Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor's Crank 2: High Voltage (2009)

What's up homiez? Check this out: Crank 2: High Voltage (2009) begins almost immediately after the events of Crank (2006); so if you don't want any spoilers of the original skip this review. However this review is of Crank 2 is spoiler-free, and it's time to roll on...The last time our antihero Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) was seen, he was falling out of a helicopter at a rapid rate, having dispatched his nemesis, Ricky Verona. A hit and a bounce off of a car (hospitalizing its elderly driver, as newsreporter Fish Halman (John de Lancie) relates) and Chelios lands in the middle of a busy intersection in downtown Los Angeles...only to get scooped up quickly, like roadkill, by a crew decked out in black and whisked away in a hearse-like van. Chelios is on the operating table where Chinese doctors are performing some back-alley open-heart surgery. Facially-pierced Triad, Johnny Vang (Art Hsu) enters and as a sign of respect flicks some ashes of his cigarette into Chelios's open torso. The doctors remove Chelios's heart and replace it with an artificial one. As he recovers on the operating table, in preparation for the Triads to harvest more of his organs, next one being his baby-maker, Chelios awakens and takes out a few foes, and it's time to hit the streets to find his pumper in Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's Crank 2: High Voltage (2009).

Immediately, the pacing of Crank 2 stands out: in the original, every time that Chelios' heart slowed down, the events of the film sped up, adrenaline-style, as Chelios had to engage in more furious and daring action to keep his "strawberry tart" going. As he steps out into the bright sunlight, to a wicked score by Mike Patton, Chelios feels all right. In fact he feels pretty good. He has a battery pack around his waist that's going to keep his heart beating regularly. Only after his heart slows down, after he gives a shotgun anal probe to a henchman, does Chelios notice that the little green lights on his battery pack are diminishing. He gets a little juice from the car that he hotwires, and during his escape, Chelios calls a surprised Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam), who's interrupted from his butt slapping of his assistant, Dark Chocolate (Julanne Chidi Hill), to get another cell-phone diagnosis: once that battery-pack dies, Chelios's artificial heart will begin to run on a temporary internal one. Chelios will have less-than-an-hour's juice to go on. Find your heart, Chev, says Doc Miles, and I'll put it in for you. The pacing of the film mimics Chev's condition again: this time Crank 2 moves at a relatively leisurely pace, punctuated by some intense action when Chelios needs to get a dose of electricity. After Chelios crashes through his getaway car windshield his battery pack is kaput. Where the hell is Johnny Vang?While Crank had some colorful, comic-book characters, the pacing of Crank 2 allows for more of a display and insight into some of these characters, including the addition of a few new ones. At the local "social club," Chelios rescues Chinese prostitute, Ria (Ling Bai), who is immediately smitten with her savior. Her outlandish broken English is often subtitled, and Ria is a kinetic addition of kink and nonsensical energy who helps Chelios out to find Johnny Vang. Poor Kaylo is no more, but his twin brother, Venus (Efren Ramirez), pops up. He's on a quest to avenge the death of his brother, but Chelios's tells him that he already taken care of that. Feeling a little pity for Venus (and getting himself some extra help), Statham's Chelios tells him that if he finds the guys that he's currently looking for, then Venus will get his revenge (albeit indirectly). Venus's mock heroics are hilarious and his character is a flamboyant and comedic addition to the action. How about Randy (Corey Haim)? Randy is the two-toned mullet-sporting boyfriend of Lemon. Who the eff is Lemon? Lemon is Eve (Amy Smart), who is now working the pole at a gentleman's club, since Chelios was supposedly dead. Haim's Randy is little more than a cameo character. However, in his few scenes, the opportunity to see Haim act like a buffoon, again, with some truly hilarious dialogue is priceless. I grew up watching Haim, and it's good to see him ham it up again. Smart's Eve is more than eye candy here, and she has some terrific scenes again with Statham. She has a fantastic scene later with Randy and dishes out some of her own wicked action and one-liners throughout. Hsu's Johnny Vang is a psycho straight out of the Kakihara school of thugs and he's an excellent foil and nemesis to Statham's Chelios. A very special actor, who recently passed away, is amazing in a small but pivotal role. Finally, Clifton Collins Jr. plays "El Huron," a new crime boss who steals all of his scenes. Statham, Yoakam, and the rest of the players from the previous Crank are just as excellent here.

Despite a low budget, the duo of Neveldine and Taylor once again, stylistically are impressive. There are a bunch of creative scenes of Statham getting some juice, like jumping his nipple and tongue from a car battery to sticking his finger in a cigarette lighter in the back seat of a mobster's limo. Neveldine and Taylor push the ridiculousness of the story to excellent effect, especially when Chelios and Vang meet in an unexpected rendering of the two's confrontation or a fun sequence involving some sassy protesting strikers from a San Fernando Valley industry. Some excellent violent, bloody, and exciting shootouts occur (with Statham getting the opportunity to use another body shield in one of Crank 2's most impressive visual sequences). When Statham and Smart are together on screen, the action is always endearing and usually audacious. Crank 2 has multiple visual styles but unlike Crank, Neveldine and Taylor have refined their overall look, as the film feels more organic and seamless. The action and other ridiculously fun set pieces really stand out in this visual style. Not to mention Mike Patton's score (who I'm a huge fan of) which is absolutely brilliant.

Crank 2 is a worthy sequel to the original, and I hope that this duo keeps making sequels. Chelios's heart might not make it for any subsequent ones, but my heart is certainly with this talented writing-and-directing duo, skipping a beat in anticipation for their next film.

Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor's Crank (2006)

Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's Crank (2006) is my favorite superhero-cum-antihero film of recent years. Villian Ricky Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo), often decked out in Joker-ish purple, has left our antihero, Chev Chelios (Jason Statham), a sweet gift: a dvd labeled "Fuck You." As Chev grabs his heart, he watches himself incapacitated on the tube while Verona is giving him an injection of poison of the Chinese-synthetic type, guaranteed to deliver a slow painful death. Shit-talking Verona smirks and wishes our antihero "good-bye," while Chelios summons about every ounce of anger in his body. He hits the streets in his vintage wheels off to kill Verona in the most heart-racingly fashion as possible.

Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, a talented writing and directing duo, create a film in video-game, comic-book fashion, which others have tried unsuccessfully, that has all of the alluring aspects of the styles' aesthetics combined with an extremely literate script. The duo wrote an excellent script for the dark thriller, Pathology (2008), directed by Marc Schölermann, which was hampered slightly by a stiff leading actor but was nonetheless a terrific film. Crank, their debut film as writers and directors, initially appears as the type of film geared towards the ADD crowd but it's too focused to be written off as such. The visuals and audio are cutting-edge quality and technology, and the duo integrates myriad styles into the film. Crank has enough retro qualities to prevent the film from being too glossy; and of course, its humor, which is dark and often nasty and very funny, is Crank's biggest allure. Most of the humor is delivered by antihero Chelios in a stellar performance by Statham.

A man on a mission, Chelios is off to look for Verona. At a nearby club, one of Verona's would-be accomplices doesn't know where Verona is but is able to give Chelios some coke and with a little angry attitude, Chelios picks a fight with the club's patrons. The coke and the aggression give our antihero some pep, and when shady Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam) gives him his cell-phone diagnosis that the poison will kill him if he slows down, Chelios knows that he has to keep a furious pace up in order to exact his revenge. Doc recommends epinephrine, so it's off to the hospital.

Crank opens with a first-person p.o.v., hits the streets for the quick cuts and fast pace in Chelios's vintage wheels (or on foot), which include a trip through the mall Blues Brothers-style, goes underwater for a quick underworld meeting, saturated colors litter interiors, on-screen text beyond subtitles (does Chelios look like he has what written on his forehead), and of course, a bit of blood is going to spray and stream, including the best use of a body shield since Governor Schwarzenegger's stint in Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall (1990). This is just a sample of Neveldine and Taylor's visuals, and their use of audio is both a superior accompaniment and an accomplishment on its own. Some of the fun stuff is watching Chelio's heart slow down before he bursts back into action. With a nifty dissolve, the camera x-rays his chest to show a couple slow pumps but its the heartbeats which ring in the viewer's ears. The audio of the heartbeats throughout Crank are not only a signal of Chelios's mortality but a nifty cue for the next exciting action sequence which often tops the preceding one. The music is a fantastic mix of odd and old jingles from Quiet Riot, an extremely humorous use of Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy Breaky Heart," Loverboy, and NOFX, for example. Mixed into the soundtrack are little audio touches that break the "fourth wall," such as the use of reverb, cd-skipping sounds on some audio, and classic video game blips. Not least of all, the sound design and construction of the duration of the film would give any mixing board or speakers a work out and it's an impressive display of sound.

Most of the offbeat humor and detail of specific sequences in Crank should really be experienced by its viewer and not related here. I will say however, that Statham gives a tour-de-force performance in Neveldine and Taylor's true coup d'etat of cinema. Statham gives Chelios a sharp and sardonic edge combined with a ferocious intensity and feeling. His soft bits come with his girlfriend, Eve (Amy Smart), and the two actors have an immediate on-screen chemistry. The lighter humor, still punctuated by some nasty bits, comes with these two characters who also deliver one of Crank's most audacious scenes. The dialogue between Chelios and Verona is priceless, as each manages to push the right button to infuriate the other. Their trash talking becomes a version of boys in the schoolyard armed with machine-gun wit. In between all of the fun stuff in Crank, Neveldine and Taylor litter the scenery and random shots with some truly odd compositions. The action sequences are phenomenal, and Crank's overall dark and perverse edge is extremely intriguing and attractive.Neveldine and Taylor delivered a sequel to Crank in 2009 and their forthcoming Gamer (2009) is one of my most-anticipated cinema trips this year. Crank is punk rock cinema played at high volume. I absolutely love this film. See it.