Starring: Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Dwight Yoakam, Efren Ramirez, Ling Bai, Clifton Collins Jr., David Carradine, Corey Haim, Geri Halliwell

Directed by: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor

Lionsgate

The Official Site of Crank: High Voltage

Discuss Crank: High Voltage on the boards!

The last time we saw Chev Chelios he had just bounced off an old man’s car and slammed into the pavement of downtown Los Angeles after falling a thousand feet out of helicopter. It was the first moment of a 90-minute chase across the city that included murder, transvestites and public sex acts, where the film slowed down enough for the audience to catch their breath. Chev had successfully killed the men that injected Chinese poison into his heart and was free to die with all his scores settled. Then his open eye, bleeding and starring at you through the camera, blinked.

As the screen faded to black and a shallow heartbeat introduced the credits I couldn’t help but be excited that this wasn’t the end of such an incredible character. That his hectic pacing refused to be slowed down by something as frivolous as death. What I never took into consideration was how perfect Chev’s death was as an ending to his story. The ultimate exclamation point to Crank’s message of pure anarchy. There never should have been a Crank 2

Crank: High Voltage picks up on that L.A. street next to that old man’s dented car where Chev is pealed off the blacktop and tossed into a van. He wakes up months later with a prosthetic heart – something to keep him alive long enough to harvest the rest of his organs. (Like that’s really any more bizarre than anything mentioned in the first paragraph…) He of course breaks free and begins hunting for his heart, killing, knocking out or sexually assaulting anyone that gets in his way.

To keep his robot heart beating Chev has to periodically shock himself. It’s a big leap from the dilemma of the first film, which featured Chev finding unique ways of keeping his adrenaline up, but it leads to some interesting scenes involving jumper cables, tasers, dog collars and the inventible… public sex acts.

The new premise might seem like a jump in logic but that’s High Voltage’s bread and butter. The first major conflict ends with a man having a shotgun shoved up his ass. Mysterious twin brothers out for revenge and floating heads on life support are only a few of the sharks this movie willingly jumps. It’s best to keep in mind that the Crank franchise is basically a live action videogame including everything from the unnecessary subtitles to Mario Kart sound effects. You’d do well to suspend belief here.

I was perhaps too harsh in saying that there never should have been a Crank 2. To me it seems almost obvious that they’re setting up a third film and part two is merely the bridge between them. The very violent, chaotic bridge that’s been condemned for years and is a little bit on fire. High Voltage plays like one extended action sequence between two plot points. It’s unwavering and unyielding in its energy but it also has very little to say. Where the first movie used its style to help tell a story of revenge in L.A., High Voltage’s plot seems to be taking a back seat to experimental filmmaking and a few dozen great action scenes. It looks fantastic but is really just the big explosion before the last explosion. High Voltage is heavily flawed, incomplete on its own and desperate to continue a story that rightfully should have stopped. But as a Crank movie it’s exactly what you want it to be. High energy, uniquely shot, completely insane and tons of fun. Things like “where the story’s going� seem so insignificant somewhere around the point that Chev’s head catches on fire. As he burned in the sun giving me the finger, I realized I was watching one of action’s best modern icons… and I wanted his adventure to continue.

Rating: 5 out of 10 - If I’m looking at high Voltage objectively and grading it for the masses then a rating of 5 is very fitting. It’ll offend as much as it will impress. As a Crank movie it succeeds in what it wants to do and would probably duke it out somewhere closer to 7 or 8 in the ratings just based on its twisted sense of humor. But appealing to Crank fans isn’t going to keep the average moviegoer from walking out on it.

If you own the first Crank then you might as well add this one to the collection. It’s less accomplished in concept but has the same free spirit, style and energy that made the first film so original.

For one reason or another I struggled with this strip. It was just one of those projects that just did not want to be finished. Ever. I decided not to push it and to let it evolve naturally to the point where I was working on it on and off throughout all of yesterday. I’d finished it before last night’s Triple Feature but had not posted it and was mortified when one of the other guys mentioned a mysterious twin brother for Chev as a joke. Nothing stings quite as much as being beaten to the punch. Especially when you put about 6 hours in on making that punch look good.

I’d like to think that the joke is as much about the bate and switch that Irv is offering Ned (our real life car tender) as it is about Kev Chelios but that’s really just me grasping at straws. Today’s lesson is just finish and post the damn comic already because if you won’t someone else will.

Thanks for reading. Ther will be much more soon.