‘Crank: High Voltage’ or “One beautiful, chaotic mess of a film” (Review)
Directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor
Written by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor
Starring – Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Clifton Collins Jr. Bai Ling, David Carradine, Corey Haim, Efren Ramirez, Dwight Yoakam and a massive amount of cameos.
After the credits of ‘Crank: High Voltage’ finished rolling, I sat there for a minute taking into account what I had just witnessed. There’s not even a word that best describes what controlled chaos I had just seen unfold before me. The first ‘Crank’ introduced audiences to the character Chev Chelios, a modern day Superman of sorts, able to survive anything thrown at him. It also established a new form of kinetic, ADD filmmaking for the YouTube generation. ‘Crank: High Voltage’ has taken everything to the next level and then some. This begs the questions; how do these films keep getting made and whom do I thank for green lighting these anarchy-filled celebrations of violence and absurdity.
‘High Voltage’ picks up immediately where the first ‘Crank’ film ended. Tough-as-nails hitman, Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) has plummeted to earth from a helicopter, and has crash-landed onto a car. He has inhumanly survived the impact with a visual queue to the audience of the character blinking. He’s immediately scooped up off the pavement by a van full of Asian gangsters who set out to harvest his indestructible heart and replace it with an artificial one. 
Chev awakens in a back-alley doctor’s office and learns he’s about to have his genitals and organs harvested. In typical Jason Statham-esq manner, he quickly and violently dispatches everyone in the room and proceeds to leave a path of destruction and dead bodies in his wake. Returning is Dwight Yoakam as Doc Miles, Chev’s one and only real friend (and possibly one of the shadiest doctors in the history of cinema). Doc informs Chev of his heart condition, thus laying the ground rules of the film. Chev must keep his artificial heart constantly charged with electricity or else he dies. Simple enough, right? Thankfully Doc can put Chev’s real heart back in as long as he can obtain it since Doc is now also a heart surgeon. Not the exact same dilemma Chev was faced with in the first film, but still a very similar situation, and one that will only lead to hilarity and mayhem.
Fans of the first ‘Crank’ film are in for a treat; ‘High Voltage’ takes the formula for the first film and ramps up everything to the tenth power. This is a loud, fast-paced, visceral, base pumping, 8 bit-graphic, assault-on-the-senses. Chev is a man on a mission as he runs across LA in a schizophrenic-madness searching for clues and answers as to where he can find his heart. He will and does anything in order to get those leads. Henchmen are hacked apart, impaled with cattle prods, shot in the head, and even in one case, sodomized with a shotgun. A film that can make light of a man with a shotgun barrel buried into their rectum clearly has a twisted sense of self-aware humor, and is not afraid to push people’s comfort levels.
All of the old faces from the previous ‘Crank’ film appear in one-way or another. Amy Smart reprises her role as Eve, Chev’s girlfriend, and his moral barometer; she has now developed a penchant for exhibitionistic sex and stripping since it’s not a ‘Crank’ film without a exhibitionistic sex scene featuring Amy Smart and Jason Statham doing every possible position in front of a screaming audience of people at a horse track. Also returning is Efren Ramirez who was seemingly killed off in the first film, but appears in an unexpected but obvious plot twist which is nevertheless entertaining. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Glenn Howerton even returns as the distressed ER worker from the first film. This becomes the filmmaker’s wink-and-nod to the audience as in “We haven’t forgotten about him either.”
As many old faces return, many more new ones are introduced in a never-ending, blink-and-you-miss-them carousel of cameos. Most notably David Carradine (with use of heavy prosthetics), Corey Haim, Spice Girl – Geri Halliwell, Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, porn legend Ron Jeremy. Additionally, various other musicians, porn-stars and UFC fighters pop-up throughout this film in a splendidly bizarre manner.
‘Crank’ is a series that would not work if any other actor besides Jason Statham had been cast to play Chev Chelios. He’s a perfect fit for this role. He’s an unstoppable force of nature when he takes on the character of Chev. For all intent and purposes, Chev Chelios is not a good person, but he’s charming in a way that audiences can’t help but rout for as he tears up the streets of Los Angeles looking to exact vengeance on those who wronged him. Statham clearly enjoys this role and making these films and that enthusiasm abundantly shines through in his work in ‘High Voltage’. Make sure to sit through out all of the credits as the filmmakers have included outtakes of some of Statham doing stunts that didn’t work out as planned.
It’s easy to dismiss this as a film for “The MTV Generation,” since the film seems to have ADD. It can never keep its attention on one thing for too long before it has to jump to something new and then fast-forward or rewind to a different event. That statement however is unfair to the film because it is something much deeper than that. The film is a satirical action film that even attempts to break the fourth wall before it cuts to the credits.
In the ‘Crank series’, filmmakers Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine have created a hyper-realistic version of Los Angeles that borders on self-destruction and chaos. This Los Angeles seems to be solely populated by ethnic stereotypes, low-level gangsters, gay bikers, porn-stars and a noticeable lack of law enforcement. It closely resembles something lifted from the Grant Theft Auto video game series. When Chev Chelios picks up a new weapon, it feels like a video game style upgrade. As soon as he finds a handgun, he then he acquires a shotgun and so on… ammunition flows like water and is discharged across the streets of Los Angeles without care for the law or innocent bystanders.
By conventional standards ‘Crank: High Voltage’ is not a good film. The story is there when it wants to be, but for the most part the narrative is very thin. Characters have little depth and it’s an incredibly vulgar film. With all of these things against it, ‘Crank: High Voltage’ is one hundred percent entertaining. It is a film where all conventional social rules and norms are thrown out the window and the audience is force-fed an entirely new brand of frenzied, video game inspired and energy-drink-fueled filmmaking. This is a film to see with your friends and marvel at the insanity that is unfolding before you. This film is bold enough to show a stripper getting shot through her fake breasts and then blatantly displays the silicone pouring out and deflating amid her horrified screams. It’s not a subtle film. As much as I would love to see Jason Statham become an even bigger star, this is the perfect film franchise for him and is what other Jason Statham films want to be. ‘High voltage’ is pure fun and is unlike anything else to come to theaters this year. Highly recommended.
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