Susan Granger’s review of “Crank: High Voltage” (Lionsgate)
British action star Jason Statham reprises his role of Chev Chelios in this dubious sequel which picks up where the original left off – as Chev is plummeting from a helicopter to certain death on the mean streets of Los Angeles. Only, of course, he doesn’t die and he won’t, not when people keep plunking down money at the box-office.
This time, instead of trying to keep his adrenaline pumping to counteract the effects of a deadly poison, Chev’s heart is forcibly removed and transplanted into the chest of Poon Dong (David Carradine), an ailing Chinese crime boss with a Fu Manchu beard. So until his underworld surgeon friend, Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam), can find a suitable organ replacement, Chev must make do with a mechanical model with a battery pack that he has to keep activated with jolts of electricity. That involves utilizing a variety of devices (jumper cables, stun guns, dog collars, etc.) on himself so he doesn’t collapse. When those devices are not available, he resorts to static electricity caused by sexual friction, aided by Eve (Amy Smart), his ever-ready, pole-dancing girl-friend, and Ria (Bai Ling), a fanatical Asian prostitute. (Although there’s R-rated nudity, the graphic ‘coupling’ is obscured by pixilation.) Above all, Chev is determined to track down the culprits who, literally, stole his heart, or, as he terms it in Cockney, his “strawberry tart.”
Directors/screenwriters Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor have constructed what amounts to a cinematic video game in that it is neither coherent nor credible but certainly gruesome and bigoted, excitedly abusing Asians, Mexicans, women and the disabled, complete with an anal rape with a shotgun.
For mainstream audiences, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Crank: High Voltage” is an adrenaline-propelled, outrageously offensive 3, culminating with overstressed Chev’s finally turning to the audience and giving them the middle finger. But I suspect that if you really relish this kind of amped-up, testosterone-drenched lunacy, you weren’t waiting for the review anyway.
