Review: Crank High Voltage

Crank High Voltage finds the badass to end all badasses, Chev Chelios, played by Jason Statham, in a further fight for his life, where his unstoppable heart is stolen and he has to constantly shock his artificial heart until he can find the creep who has it.

I absolutely loved the first Crank, and if you thought creators, Neveldine and Taylor, couldn't push the boundaries of absurdity, you were wrong. unfortunately, it's just not that good. The perfect way to describe it is "tries to hard." Or maybe "felt terribly forced." Any one of the stock dissapointment phrases works best here.

It falls into a seriously poor trend that some sequels get into. They take the most memorable parts, increase them exponentially, and forget why the whole package was good in the first place. I loved the absurdism of the first one, but without the more serious (more like less tongue in cheek) moments, its hard to accept the out of the box shocks when they are continusously roped together in a terribly uninteresting plotline. Also, everyone noting the "badass Englishman" changed Chelios' dialog from nationality-neutral slang to overly cockney slang, which sometimes can be cool, but hearing Chelios call people "gents" and use cockney rhyming just seemed out of place.

There was a frantic pace and epileptic editing. There was also silly sound effects and cheap site gags, including a number of groin shots. It was like a gorey, violent version of The Three Stooges. Not even Statham's eternal badass cred or Amy Smart's adorable but kinda-slutty-in-a-fun-way delivery could save this movie.

Not to mention, it was full of horrible friggin' cameos. Some where fun like Ginger Spice and Maynard James Keenan showing up, but Corey Haim and Bai Ling were hard to watch. As were most of the Asian and Latino gangsters who were even further stereotypical caricatures than in the first one.

SPOILER
And the head in a vat was pretty much the last straw. What the fuck was that? Stupidest thing I have ever seen in a flick. This was like Ford Fairline bad. And the fact that everyone from the first flick's brother showed up made this movie almost cross over from tongue-in-cheek to downright parody.
END SPOILER

Obviously, in voicing my opinion of this flick, I have already heard the stock answers. "What did you expect? It's supposed to be like that." True, the movie is supposed to be absurd, that is what I expected. But I also expected it to be good and fun. "Supposed to be absurd" does not give it a free pass to just be as crappy as it wants or can.

When you are trying to up the ante from the first one, I think Crank High Voltage is the perfect example of how not to do it. I still want to see them make a Crank 3, Chev is a cool character, and Statham is a cool actor, and I hope they could do something much better than this incredibly dissapointing flick.

3/10