Crank 2: High Voltage

Crank 2: High Voltage

Genre: Action

Starring: Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Dwight Yoakam, Clifton Collins Junior, Efren Ramirez, Bai Ling, David Carradine

Release Date: April 17th 2009

*Contains Spoilers*

     Crank 2: High Voltage, the sequel to the relatively well received Crank (2006), is a very complicated and thought provoking move.  Oh, wait, no it isn't.  Not in the slightest.

     Jason Statham plays Chev Chelios, a hitman who, in the first movie, has to find an antidote for a new Chinese poison which slows his heart and kills him.  So, how does he avoid this?  Chelios tears across the city, hunting those responsible, while taking on any and every dangerous stunt he can think of to keep his adrenaline pumping and his heart beating, until ultimately, he falls out of a helicopter.

     That's right, he falls out of a freaking helicopter.  And by the way, we aren't talking about a little fall, here.  The helicopter isn't in the middle of take-off, and he tumbles out, and scrapes his knee, and needs a bandaid for his boo-boo.  He falls long enough to take out his cellphone, call his girlfriend (Smart), and leave her a long-winded apology message, before bouncing off and crushing a parked car and splatting in the middle of the sidewalk.

     Here's the good news.  Change the end I just described to the beginning, switch up one or two details in the first paragraph, and in the words of Emeril, "Bam!", you've got Crank 2, complete with dead prostitute aux jus.  This time though, it's his heart.  As in, Chinese mobsters have cut it out in a dirty motel, and considerately replaced it with something that looks like they stole it from the prop closet of Robin Williams' "Bicentennial Man".  The kicker this time is, the new heart is run by a battery pack, which being the fun-loving guy he is, Chelios destroys within minutes while crashing his car into a concrete abutment.

     This is where I started to think I'd already seen this movie.  Chelios, once again, tears a** around the city looking for the bastards who have his "Strawberry Tart".  Along the way, he throws plenty of kicks, punches, and vaguely British sounding witticisms as often as the film-maker thought it necessary to show bare breasts (which is a LOT).  So, in order to keep his ticker ticking, he is jumped by a car battery, tazed, electrocuted, sticks his finger in the A/C port of a limousine, wears a dog's shock collar, and climbs a telephone pole to grab the exposed wires there.

     The director even found a reason for him to publicly hump Amy Smart again.  Last time it was for the adrenaline, this time it's for the static electricity from the friction.  Yep, you heard that right.  And it's in the middle of a horse track.  You heard that right, too.  It's in the middle of a horse track, during a race, with the sounds of "Gamblers and Degenerate Low-Lives" cheering and SCREAMING their heads off from the stands.

     The movie ends with the expected "Gunfight At The OK Corral" type of scene, and the promise that Chelios is, you guessed it, still alive.

     So, this begs the question, if the movie was so ludicrous, so poorly written, so downright bad (and it was), why in the name of God am I completely prepared to sit through it again?

     Because Jason Statham is the F*%KING MAN!

Action: 4 out of 5

Story: 1 out of 5

Overall: 2.5 out of 5