Crank: HIgh Voltage

In 2006, my favorite film was Casino Royale. It took me from being a 007 fan, into becoming a HUGE 007 fan. That movie took everything I loved about James Bond and threw all the bad parts out the window. Five months ago, Eon Productions released the follow-up to Casino Royale and I really enjoyed it. I thought that it took what was established in Royale and took the next logical step. It was a great follow up. 

Back in 2006, just a few months before Casino Royale was released, Lionsgate unleashed my second favorite film of that year. CRANK! After being totally disappointed with the recently released Snakes on a Plane, Crank came along and showed me, that with a lame enough premise, any movie could be made. Crank was a HUGE surprise to me. I knew being a Transporter fan, that I would go into this movie and have a good time. I did not know that it would turn into one of my favorite films ever. It was fast, brutal, hilarious and unapologetic. They set up the rules and did not let up once. Crank was what it was and didn’t care what anyone thought.

After seeing the sequel to my favorite film of 2006 just 5 months ago I got to see the sequel to my second favorite film of 2006 today. CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE. I have to be honest, I was a little disappointed in it, but just a little bit. All of the ingredients of the film seemed to be set into place. All of our main characters were there: Chev, Eve, Orlando, Dr. Miles, Don Kim and even Ricky Varona (more on that later). The premise of the film was set up in the first few minutes, just like the previous film. In the last one, the Bejing Cocktail was injected into Chev and he was off and running. In this film, they tie up any loose ends, literally tell you to deal with anything illogical and go along for another ride. After all, it is a video game. So after we get a news update on the events that happened in Crank, we see a very alive Chev Chelios laying in a hospital getting his new Electronic Heart! BAM, the “story” is set up, and now we are ready to do this!

My main problem with Crank: High Voltage is that we do not follow Chev throughout the entire movie as we did in Crank. The fun of the first Crank film was that we got to follow a man who would stop at nothing in order to survive the day. He was on a bender and needed to fulfill his bucket list within’ the hour timeframe he was given. Crank: High Voltage does not have that same sense of urgency; especially when the “story” strays away from Chev and goes and shows you what other characters are doing. That sense of danger is not there. It does not keep your heart racing as much as the first one did. I never really felt like the Electric Charge to the heart was that important. I never felt like he really needed to get to that next electric source. I think a lot of what made the first film so good was that, even though we can tell Chev is a superhuman, he still had to protect Eve. There was a sense of danger. This film did not have any stakes. Chev was out for revenge and there was nothing stopping him from going on his rampage. He had nothing to protect, so he was not vulnerable. I know that this is a Crank movie, but every movie needs that sense of drama.

I understand that these events seem far fetched (Kalo’s twin brother Venus), but for the most part, these movies play out in a real world. When Eve says that she saw a man on youtube fall from 40,000 feet without a parachute and survive, it shows you that this story may just work in real life; but when you see the return of Ricky Verona, it just throws all of the rules out the window and I don’t think that I like it. I know that these movies are supposed to be over the top, and I like that they took it way too far in this installment, but I didn’t feel that the absurdity of Ricky Verona’s return was eased into at all. I felt that the rules established in the first film were still pretty much followed until we saw him. It turned very Sci-Fi, very very quickly. Maybe that sort of thing does exist, but God damn if it was not set up in a way that let me to believe it could actually happen. As funny as it was, it did take me out of the movie for a while and the unfortunate thing about it is, it happened way to close to the end. Before I could wrap my head around what the fuck had just happened, the movie was over.

There are a lot of odd choices made in this movie, and they grew on me more later on. A few that I thought were strange at the time were the “Godzilla scene” and the talk show scene. Let’s get to the Godzilla scene. In this scene Chev Chelios grabs some high voltage coils in a power plant and starts to hallucinate, in his hallucination he imagines himself in an epic Kaiju battle vs. the baddy. I was actually okay with this scene. I think that it was really well executed and I loved that we get a glimpse into the mind of a madman. It works for me the same way that the hallucination elevator scene worked in the first film. As for the talk show scene, I thought that was really great. It was a cool way to show Chev Chelios’ past and it was awesome that he was just as bad ass as we had hoped!

All in all, I was satisfied with the movie. I wish it just stayed with Chev the whole time instead of showing scenes without him and I definitely could have liked more time getting used to Ricky Verona’s return. I hope that they make a Crank: Part Three, just so they can do a balls out action epic, but i am not sure that will happen. If they do a part three I hope that they give Chev that ability of flight (as a friend of mine once suggested of Statham’s Frank Martin character in the Transporter films).

Crank: High Voltage had all the right components and characters, it just didn’t quite stack up to the first installment. Make no mistake, I am in favor of giving Chev Chelios another quarter for a third life and even though I did not like this film as much as I wanted to, it was still better than Shoot ‘Em Up, by leaps and bounds!