Review: Crank High Voltage (2009)

Crank High Voltage (2009)

He was dead...But he got better.

Crank High Voltage opens with a 32-bit, videogame-styled recreation of the final events of the previous movie, because God help us if we get lost trying to follow this franchise's richly detailed and cerebral plot-line. I like to think that the filmmakers are telling us, "Yes we know it's ridiculous, but think of it like a video game. Chev Chelios still has one more credit left." I've played a lot of videogames. Most have adhered more closely to the limitations of reality than Chev Chelios does in Crank High Voltage. There is a glorious audacity, however, in a movie that begins with a man surviving a multi-thousand-foot drop from a helicopter, only to have open heart surgery to replace his "strawberry tart" with an artificial one. This is most crucial to this sequel's plot: the filmmakers have found a way to recycle the same gimmick from the first movie, so that the sequel can focus solely on one-upping its predecessor. But if you are unwilling to accept that a man has survived a fall from a helicopter without breaking a single bone, than perhaps this movie is not for you. Lucky for you, the film gets this little fact out of the way very early on so that you can still take advantage of most theater chains' ten-minute money-back policy.

If you are, like me, okay with this, then you will have a great time with this film. To say that the action never stops is like saying planet Earth never stops rotating; if it did we would all die, or, in the movie's case, we would get really bored. Thankfully this never happens. Chev must keep himself constantly juiced in order to power his dying artificial heart. It's like if the Speed bus was a man and that man was Jason Statham. So Chev tours Los Angeles trying to find his real heart, which Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam who reprises his scene-stealing role from the first movie) thinks he may be able to put back in. Along the way, Chev charges himself back up in all kinds of offensive ways, most of which would kill you or me instantly. I can't question the plausibility though, because this man has already survived a fall from a helicopter. It's all wonderfully entertaining, and I imagine many patrons with more delicate sensibilities than I would be grossly offended at some of Chelios' unpredictable shenanigans.

Jason Statham is great in this role, a role that somehow manages to be more respectable than his Transporter character. I don't know why. I am willing to buy Jason Statham falling from a helicopter, but I am not willing to buy Jason Statham jumping a car onto a moving train. I'm not sure where the line is for me. Statham is the only modern action star who can hold a candle to last generation's stock of Bruce Willises and Sylvester Stallones. He is athletic and totally convincing during almost any action scene, and he actually looks like a man. This is the problem with a lot of today's action-star wannabes (I'm talking about you LaBoeuf).

Bai Ling is a new addition to the franchise, and she is as much of a scene-stealer as Dwight Yoakam. She milks an Engrish accent so severely that all her lines must be subtitled, but still delivers some of the movie's best lines. 

There are lots of little nods to the first Crank. Some will be apparent and hilarious, such as Amy Smart playing the message that Chelios left on her phone as he fell to his death from a helicopter, while others require more exposition to jog your memory. I recommend the film as pure entertainment, although I honestly cannot say whether I was more entertained by the film, or by the group of 10-year-olds who snuck into this R-rated picture, and were clearly very uncomfortable with some of the horrors they were being subjected to much, much too soon.

Professor P