Crank: High Voltage

As the ending credits start to roll for Crank: High Voltage, there is a sequence that plays that seems to hint at a third film. As the thought of another sequel entered my head, the first question I had to ask myself was what could writers-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor possibly do that they haven't done in the first two Crank films? Both are experiments in "everything but the kitchen sink"-style action filmmaking. There's a paper-thin plot to drive the action, but mostly, the movies are about squeezing as many bizarre and frantic images into a roughly 90 minute time frame. The first movie worked, and I guess this one does, too. It just lacks the freshness of the original, since we've seen it before, and I kept on getting the sense that Neveldine and Taylor were constantly trying to top themselves and were maybe trying too hard.

If you'll recall, 2006's Crank told the story of a hitman named Chev Chelios (Jason Statham), who woke up one morning to find that he had been injected with a toxic poison, and was going to die unless he found a way to keep himself going. That film followed Chev as he raced around the city, trying to keep himself moving, and taking out his enemies in the process. He found his revenge, but the movie also ended with him dying as he fell from a helicopter, smashed into a car, bounced off of it, and crashed on the pavement. In High Voltage, Chev somehow survived, and as soon as he hit the street, he was literally scraped off the pavement by some Asian criminals with a giant spatula. He wakes up in a seedy hospital, and discovers his heart's been removed from his body and replaced with an artificial one that needs to be constantly charged up with a battery box. Before the criminals can harvest any more of his organs and sell them on the Black Market, Chev escapes, and goes on another madcap, blood-soaked romp through the city, trying to find different ways to keep his artificial heart charged up and pumping until he can find the person who has his real one.

That's pretty much all you need to know, and all you get here. Chev meets some new faces, like an obnoxious Asian prostitute (Bai Ling) who sees him as her hero after he saves her from an unsavory customer, and refuses to leave him alone during his search. He also encounters some old ones, like his girlfriend from the first film (Amy Smart), who is now working as a stripper and is surprised to see Chev alive. The plot is the last thing on this movie's mind, however. It's a literal assault on the senses as images flash across the screen, different film styles are thrown in (everything from video game animation to an out of the blue tribute to cheesy Japanese monster movies), random flashbacks that either tie into the first movie or seem to just be thrown in on a lark, and the movie just keeps on piling on as many ideas as it can. Even the cameos this movie throws at us seem to be completely off the wall. Can you think of any other mainstream movie that features porn star Ron Jeremy and former 80s icon Corey Haim in minor roles?

It's useless to talk about the performances here. Everybody just goes with it, which is the way it really should be in a movie like this. It's admirable that the cast go into some of the more off the wall scenes (such as when Chev and his girlfriend must have sex in public on a horse race track in order to keep his heart going) head on, and seemingly without any hesitation. The movie's random and frantic pace is matched only by its surprisingly sly sense of humor. There are some truly funny moments, such as a series of newscasts that pop up now and then detailing Chev's destructive dash through the city. If the movie gets to be a little much as it goes on, I think that was the idea the filmmakers had in mind. They got the chance to do a sequel (something that probably wasn't planned), so they tried to top themselves in every way, not caring about coherency or structure. The method works most of the time, but it gets a little tiresome eventually.

For all of its energy and humor, I wasn't quite as taken by High Voltage as I was the original. This is basically another run through of the first film's formula, only kicked up a couple hundred notches. This is, I guess, the only way one could do a sequel to Crank. I had fun with this movie, but it can't hide the fact that this is a sequel, and we're basically getting a rehash. A highly energized and an often very fun one, but a rehash nonetheless. And besides, the question remains - What do you do for an encore? Seeing as though this movie has a guy getting a majority of a rifle shoved up a spot of the human anatomy one wouldn't want a rife shoved up, I don't think I want to know.

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