Want to make a trashy movie but not have those imbecilic executives interfere? Well the trick is to keep it cheap and don't show the script to anyone. Neveldine and Taylor, the duo behind Crank, played the game beautifully and the result was a high octane, low rent orgy of violence, sex, profanity and insanity. If you were in the mood, and more of us needed it than we cared to admit, Crank was a tonic, though one that made you ill and vomit blood for days afterwards.
Anchored by a game and wide eyed Jason Statham who got to deliver lines like 'does it look like I've got C**T written on my forehead?' (yes), Crank was a movie that brushed aside coherence, logic and any sense of it's own importance for laughs and thankfully 'High Voltage', er, cranks it up a notch, though the directorial duo will have to dig deep for a third instalment – though I wouldn't bet against them having a go.
Voltage beings where the original ended with the Stath falling a mile from a helicopter and bouncing off a parked car – dead presumably, but no because the Chinese warlord responsible for his original poisoned predicament has Staham's Chev Chelios scraped off the roadside and deposited in a makeshift surgical theatre where his heart, strong enough to survive the original film and so a desirable commodity for his wizened nemesis, is extracted and replaced with a battery powered stopgap designed to keep him alive and his organs fresh for transplantation. You'd be forgiven for losing the thread at this point but the movie is only 5 minutes old when Chelios thankfully regains consciousness and on Doctor's orders, begins a hunt for his real heart while subjecting himself to electric shocks to keep the temporary one functioning.
That, if you can believe it, is the setup, and you won't be shocked to learn that it's a fairly sober foundation for what follows. Shot on prosumer camcorders, Crank 2 is saturated in the promise of bargain basement vulgarity and doesn't disappoint. Edited with an eye for the absurd, it feverishly presses on across ninety monged out minutes in which guns are inserted into rectums, nipples sliced from torsos, fights segue into Godzilla style monsters battling against miniatures (with actors in caricatured masks of Statham and his enemy battling it out) and in the funniest sequence, Geri Halliwell appears in flashback as Mother Chelios, taking the young Chev to task on a talk show in which a few British cars and a reject from a mad max movie dressed as a British punk are dropped onto a Californian backlot for the least convincing but most enjoyable English flashback you've ever seen. Chelios may be a hardline misogynist and causal racist, "Is that some change loose in my pocket or did I hear a chink?" is his riposte to one of the Chinese Villains, but there's something about the former Sydenham market trader that would make him likable if he were playing a recidivist paedophile and he brings his gruff, er, charms to every scene.
There's little that's fundamentally new about the second Crank – it's structurally the same as the original and hits many of the same beats, but the sense of fun and embellishment of every frame with unashamed excess, makes it hideously enjoyable. Counting the instances of 'f*ck you Chelios' should be your new drinking game when it comes to DVD but in the meantime, High Voltage is essential for those that like their junk movies tasteless and baseless. The end, which such is the pace, you arrive at 15 minutes before the film itself, promises a third which on this evidence would be well worth a punt - as Chelios would say, "Bing F*ckin' Crosby!"
Anchored by a game and wide eyed Jason Statham who got to deliver lines like 'does it look like I've got C**T written on my forehead?' (yes), Crank was a movie that brushed aside coherence, logic and any sense of it's own importance for laughs and thankfully 'High Voltage', er, cranks it up a notch, though the directorial duo will have to dig deep for a third instalment – though I wouldn't bet against them having a go.
Voltage beings where the original ended with the Stath falling a mile from a helicopter and bouncing off a parked car – dead presumably, but no because the Chinese warlord responsible for his original poisoned predicament has Staham's Chev Chelios scraped off the roadside and deposited in a makeshift surgical theatre where his heart, strong enough to survive the original film and so a desirable commodity for his wizened nemesis, is extracted and replaced with a battery powered stopgap designed to keep him alive and his organs fresh for transplantation. You'd be forgiven for losing the thread at this point but the movie is only 5 minutes old when Chelios thankfully regains consciousness and on Doctor's orders, begins a hunt for his real heart while subjecting himself to electric shocks to keep the temporary one functioning.
That, if you can believe it, is the setup, and you won't be shocked to learn that it's a fairly sober foundation for what follows. Shot on prosumer camcorders, Crank 2 is saturated in the promise of bargain basement vulgarity and doesn't disappoint. Edited with an eye for the absurd, it feverishly presses on across ninety monged out minutes in which guns are inserted into rectums, nipples sliced from torsos, fights segue into Godzilla style monsters battling against miniatures (with actors in caricatured masks of Statham and his enemy battling it out) and in the funniest sequence, Geri Halliwell appears in flashback as Mother Chelios, taking the young Chev to task on a talk show in which a few British cars and a reject from a mad max movie dressed as a British punk are dropped onto a Californian backlot for the least convincing but most enjoyable English flashback you've ever seen. Chelios may be a hardline misogynist and causal racist, "Is that some change loose in my pocket or did I hear a chink?" is his riposte to one of the Chinese Villains, but there's something about the former Sydenham market trader that would make him likable if he were playing a recidivist paedophile and he brings his gruff, er, charms to every scene.
There's little that's fundamentally new about the second Crank – it's structurally the same as the original and hits many of the same beats, but the sense of fun and embellishment of every frame with unashamed excess, makes it hideously enjoyable. Counting the instances of 'f*ck you Chelios' should be your new drinking game when it comes to DVD but in the meantime, High Voltage is essential for those that like their junk movies tasteless and baseless. The end, which such is the pace, you arrive at 15 minutes before the film itself, promises a third which on this evidence would be well worth a punt - as Chelios would say, "Bing F*ckin' Crosby!"