Crank Review
by samseescinema (sammeriam AT comcast DOT net)September 1st, 2006
Crank
-reviewed by Sam Osborn
-rating: -
Director: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Cast: Jason Statham, Amy Smart
Screenplay: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
MPAA Classification: R (strong violence, pervasive language, sexuality, nudity and drug use)
There was a good idea hidden somewhere within this muck: a film that starts with its foot lead-heavy on the gas pedal without any reason to brake; something that starts with fury and fireworks and never stops; a kind of mad-dash catharsis of an action film surrounding a man with nothing to lose and only an hour to live. But from such a simple, promising novelty of a premise, filmmakers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor manage to convolute it with such misguided injections of style that, by its end, the film is just swirling vomit in a rotting toilet bowl.
Jason Statham plays Chev Chelios, an assassin who's just woken up to a recorded DVD informing him that rival mobster Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo) has injected him with the Beijing Cocktail. The cocktail is a poison that, if not counteracted with adrenaline, will kill Chev in less than an hour. So Chev must find Verona quick, and produce the adrenaline needed to stay alive long enough to find him.
Crank is an exercise in style. Neveldine and Taylor work like they're the eighties lovechild of Tony Scott and Oliver Stone. Except, without the talent. It reeks of the rawness behind Oliver Stone's ears when he made Natural Born Killers. It's loud and mean and politically incorrect beyond imagination. At one point Chev yanks an innocent cabbie from his vehicle, throws him to the pavement, points at him and screams "Al Qaeda!." An elderly couple leaps from their table at a nearby café and starts beating the cabbie to a broken pulp while Chev commandeers the vehicle. This is Crank's sense of humor? Another supposedly comic scene has Eve (Amy Smart), Chev's girlfriend, being physically forced into sex in front of dozens of smiling, pointing Chinese onlookers in Chinatown.
Putrid comedy aside, however, Crank still doesn't stand tall as an action flick. Its action is without distinction or interest; only random, never-ending barrages of bullets and beatings that flly in all directions. Mr. Statham is a talented, witty action hero. Why these filmmakers can't figure out how to properly utilize him is beyond me.
Several years ago, Guy Ritchie put out a film called Snatch. The film's premise was fundamentally different from Crank's, but it shared the similarity of also being just an exercise in style. But Ritchie's style had character and speed, never willing to slow down to explain itself or apologize for the confusion it often wreaked. But as confused as we all got, Ritchie kept our pulses moving without resorting to the muck Crank lives in. This film is dirty and mean. And most disturbing is that these two filmmakers want us to be entertained by it.
-Copyright 2006 www.samseescinema.com
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
