FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

Chev Chelios is a professional assassin which means he doesn’t make friends very easily. While he was sleeping, one bitter rival of his has injected him with a chemical concoction called the “Beijing Cocktail.” The poison will surely kill him if he isn’t able to keep his heart rate pumping at all times. So, in order to exact revenge on the dude that did this to him, Chev has to find ways to boost his adrenaline constantly. Can he crank up his heart rate long enough to take his nemesis down with him?

Think of it as “Speed” but instead of a bus, it’s a person and instead of Keanu and Sandra and Hopper, it’s drugs, guns and public sex. And instead of a good action movie, it’s this. “Crank” is nothing more than a disjointed ridiculous farce of action movies. That would great if it were the director’s intention, but I doubt they meant it to be so laughable. Maybe I’m wrong, but I certainly didn’t get that vibe.

I know I’m asking too much from writer/directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (‘extreme visual sequence creators’ for “Biker Boyz”) to add a little depth to their debut, but how about a tiny bit of consistency. They should have introduced the poison as something that really messes with his brain minute by minute, thus ever-changing the world he’s barely living in. Then I would have understood why the film takes on a different persona with every scene. It’s not that having a totally different style for each and every scene is bad. It’s shot well and is actually pretty cool at times, but the simple fact that it’s utterly unmotivated and unwarranted is bad. It makes it so that the movie comes off as knowing it’s bad and so it’s trying too hard to be something better.

For a low budget action movie, it’s not horrible. It’ll certainly keep your attention if only because you’re laughing too hard at the stupid ways they find for Chev to keep his adrenaline up. Plus you have Jason Statham basically doing the same stuff he did in “The Transporter” and people seemed to like that enough for there to be a sequel. I guess the big problem here is that it tries to take advantage of the action genre. What we’re seeing on screen isn’t suspension of disbelief. It’s not merely cars exploding randomly and big gun fights and crazy leaps that people can’t really make. None of that stuff is really shown here. But instead what we’re seeing is a collection of the most off-the-wall ludicrous situations without the entertaining stunts to go along with it. Crank may be a non-stop thrill ride that keeps the action going until the very end (I’m assuming that’s the kind of quote they’re looking for), but it’s only fun because it’s bad.

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