Confessions of a film snob: Why I loved Crank 2 - High Voltage

Wow...the lodge lives. Train wasn’t fooling around. Figured I ought to post something.

So judging by the box office returns I think it’s safe to say that I’m just about the only member of the lodge who even saw Crank 2. Yeah, I could have saw ‘The Soloist’ or ‘Sugar’ or something subtitled...but no. The second I saw the trailer for Crank 2 I knew it was my destiny to see it opening weekend.

It’s easy to dismiss the Crank movies. Jason Statham doesn’t exactly scream thespian. The man has not only starred in a Paul W.S Anderson film but also in a film from the only person ever to win a lifetime achievement award from the Razzies: Uwe Boll. The co-directors, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, have never directed anything else according to IMDB but they both worked on the magnum opus, ‘Biker Boyz’ (Neveldine is credited as the ‘extreme visual sequences creator’. Sounds like a job you would apply for in the Mountain Dew marketing department).

It has been suggested by many people that have known me that I am a film snob. So how is it that I love these movies like Joe loves jack & coke at Sounders games? I submit the following reasons:

You're crazy man. I like you....but you're crazy.

So, in case you don’t know, here’s a quick rundown of the Crank films:

Crank 1: Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) is injected with a poison that will kill him in 1 hour. In order to keep the poison at bay he has to keep his adrenaline flowing until he can get his hands on the antidote. Shenanigans ensue.

Crank 2: After surviving a fall from a helicopter thousands of feet up, Chev is captured and his heart is removed and replaced with an artificial heart. In order to keep his fake heart beating he has to keep it electrically charged until he can get his hands on his new heart. Even crazier shenanigans ensue.

I imagine the writing of the Crank movies involved the filmmakers coming up with as many weird action moments as the can ("and then he literally shoves a shotgun up a guys ass!") and then finding a connective thread to hopefully link them ('We'll cut to a godzilla style fight!")

In the course of 100 minutes you are bombarded with non stop action thats slightly off kilter from anything you'd see anywhere else. You have to at least respect the originality of it all.

Filmmaking For Dummies

The single biggest thing I love about the movies is how they're made. Crank is an A.D.D kids wet dream. Everything happens at a blistering pace that can make your senses go into overload.

But it works.

The filmmakers really employ a unique look for the film. It's a hodgepodge of styles. It's nearly all hand held, with lots of cutaways and just about every film trick in the book. It can come off as excessive, but that's kind of the point. Everything is overloaded. It's quite a rare thing for new filmmakers to have such a unique stamp to identify their work.

Return of the 80’s action film

Somewhere in the 90’s, macho action films became passé’. Stallone, Van Damme, Segal, Schwarzenegger...all of these guys used were huge action stars who all saw their careers derail at roughly the same time. Peoples interest in over the top action flicks waned. The reasons were completely reasonable. We started asking for more of our action heroes, CG became more important than the stars, we liked a little bit of intelligence mixed into our action.

But at the same time, how cool are movies like ‘Red Dawn’, ‘Commando’, etc.? We’ve all seen those movies...multiple times. What happened to those? Well they kind of morphed. I think the biggest thing that happened was the humor angle. You could do these films still, but you could no longer play them completely straight faced anymore. Audiences had keyed into how ridiculous these flicks were. The tone became much more tongue in cheek. This style led to movies like ‘The Rundown’, ‘The Transporter’ etc. I see ‘Crank’ as a natural evolution of this genre.
Enter the Haim

I love the use of casting in the Crank films. The second one in particular. Like these movies or not you can't deny their casting choices are anything short of....creative. A rundown:

Dwight Yoakam: Seeing Yoakam go from Mr. Country singer to a drugged out former doctor who watches Mortal Kombat with hookers is nothing short of a pleasure.

Efren Ramirez aka Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite: I just love seing Pedro play a drag queen with full body tourettes.

Bai Ling: Yes...that Bai Ling. I never thought I'd see the day where I'd think she was perfectly cast in a movie. She plays an absolutely psycho hooker...so she's pretty much just playing herself.

David Carradine: He's only in it briefly, but he's awesome in everything.

Geri Hallwell aka Ginger Spice: Why not?

Corey Haim: Yep somebody actually gave him a job. He rocks an epic mullet.

John De Lancie: Motha#$%$in' 'Q'

Maynard James Keenan: Don't know if y'all are fans of Tool, but Maynard rocks his comedy chops in his scene. I knew he had a funny side but I'd never really seen it before.

So there you go...they're not great films, but damn are they entertaining.

Glad to see the lodge back up and running!