Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Getting Crunk

Crank 2: High Voltage directed by Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor

Beyond the valley Ridiculous in the shadow of Mt. WTF, lies Crank 2: High Voltage. I have not seen the first Crank, and so had no idea what I was getting into. The first scene is of two 2d videogame characters fighting while falling through the sky, an abrupt cut later and we are in the film, with Statham falling out of the sky and bouncing thirty feet off of a car and onto the pavement, where he is immediately thrown into a van and taken away.
Then his heart is removed and replaced with an artificial one, but when it comes time to remove Statham's penis, he jumps off the table and fights his way out of wherever he is onto the streets. His heart battery wears out and he has to give himself continous electrical shocks (from tasers, car batteries, and even human friction from skin rubbing together...)to keep himself alive. Chinese and Mexican gangsters are after him, and so is wild eyed running through the streets screaming crazy Bail Ling who has become obsessed with him for some reason.At one point unnanounced and with no reference to anything else in the movie, Statham and a bad gut he is facing are suddenly morphed into Godzilla like versions of themselves, with fake oversized heads and a model version of a city beneath them as their arena. They Godzilla fight for several minutes, and when the fights done the movie is back to normal, no mention, no bump on the head induced hallucination, its buisness as usual in Crankland. And what buisness it is.
This movie has no connection to reason, logic, or sense, it's one crazy episode after the next; from public sex on the middle of a race track(with thunderous applause from a cheering crowd) to bieng so overcharged with adrenalynn you cant comprehend your entire body is on fire(as the skin on your face flakes off like ash), to facing the preserved head of your enemy in a jar, there is nothing Statham can't or won't do. I for one like the un-serious approach, action films could do with more levity and less text-book dramatic intensity. It's silly, but too silly to be ignored. If you were able to get the joke in "Shoot Em Up" and "Punisher: War Zone", "Crank 2", is jolt of genre life, you have been waiting for.

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