaline production.
Consequently, while attempting to track down and take major revenge upon his poisoner, Chev tries everything possible to keep his heart rate fast and pumping – manic car chases, near-suicidal motorbike rides while standing on the handlebars, consuming industrial quantities of coke (of both kinds!), and self-injecting shots of epinephrine that he steals from a hospital while causing total chaos all around him.
Chev's mayhem-inducing efforts ultimately reach a climax (in every sense!) when he vigorously indulges in some (very) public outdoor sex with his girlfriend Eve right in the middle of LA's Chinatown. As you'd expect, this certainly speeds up his heart, but dramatically slows down the traffic, as everyone crowds around to watch – hilarious! (Many of the observers, btw, were genuine passers-by, not actors, so their reactions and their expressions of surprise and laughter were real!)
I'd never seen Jason in a semi-comedy role before, but there is no doubt that he carries this one off with great aplomb, effortlessly combining surreal humour and violent excess to great effect (performing all of his own stunts and fight scenes too). Co-star Amy Smart as Eve is also memorable, her constant obsession with unimportant minutiae being a particular delight to behold, as when she insists upon pausing to turn off her electric waffle-maker before fleeing with Chev, despite a gang of gun-toting killers being in imminent proximity!
After watching Crank, I swiftly sought out its sequel, Crank 2: High Voltage, once again directed and written by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, released by Lionsgate in 2009, and beginning precisely where Crank ends. But if I thought that Crank was outrageous and eye-popping, I'd seen nothing yet!
Let's just say that Crank 2 is full of heart – Chev's, mostly, but not where it should be, inside his chest. Instead, it's now beating away merrily inside someone else's, having been surgically removed from an unconscious Chev immediately after the events of the first movie.
In its place an artificial short-lasting version has been implanted, which is keeping Chev alive for now, but not for long, unless he can keep charging it up with plenty of (very) high voltage while seeking out his own heart, and those who stole it from him (at which point this movie gives up all pretence of verisimiltude, and energetically, wholeheartedly embraces the frenetic fantasy realm of science fiction even more emphatically than its predecessor – you have been warned!).
So Chev duly sets forth in a reality-defying, hurricane-force frenzy of relentless physical fury amply augmented with substantial helpings of OTT lunacy and hilarity, aided and abetted once more by an understandably bemused Eve, throughout which I strongly advise all viewers to not so much suspend disbelief as to lock it securely away and throw away the key! Fantastic fun and once again packed with awesome if at times mind-boggling action – including another session of al fresco friskiness between Chev and Eve, this time in the middle of a race course, with horses galloping by in dangerously close proximity!
Crank 2 also features brief roles and cameos by a number of celebrities. These include Corey Haim, David Carradine (his final film appearance), Linkin Park's lead singer Chester Bennington, Dwight Yoakam reprising his role as Doc Miles, and even Ginger Spice herself, Geri Halliwell (now Horner). She plays Chev's mother, appearing alongside him in a flashback scene where he is still a youngster but no less rebellious even then than he is now as an adult. (In real life, Jason is actually 5 years older than Geri!)
Incidentally, if you're wondering what the relevance of these two movies' main title is to their theme of Chev needing to keep his body hyper-stimulated, crank is a slang name for methamphetamine, which is a powerful chemical stimulant of the central nervous system.
There have intermittent murmuring ever since the release of Crank 2 in 2009 that a Crank 3 movie will be made at some stage, and Jason Statham has been quoted as saying that he would love to do it, but as yet nothing has emerged.
Meanwhile: here and here are a couple of official trailers on YouTube to give you just the tiniest taster of the zany, wholly unrestrained mayhem that you can expect from Crank, Crank 2, and above all else Jason Statham, in excellent form as the transatlantically-transplanted London chav Chev.
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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