Crank
(2006)
review by Died with Boots On

"With 'Crank,' we wanted to do a movie where a guy was moving, moving, moving all the time.   It's like Speed, only instead of a bus, it's a guy.  And if he slows down, he detonates," prattles debuting writer and director Brian Taylor.   The simplicity of the plot leaves much to the directors' wild imaginations, fashioning built-in excuses to move the camera the way they wanted to move the camera and to attack the world of the character the way they wanted to attack his world.   This movie is so experimentally great, from the dizzying camera angles to the artistic color filters to making a habit of breaking the fourth wall.  I fucking love every second of it.  While some argue that this is a guilty pleasure, I beg to differ.  "Crank" is so completely bonkers that it is a welcomed reprieve from Hollywood's formulaic action potpourri, and really proves that originality is not dead.   Filmmakers like these are the adrenaline that the film industry needs, taking chances and going out on limbs in order for their vision to flesh out and come to fruition.

As far as breaking the fourth wall goes, this movie elevates that crime to an art form.   Whenever Chev Chelios (Statham) sets his sights on a destination, the film transitions using several bird's-eye stills of Los Angeles taken from the satellite "Google Earth."   When a Haitian cab driver offer's Chev some "Haitian shit," the slang and its definition flash across the bottom of the screen.  While on the phone with his doctor, Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam), Chev is given instructions to inject himself with a fifth of a syringe of epinephrine, and as this detail is spoken, a syringe appears at the bottom of the screen with a fifth filled with the adrenaline.   Later on in the film he finds himself in an elevator with a Chinese businessman who begins taking on the voices of his mother, his killer, and himself.   Finally, we see what is really being spoken and so does Chev as he reads the subtitle that was meant as a translation for the audience.  There are countless other examples that galvanize the movie and set it apart from any other piece of cinema I've ever seen.

Not only was the cinematography ungodly, but the writing was just as electrifying, with violence, romance, comedy, and drama rolled into one effortless story.   Jason Statham was a perfect choice despite his thick British accent, which just added to the eccentricity of the film.  He was given an excellent script and many opportunities to showcase his fierce stage presence.   Unlike the other performances he's turned in, he plays a sorely vulnerable trapped rat.  His right-hand man played by "Napoleon Dynamite's" scene-stealing Efren Ramirez (Pedro) is another three-dimensional character in "Crank," playing the fashionable drag queen, rave-dancing Kaylo.   As he disappears and reappears within the epic tale, his layers are peeled away to reveal even more layers, providing comic relief and a thoroughly entrancing character.   Everything about this movie feels so real despite its intentionally clichéd surrealism.  Much like this past year's painfully underrated "Running Scared" and Stephen Chow's " Kung Fu Hustle," "Crank" is a display of what is possible when a filmmaker truly has artistic vision.

The ads for this movie do not do it justice.   I was never let in on the insanity.  It has a reputation for being a campy action faux pas, but that's not what it is at all.  I wouldn't even consider in a million years classifying it as an action thriller.   There is a level of adrenaline pumping, heart-stopping violence and epic scenes of mindlessness, but that's not action.  Action is uninspired.   It's expensive and distasteful.  Sure this movie has a helicopter brawl and a gun battle and stylized fist fights, but it's done in a way that no one has ever seen before.   Sometimes it has the grit of complete fantasy, but the fantasy tugs the leash and yanks the audience back into the out of kilter reality.  The characters are so engaging because they love their seedy L.A. personalities, they love being the underbelly of society.  Neveldine and Taylor had a strict vision of where they wanted their film to go and exactly how it would be executed.   Part of what the directors had in mind was Neveldine strapping on a pair of roller blades and filming with a handheld camera.

Once Quiet Riot's Metal Health blares and a pulsating heart with the pixels of a videogame from the 80's explodes onto the screen, I felt the gearshift inside me.   The camera swaggers throughout the hallways of a house, the picture warping and blurring like an acid trip.  Chev Chelios (Statham), a thirty-something Brit, doubles over because of a headache or pains in his stomach and stumbles over to his television.  On the DVD player is a DVD with the words "FUCK YOU" written in a spiral around the disc.   Popping it into his player, he watches as a Hispanic/Chinese crime lord named Verona (Cantillo) makes light of Chev's impending death.  Stabbed in the neck with a syringe full of a poison called the "Beijing Cocktail," Chev only has until the end of the hour before the poison trickles into his bloodstream and restricts his body's ability to excrete adrenaline, killing him.   Flying into a rage, Chev annihilates his plasma TV and slides into his hotrod, speeding through the streets of Los Angeles.  Realizing his condition has stabilized, he places a call to his girlfriend, Eve (Smart), who never answers, to his friend Kaylo (Efren Ramirez) to track down the whereabouts of Verona, and finally to his doctor, Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam).   Not understanding why or how Chev is where he is, we believe the story nonetheless.  When he floors it in his car, he realizes what his superstar doctor later confirms.   He has to keep ramping it up, his adrenaline has to keep flowing, or else he dies, a dilemma that seeps into every corner of the movie and keeps the pace flying like a cheetah with wings, if cheetahs had wings (which wouldn't be too far-fetched for this movie).

"Crank" is as gung ho as a movie can get.   Whether in Silverlake or Downtown L.A. or Chinatown, the dirty and raw and gritty Los Angeles flavor is there.   Crossbred with an unforgettable cast and two devoted writer/director/cinematographers who never flinch in their approach to an entirely new genre of film, "Crank" is a movie that can't be missed at any cost.   Whether you consider it a guilty pleasure or one of the best films this year, it doesn't change the fact that this movie is the most fun you will ever have in a theater, ever.   I promise.