Movie Review - Crank: High Voltage (2009)

***Updated the rating 1:00 4/17/09 and again on 9/16/09***

Starring Jason Statham and Amy Smart

Written and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor

"I'm gonna go floss my teeth with some pubes."

Seriously...that's a line from this flick. One would think that with a line like that, there's no way I could possibly like it. And you'd be right. Crank: High Voltage is a really awful movie. But it's also a movie that doesn't take itself the least bit seriously and is completely in on the joke. And because of that, it succeeds at simply being entertaining.

The story picks up immediately where the first Crank left off. Hit man Chev Chelios has fallen out of a helicopter, landed on a car, and survived. Immediately after landing, he is literally scraped off the ground with a shovel and taken to some Asian gang's headquarters where they remove his heart and replace it with an artificial one...for, you see, since Chev's heart could survive that fall, this Asian gang wants to place the heart in their 100 year-old leader. Well, Chev ain't too happy about this. He wants his heart back, but the problem is that the artificial heart only has enough battery power to last for an hour, so he needs to do whatever he can to give himself a shock and pump electricity into his body...whether that be tasering himself, grabbing high voltage wires, or having sex in public (you know, fornication is a haven for static electricity, of course). [Side Note: Why they needed this public sex scene is completely unknown to me. They do the exact same thing in the first movie...and the scene in this one literally feels like it goes on forever. Easily my least favorite scene in the movie because the writers definitely copped out by repeating something that was humorous the first time, but overkill the second.]

Now, if one were black, Asian, Hispanic, gay, or a woman, one would probably find this movie incredibly offensive...and I can't say they'd be wrong. Not falling into any of those categories, I couldn't help but laugh at every single thing onscreen. At first, you think, "Man, this movie is awful," but then about 30 minutes in, you realize that this movie wants to make you laugh. It's purpose is to be as ridiculous as possible (hence the fight scene where Chev and some other guy literally turn from humans into oversized, giant puppets and fight by picking up electrical towers and going Godzilla on each other).

It's like an 80-minute long Cartoon Network Adult Swim show. Super-crazy, making no sense whatsoever, but for some unknown reason, incredibly entertaining.

Is Crank: High Voltage a good movie? Not in the slightest. But I can't help but like it (at least, I think I can't help but like it).

The RyMickey Rating: B or D

(...Depending how I feel at the moment...I keep reading reviews and they describe scenes and I think, "Wow, that scene was awful.")

UPDATED RATING (9/16/09): B+