Have you ever been drunk, on the internet, watching videos on YouTube, and happened across something really wrong, like someone hitting themselves in the head with a hammer? And you know that you shouldn't be laughing at what you're watching, but you can't stop? If so, the sensations generated by a viewing of Crank: High Voltage will be familiar ones.Here are the facts:
1. When the end credits began to roll, the first thing out of my mouth was, "FFFFFuck. What the fuck."
2. I emerged from the theater dazed, twitchy and squinting, with Mike Patton's hard-driving score bouncing around in my head, feeling as though I was about to be assaulted or arrested.
3. When people I know describe a film, and they use terms like "mindless and needlessly graphic violence" or "gratuitous sexuality," they are insulting it. In Crank 2 they are points of pride, cinematic tools applied with skill. I believe that there is a place in cinema for such things. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, Crank 2's writer/directors, have found that place, and are probably hanging out there doing poppers with Takashi Miike and John Waters, who have been there for years.
4. A quick summary: Chev Chelios, hardened killer, is "rescued" from the certain death he faced at the end of the first film by Chinese Triad surgeons who remove his heart (while he watches!!!). They replace the heart with an artificial one, in order to keep him alive until they can harvest the rest of his organs. Chelios slaughters the surgeons and escapes, intent on getting his heart back. For the rest of the film's running time, Chelios fucks, shoots and stabs his way across Los Angeles, through strip clubs and whorehouses and racetracks. He steals cars and crashes them. He battles policemen. In order to keep his artificial heart going, he has to "power up" by running electricity through his body, which leads to fun scenes involving tasers, jumper cables, and fuseboxes.
5. The Chev Chelios character will be the one that Jason Statham is remembered for. He won't be thought of as the Transporter, or "the guy from Snatch," which was how I always thought of him. He's Chev Chelios, first and forever.
6. Bai-Ling, as a tough and persistent prostitute, is officially awesome. Best line: "I'm clean like a baby!"
7. Amy Smart is fantastic again, as she was in the first film, but now she's cute AND trashy AND bad-ass.
6. A turning point in the film: After we watch a man cut his own nipple off with a knife, in slow, excruciating close-up, we are treated to an even longer, more torturous close-up of the removal of the second nipple. That was when I knew that Neveldine and Taylor were men who truly did not give a fuck, who were pushing things as far as they could. Men to be feared and respected.
7. I found myself thinking, “How long has it been since Fight Club came out?” It's been TEN YEARS since Fight Club came out. But that was the last time I remember feeling this way on the way out of a theater, like I'd been punched in the throat. Before that, it was Natural Born Killers. Neveldine and Taylor play with film grammar in fun ways, and at a challenging level of intensity.
8. The kind of jokes about genitalia and racial stereotypes that would normally have me rolling my eyes, had me laughing.
9. Crank: High Voltage is not for everyone. If you have a problem with greasy close ups of smacked buttocks and foreign-object anal penetration and strippers gettting shot through the head and/or implants, it probably isn't your thing. If you play a lot of Grand Theft Auto, on the other hand, you'll feel right at home.
10. Also: vomit, public sex, porn stars, Tourette's syndrome, it's all in there.
It's hard to believe that an American film, shot in Los Angeles with studio money is making these moves, and making them with real, effective humor. We've become so desensitized as a culture, that it is no longer surprising to see mass media that attempts to be shocking, but it is surprising to see art that succeeds in being shocking and yet is still a lot of fun.
Not everyone is going to like this movie. Or maybe everyone will. Everyone worth talking to, at any rate.
