After reading this and watching this, how could I read the tease for Crank: High Voltage ("After surviving the brush with death that ended the first Crank film, top assassin Chev Chelios returns in this action-packed sequel to track down a ruthless Chinese mobster who has stolen his most prized possession: his heart.... he must continually jolt the mechanical ticker that beats within his chest") and not just plow ahead with the double feature? Per the blurb, its not exactly a chemical situation in this case, but the jist is the same.
It seems most appropriate to present my review in the same format as Dallas did. Plus that saves me having to come up with yet another way to vary my incessant posts. ONWARD!
1. Ridiculous Premise. After falling out of the sky (literally) some chinamen abscond with Chev to a mysterious back room where his heart, amongst other organs, are removed for transplant. Keeping Chev alive: a mechanical heart designed only to support minimal human activity for a couple days until the subject gets a transplant. Perhaps not as outlandish as the original, in this one Chev is constantly in search of some batteries or other clever way to get a shock. Naturally getting his electrical fix won't be enough for Chev; he's going to get revenge on the motherfuckers responsible for stealing his heart while he's at it. Given the limits already set out, not a bad storyline. At the same time, given the limits already set out it probably wasn't too hard to say "lets take his heart".
Other plot notes of interest: Amongst the side characters: a guy with "full body tourrettes" (apparently the brother of the gay guy in Crank) (like they needed a reason for more jerky camera work and ridiculous spasticity) and some skinny asian bitch who just won't die, even when she's run over by a car going 50 mph. For some reason in the midst of a bunch of transformers, Chev and his Chinese nemesis grow to 50 feet tall and battle like King Kong, replete with bizarre facial prosthetics and building smashing. It's a hysterical scene. The buxom chocolate-skinned lady riding Doc's lap at the start of the movie helps Chev find the guy with his heart by playing a prostitute. A true hooker with a heart of gold story. At one point Chev comes face to face with the disembodied but still living head of one of his prior victims. This happens just before the gay guys come kill the ferret and save Chev from a super homoerotic cat-o-nine-tails lashing.
2 Stallones and a Statham for the storyline.
2. Earnest over-acting. One of the ways Doc tells Chev to get revved up is to use friction ("the rubbing of two like objects causes the transfer of electrons"). For some reason it takes him the better part of seven minutes to figure out that this can be accomplished not just by dry-humping an old lady, but also by sex. As he's about to lose it before the redemptive sex scene, he throws us a gloriously over-acted "Friiiictioooon" as his body wilts from his failing heart. Generally though, Statham's breed of grimace-and-run is just a different kind of action from the Stallone "It's like a switch" school of acting. 1 Stallone, 2 Stathams.
3. Ka-blooey! We open with Chev falling from the sky onto a Cadillac. It doesn't explode, but the peeling-his-body-off-the-cement sound effect was pretty swell. The rest of the movie, sadly, follows a very similar path. Lots of fighting, lots of jolting, lots of running around, but the ka-blooeys are few and far between. What it lacks in splosions it tries to make up for in blood, like when they cut off the tip of a guy's elbow, or when a failed cronie is forced to cut off his own nipples. However, this does not make up for the lack of explosions. Its just terribly disturbing. Yech. 2 Stathams.
4. Ka-boobie For some reason or another, Chev pops into a strip club. So, boobies abound, especially when the Mexicans come in and startle the strippers into bouncing their jubblies all over the place. Importantly, he also hooks up with Amy Smart there, and this time there's no doubt at all about the fact that she spends the next fifteen minutes with nothing but electrical taped X's covering her nips. So, incidental tits + leading character breasts (minus nipples) + occasional frontal nudity during the final poolside shootout gives us an upgrade over the original: three Stallones. However, minus one Statham for the scene later where Chev and Amy do it on the horse track in the middle of a race and expose nothing but Statham's buttcheeks. Net: 2 Stallones, 2 Stathams. It is a pretty awesome protracted ridiculous sex scene though.
5. Cheesy one liners. They're not one liners, but the film's repeated use of little graphical ploys is at least thematically entertaining and accomplishes what it sets out to do in making the film feel like a comic book. Chev tries a one-liner once with "Chicken and broccoli" after he kills a bunch of Chinese, causing their limo to crash, but that really doesn't make any damn sense. One Stallone.
It's certainly no Over the Top; its pretty much just a shadow of Crank. What do you expect though? It was a hell of a lot more entertaining than War or Death Race; they're all foregone conclusions but at least this one gets from A to B by way of breasts, flaming dream hugs, Journey, and SoA-approved awesomeness.
No comments:
Post a Comment