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Ace mobster hitman Chev Chelios
(Jason Statham) wakes up muzzy-brained one morning and learns through a DVD that he has been injected the poisonous "Beijing Cocktail" by fellow gangster Varona (Jose Pablo
Cantillo). He has about one hour to live before the poison stops his heart. Chev's doctor is getting ready to board a plane and manages to diagnose his condition via
cellphone. He advises Chev to find the drug that he needs to be kept on an adrenaline high to stave off the effects of the lethal cocktail. If he slows down, he might
lapse into a coma. He's not asking much of his doctor—just to live long enough to taste revenge. So Chev goes off in a frenzied search of the drug and his hoodlum
enemies—that means being the ultimate hoodlum himself, robbing shops, messing up hospitals, crash-driving through a mall in a chase with the police, sniffing cocaine, banging
heads and having public sex with his girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart). The rampage finally leads him face to face with Varona.
If you are looking for thought-provoking dialogue, a plausible plot or even an over-all message in
a film, skip Crank. Its last-name directors, billed Neveldine/Taylor, seem more concerned with packing Crank with the hazards and sensory overload of a video
game. It's life imitating a video game, and while the "hero" is on an adrenaline high, the movie seeks to put you, the viewer, in the same mode by packing every frame with
blood-dripping violence and lewdness while battering your eardrums with profanity and crude language. Technically, it achieves its aim--to wed MTV style and video game
action--and hopes its audience, seeing some worth in that, will forgive the movie its lack of respect for moderation. It's style is not even that original, resorting to
Google Earth for transitions between locations. After all that brazen destruction and suffocating mindlessness, it is ridiculously funny to watch Crank
believing it can save itself with a sober or heart-rending ending.
The movie's tagline says "Poison in his veins. Vengeance in his heart." We might as
well add "… and a lot of hot air in his head." Crank
wants to fly high on nothing. CINEMA, with all due respect, would like to express its perplexity over the MTRCB rating of Crank--hat 13 year olds may watch it.
We wouldn't even call it "entertainment" for the most mature of viewers. Whether Crank
is art or an artistic garbage heap, you'd be well off spending your movie money on something else. It could buy you five kilos of good rice, for one.
(Date Reviewed: 22 September 2006)
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