"You wanna give me a jump?" - 'Crank 2' Review...

It took about two full days before my thoughts slowed down to the point where I could sit down and write something coherent about Crank 2. I have been genuinely curious to know how they would follow up the original movie, which was basically an hour and a half of adrenaline-fueled pedal-to-the-metalness and almost nothing else. Sure, they’re both exploitation films and they’re both over-flowing with testosterone but you can hardly do better for pure hardcore action. Clearly this is a man's movie, but I will venture to say that there are girls out there who would get a kick out a few beers and a movie like Crank or Crank 2 (and ladies, if any of you are reading this, feel free to email me because I’ll be back in America in a couple months and I still need a date for Public Enemies).

Anyway, I don’t know what the future of action movies will look like. Sadly, at the moment I am little more than a guy who sacrifices his free time in order to lead you away from snoozefests like Bride Wars and Dan in Real Life and promote the good movies, but I will tell you one thing – after movies like Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage, car chases and gun fights are never again going to be enough.

The movie picks up exactly where the first movie left off with Chev Chelios’ freefall out of a helicopter onto the crowded streets of Los Angeles. The Chinese Mafia once again proves their resourcefulness by arriving at his landing site seconds later, where they literally scrape him off the pavement with a snowshovel (I’m really not joking about that. You have to see it, it’s classic) and ship him to their lab, where they proceed to harvest his organs.

Chelios is abducted by the Chinese Triads (if you’re not sure who they are, watch Infernal Affairs), whose leader, Poon Dong, is in ailing health and in need of a heart. You may remember that Chelios survived their deadliest poison in the first movie, when the mysterious “Beijing cocktail” was injected into him.

Poon Dong is understandably impressed and wants Chelios' super-heart for himself. So they extract his heart and replace it with an artificial one in order to keep him alive long enough for them to harvest the rest of his organs, but when they mention plans to remove an organ for which Chelios has a particular affection, he makes a…ah…quick recovery, let’s say.

By this point the stage has been set, the gates fling open and the movie explodes forward like a racehorse with it’s ass on fire.

Yeah, it’s all a set-up to drive the action, but do we really need more than that? Crank 2 has one goal: to give you the hardest, fastest action thriller you’ve ever seen, and it never slows down to please the critics. Along the way, Chev reunites with Eve, who has become a stripper, he gets his  medical advice once again from Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam), who possesses a wealth of knowledge about the inner workings of temporary hearts and such, and he finds himself pursued from all directions by Mexican and Chinese gangsters alike. And all the while he has to electrically charge his body every few minutes in order to keep his new battery-powered heart pumping.

Now, if you can understand something about a movie like that last sentence and still go into the theater on the lookout for logistical inconsistencies in the plot and a conspicuous lack of strong female leads, I invite you to just stay home and, I don’t know, maybe catch up on some reading. But the rest of you are going to love it.

People have criticized the Crank movies for having no plot, for being nothing but an excuse for hardcore, exploitative action. Yeah, so what? What’s wrong with a movie existing purely within one genre? You want to take your girlfriend on a date? Go see the Hannah Montana movie. Reminiscing about high school? Go see 17 Again. Those are perfectly acceptable diversions.

But what about those of us who want a hardcore action movie that pulls out all the stops and knows enough to make us laugh along the way? What if we want to see an action movie with butane on its breath and gravel in its guts that doesn’t dumb itself down with a moron love story and a cutesy ending?

Seriously, have we been asking too much? I’m talking to you, Bruckheimer!

Let’s put it this way. If you would have been more interested in this movie if Josh Hartnett starred instead of Jason Statham, it’s not for you. If you are not intrigued to see why Chev Chelios finds himself driving a stolen police car with two strippers in the back seat up to a picket line of porn stars on strike, good God man, I already told you. Hannah Montana! Enjoy!!

And most importantly, if you have a problem with originality in violence you are going to hate this movie.

That last one is important. At least half a dozen terrible things happen to people in Crank 2 that have never been done in a movie before, so even if you hate the movie, it's definitely something of a milestone in the evolution of the action genre. And also notice the evolution of the comic relief! There is a Japanese movie monster battle in the movie that is hilarious.

I would also like to call your attention to the performances of freaky Chinese actress Ling Bai and slightly less freaky Chinese actor Art Hsu, both of whom were nice enough to sit down with us here at Hollywire and give us exclusive interviews. Keep your eye on that Art Hsu guy, he's on his way up.

There is one scene in the movie in particular (just after the elbow scene - you'll know it when you see it) where he says the line "We can make a deal," and the complexity of emotions in that one shot betrays a level of acting talent that is generally not found in movies like this.

But no, the movie isn’t perfect, and no, you’re not going to learn anything from it. But it is very, very clear who the target audience is, and those of us within that audience are sure to have a blast. It’s gotten a lot of bad press already, but this is one of those movies that you can decide in advance if you’ll like it or not. If you watch it intending to hate it, you’ll find plenty of reasons, but if you watch it for a good time you’re gonna love it!

Note: In the final scene in the movie, the line “You gotta be f&@#ing kidding me” is uttered. I won’t reveal what happens, of course, but let’s just say that this particular bit of dialogue may never have been more appropriate. I'm counting the days until Crank 3: This Time It's Nuclear!