Friday, January 8, 2010

Crank

Definition of the word "crank": [KRANGK]:

1) An unbalanced person who is overzealous in the advocacy of a private cause. Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) is a hitman charged by West Coast Crime Syndicate boss Carlito (Carlos Sanz) with assassinating a rival gang leader, Don Kim (Keone Young). In a fit of revenge, Chelios' rival Ricky Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo) injects him with a "Beijing Cocktail" while he's sleeping. Verona really, really hates Chelios – the kind of hate that goes beyond simply murdering his foe. The Cocktail will kill Chelios in one hour if he doesn't keep his adrenaline up. As the movie cheerfully explains, there are three ways to keep said adrenaline up: fear, rage, and sex. So Chelios sets out to destroy the man who destroyed him, buying himself just a little more time through a series of increasingly reckless attempts to keep his adrenaline up.

2) A nasal decongestant used illicitly for its euphoric effects. The most obvious, and the first tactic Chelios resorts to, is drugs. He snorts them. He injects them. He snorts them again, all under the orders of his Mafia doc. This may be the first action movie that has a pro-drug message: Hey, at least it's keeping your heart rate up!

3) To increase the volume of an electronic device. Crank is loud. Big, dumb and loud, filled with kicking beats, whip cuts, video game flashes, surreal moments reminiscent of Naked Lunch (Chelios is, after all, under the influence of a great many drugs). Sometimes it's hard to make out what's going on over all the swearing and the explosions. Statham awesome martial arts talents are completely wasted here, with a few punches and a neck-break or two. Even his reputation as a driver is underplayed, although perhaps smashing a car through a mall and landing it on an escalator counts.

What's not quite as cool is the homophobia, misogyny, and racism on full display. Chelios' flamboyantly gay contact Kaylo (Efren Ramirez) doesn’t know how to fight even when he tries to help and then gets tortured, all the while being spat on with homophobic slurs. Chelios' girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart) who never picks up her cell phone because she doesn't have one, hangs around her apartment all day stoned out of her mind, and stupidly believes Chelios' claim that he's a video game programmer. Throughout the escalating attacks that Chelios tries to keep from her, Eve blathers on about shopping and her nails and her clothes. When Chelios sexually assaults her (remember that third way to keep his adrenaline up?), Eve gives in. Then they rut in the street before an alternately horrified/curious crowd of Asians. Because apparently it's not as squicky if you do it in front of people of a different race who don't speak the same language as you.

4) To turn and twist; zigzag. Chelios carves a murderous path towards his foe. In the process he picks fights with thugs, robs a convenience store, and hijacks a hospital. But there's a twist, you see: Chelios never KILLED the Tong leader! See? Chelios is actually a nice guy! Shouldn't we forgive him for all the killing and the attempted rape?

Instead of sharing this plot twist at the very last moment, it telegraphs the whole scene much too early. We already know Kim is alive well before the "twist" happens. Which concludes, thankfully, with Chelios grappling Verona as they plunge to their deaths from a helicopter.

4) Bogus; false; phony. But the movie's not over yet. Oh no, not yet. Instead of splattering like a bloody pancake batter when he hits, Chelios BOUNCES off a car, landing in front of the camera, nostrils still flaring, eyes still blinking, as his heart beats once more.

And that's when we know this is a joke. If it wasn't clear, the credits concludes with a badly pixilated video game sequence of Chelios shooting bad guys, picking up power-ups, and his digitized beating heart. So all those drugs Chelios took? Power ups. All those bad guys Chelios killed? Points. That time limit on his heart? That was the time limit on the video game.

Chelios bounced off the car because the movie is a commentary about what a video game in real life might look like. Or rather, what a certain style of video game might look like. Except nowadays, even Grand Theft Auto has more pathos and plot than this tripe.

Crank earns an additional star for the irony. But that doesn’t make it a good movie.

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