Crank 2 High Voltage Movie Review





			RETURN TO HOMEPAGE

CRANK 2: F*#K IT

So let’s talk about Crank 2: High F*#king Voltage.

Yeah, I know, you’re probably thinking, “Dude, come on, there are like some huge movies coming out right now, don’t waste time on some sh*tty sequel that didn’t even make 10 million opening weekend.”

I hear you. I understand you. I was you… until I saw it.

Because now, its blitzkrieg of avant-garde cinematic anarchy is tattooed on my shell shocked brain. The heart palpitations are fading, I’ve stopped sweating, but my teeth are still chattering and my knuckles are still white from manic-editing-seizure-induced-fist-grips.

Watching this movie was like being dropped out of an airplane without a parachute with my eyes taped open, forced to star at the earth, the speeding terra firma first of the Grim Reaper, about to KO me into oblivion.

I’m here to talk about what I strongly believe is the ballsiest main stream f*#k-the-system movie since Fight Club and the most artistic, Zeitgeist-captured-on-celluloid-representation-of-reality since American Beauty.

Yes, I’m talking about Crank part f*#king 2, and yes, I might just be a little crazy.

To make sure this all has some logic and sense to it, let’s start with an establishing shot – Today, the movie industry, the motivation for movie creation and how the artist relates to it and to us, the movie hungry audience, that needs story in order to survive.

And, just a warning….this review contains spoilers. So, if you want surprises, read this after you watch.

We live in a scary place in movie history. The battle between inspiration and replication, between creativity and profitability as the reason a movie is green lit has never been this dire.

On the one hand you have cinema the art from: The ultimate means of multiple sensory story communication and entertainment. A medium uniquely capable of probing the depths of the human soul with the viewer as active participant instead of a passive experiencer.

On the other side, the major producer and controller of this power – Story Corp. It’s motivation: profit, which is nothing new. The nickname for the movie industry since its creation has been show business, not show art.

And for its first hundred years, the tug of war between art and commercialism was fairly even…until the beginning of this millennium, of this decade.

With technology finally capable of bringing our wildest fantastic imaginings to the big screen, comic books, novels, TV shows, cartoons and anything with an already established audience is being sought like the holy grail - the reward: millions of automatic nearly 100 percent guaranteed Box Office Dollars.

The struggle for the art of cinema to survive in this environment is a desperate one. Like a Polar Bear exhausted from swimming miles in a Global Warming melted ever expanding ocean, searching for a piece of ice large enough to support its weight. Art is becoming extinct, it’s fading from the motion picture as the motivation force behind it, the spark for its creation.

Why is this important? Because, we, as people, need art. It rejuvenates our souls, inspires our minds and helps us make sense of our world; a world sometimes too overwhelming to perceive accurately, to unstable to pinpoint, to chaotic to understand totally.

My favorite definition what an artist is, and why we need them, comes from Marshall McLuhan, maybe the first techno-philosopher , who revolutionized the way we look at all media and was most popular during the 1960s, a time when, much like the late 1990s and early 2000s, life is overloading our 56k modem processing minds with terabytes of information per second.

Regarding The Artist he said:

“The present day is only faced in any generation by the artist. The artist is prepared to study the present as his material. The artist comes in contact with the present and produces an avant-garde image, which is terrifying to contemporaries. He alone has the sensory awareness to tell us what our world is made of. He is more important than the scientist. “

Echoing this idea, and getting a little spiritual, is modern day psychonaut, Terrence McKenna, discussing art said:

“Arts task is to save the soul of mankind, and that anything less is a dithering while roam burns, because it’s the artists who are self selected for being able to journey into the other. If the artist cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found.”

Marshall McLuhan: Dude who knew about some real-life sh*t.

Combining these two idea, here’s a list of other art/artist interpreting the times, rejuvenating the soul related quotes:

But that's what being an artist is - feeling crummy before everyone else feels crummy. --The New Yorker

Man will begin to recover the moment he takes art as seriously as physics, chemistry or money. --Ernst Levy

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. --John Updike

Art is the triumph over chaos. --John Cheever

Art is the struggle to understand. --Audrey Foris

It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man. --Loren Eiseley, The Night Country, 1971

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. --Aristotle

Art is when you hear a knocking from your soul - and you answer. --Star Richés

You might be thinking, “Dude, you’re using these quotes to set up a review of Crank 2! Isn’t that overdoing it?”

At first, I thought so too, but the more I think about Crank 2: High Voltage, or, really, the more I try to remove it’s shrapnel-scattered imagery from my Grey Matter, the more I realize it’s a work of true art.

It makes sense of a lot of the elements of our world, and that amazes me as much as it scares the sh*t out of me.

Let’s start with the fact that this is a sequel. It picks up right where the first left off, literally, at the exact moment the first one ends- and that’s the only thing it has in common with it, continuous story, the same characters, but, wow, does it ever raise the bar, taking it all to the next level.

The concept and story from the first movie is absurd, simple and brilliant. Basically, dude gets injected with the “Beijing Cocktail”, a drug that slows adrenaline in the body, eventually causing the heart to stop. So the solution of the movie is simple, the main character, Chev Chelios, has to keep his heart pumping, keep the adrenaline flowing to stay alive long enough to get the cure as well as revenge.

If this sounds familiar, it’s inspired by the 1994 insane Die-Hard-on-a-(blank) action adventure, Speed, (a.k.a. The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down – according to Homer Simpson) where the bus couldn’t go under 50 miles per hour or it would explode.


	+


	+


	=

Crank is basically, Speed inside of a person. So in that sense mix in D.O.A. or Escape From New York.

The first Crank got more outrageous and absurd every time Chev tried a new way to get a jolt of adrenaline.

In the original, there was still some believability to it, a very tiny, tiny, tiny shred of possibility, mainly because the people were somewhat human still, they had motivations, emotions and felt the impact of their actions on each other...kinda.

From the start here, of the sequel, we know what to expect – a live action video game. The opening credit sequence is done Atari-Old School Nintendo style.

And then it picks up with Chev falling out of the helicopter, he hits a car then bounces on the ground, blinks and the Chinese Triads pull up in a van and literally peel him off the road using a shovel, indicating the comedic silly Looney Tunes tone the rest of the movie will have.

If Salvador Dail, Terry Gilliam, 1990’s Tarantino and Chuck Jones co-directed an action movie, it might look something like this.

I’m not gonna summarize the movie here, just review some key points. The next scene is our journey down the rabbit hole, an entrance into the surreal universe.

Chev’s heart is taken out during the most unsanitary operation in movie history and it’s replaced with an artificial one, that, of course for story driving purposes, has limited battery power.

So the video-game-power-up structure of this movie is just like the first. Chev juices himself with electricity, runs around and does crazy sh*t for 10 minutes, and has to find another source of life, cut, paste, repeat till he reaches the final level and boss and conquers the game.

What makes this movie stand out is the filmmaking technique, and the way humans are portrayed.

First, the cinematic craftsmanship – it’s almost like writers/directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor Mad-Scientist-linked the camera to the brain of a male teenager with, Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder while he was playing Grand Theft Auto, while listening to two MP3 players simultaneously, in one ear techno, in the other metal, while at the same time clicking through porn images.

If you don’t know what ADHD is going into this movie, you’ll know coming out, you may even have it as a result - because don’t watch this movie in HD, you watch it in ADHD.

This movie is pure animalistic sensory overload. Violence, sex and more violence. It’s a Matrix style USB cable direct link to the reptilian center of the brain.

And that brings up the second area that makes this movie stand out - the portrayal of human beings.

It’s either a laziness to create and then failure to capture “classic” human behaviors, or, it’s a bold presentation of the next evolution: from human to humanoid - as predicted in the 1976 Oscar winning movie Network by “The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves” Howard Beale when he says, “Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It’s a nation of some 200 odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white-steel-belted bodies totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods. Well, the time has come to say, ‘is dehumanization such a bad word?’ Whether it’s good or bad, that’s what is so. The whole world is becoming humanoid: creatures that look human, but aren’t. The whole world, not just us. We’re just the most advanced country, so we’re getting their first. The whole world’s people are becoming mass-produced, programmed, numbered and…”

Crank 2: High Voltage explores the schizophrenic reality where 19^th century meets 21^st. A world where Illusion has become reality. A world where people have become Frankensteins, 2-Demensional clichés born from the spewed programming of the 2-Demensional fantasy world of the TV screen. A world obsessed with the “out there” not the, “in here.” A world best characterized by Ned Beatty’s character Arthur Jensen in Network, “All anxieties (are) tranquilized, all boredom (is) amused.”

They’re stereotypes, but more than that, they’re a warning, an alarm, of people overwhelmed by pop culture constantly shoved down everyone’s throats in all forms of media used to distract from questions philosophers courageously faced in the early part of the 20^th century. Like Chev must keep moving to stay alive, so too are people running from themselves into the arms of anything that promises momentary relief from existential crisis, like a soothing parental hug.

There is the Triad gangster who Chev chases around because he has his heart.

This gangster feels no pain, has no backstory, laughs at violence and seems to only react to hyper-violent stimuli. It’s almost like he’s in Chev’s situation, but instead of needed electric jolts to stay alive, he needs extreme violence stimulant to the brain.

“Me love you long time...wait, what is love? You have to be human to feel that.”

You used to be my girlfriend, now you’re a pop culture cliche.

Do we really need to see Dwight Yoakam spanking anybody?

In a world filled with machine guns, real men still fight with swords.





		The “Humanoid” speech starts around the 7:20 mark.



	*The battle is between perceived and programmed reality, which Crank 2* reflects.**

Then there’s Bai Ling playing a prostitute named Ria. She’s one of the most disturbing characters I’ve ever seen on screen. First, because she looks like a Concentration Camp Hooker, and second, because she acts like a shell shocked zombie Vietnam Vet version of the “me love you long time” girl from Full Metal Jacket. It’s like she’s been lobotomized to only think of sex, having it, wanting to give it and oh yeah, swearing every other word. Chev saves her and all she wants to do is f#k him. She’s like a beaten down dog that’s clinging onto the first person to treat her nice….I still don’t know if the performance is Razzy worthy or Oscar worthy. Even characters we liked from the first movie have lost their humanity. Amy Smart, Chev’s girlfriend Eve, is now a stripper, because...she just is. There’s never any reason given for her new choice of profession, especially since she was a decent girl in the first one, until that is when Chev f#ked her in public and everyone cheered them on. Here she’s with some club-bouncer-pimp who’s also obsessed with sex and violence. And because it happened in the first one, Chev and Eve bang out in public again, this time on a racetrack as horses are jumping over them and Eve’s looking at huge horse cck and for some reason she’s enchanted, yes, mesmerized to see it. Then there Dwight Yoakam’s doctor character…he’s back, but this time even less sympathetic. When we first meet him he’s slapping the ass of a ho named “Chocolate.” He even says the line “Is Doc Miles gonna have to slap a bitch,” which is total dialog porn – said because the movie knows the audience will laugh instead of staying true to the moment of the story. There’s a scene of a cougar-esque psychologist giving advice to a patient where she’s acting like a horny porn star as she seductively says, “You have to get back out there, get on your feet and start f#king” or some skin-rubbing-movie dialog like that. If that’s not enough, Chev runs into a porn star picket line, then a bloody strip club shoot out and massacres a gang bang bordello where he decapitates some dude who’s head we see fly out a window while Bai Ling foot-kick-beats some guys dck to a bloody pulp. There are moments of people puking, a dude slicing off both his nipples - and no the camera does not cut away. A dude’s elbow being samurai sworded off - and no the camera doesn’t cut away, A guy’s head in suspended animation - and yes he talks. And all the guns, bullets, blood and breasts you’d ever want to see in an action movie that isn’t officially erotica. In Italy this would be considered a Mondo film – which is defined as a film depicting sensational topics, scenes and situations. This was started in the 60’s with movies like Mondo Cane*, a pseudo documentary about strage shit people do around the world, much of it was faked, but it influenced the Faces of Death series that was popular in the 80’s. This is also very Gonzo…which means being a part of what’s going on. The filmmaking style here doesn’t give you that viewer separation, you feel like your right there. It also owes a huge thanks to Run Lola Run. See that 1998 brilliant Tom Tykwer postmodern action movie and you’ll see a lot of Crank. Most of all this is a Grindhouse Film. Which means a a type of film that contained large amounts of sex, violence and bizarre subject matter. Even more so, it’s an amazing Grindhouse Film. Wayyyyy better than the Tarentino/Rodriquez homage from a few years back. When compared to this, those movies look rated Disney G. The question has to be asked, how did this movie get financial backing and then a wide release?

Either Lionsgate is a studio that supports the artists vision first and worries about profits second or Taylor and Neveldine filmed two versions at the same time, showed their bosses the safe PG-13 version, and sunk this one into distribution, because, while watching it, there’s this feeling that somebody got away with something.

This is a true cinematic cut-de-tat.

Not since Fight Club have I left a movie saying to myself ,”How did this get Story Corp. released?”

It’s like it’s a film school grad project. It takes so many risks, uses so many techniques, incorporates so many elements of 13-25 year old pop culture life, puts it in a blender, dumps in a bunch of Meth and LSD, pours it on a plate and smashes our face into it.

It brims with creativity. It’s an onslaught stimulus. It feels like you’re trying watching every TV channel in the world at once with your eyes locked open Clockwork Orange-style while intravenously being jolted with Red Bull.

Emotionally, there’s nothing.

It’s not anchored in the characters, we don’t know who these people are, how they feel so as a result we don’t know how to feel. Another metaphor for the 21^st century, information and stimulus bombarding us so fast that we don’t have time to process, no time to ask, “How does that make me feel?” or “What does this mean, to me, to society, to the future?”

And that’s because this is a video game featuring the humanoids we might become instead of the humans we once were.

The soundtrack is risky, creative and self referential. There’s a moment when Chev starts whistling along with it, as if he can hear. It’s crafted by Mike Patton, best known for being the front man of Faith No More in the late 80’s early 90’s. This enhances to the movie’s rebellious natures and overloads another sensory organ with it’s chaos.

It’s a tornado made of mondo-gonzo-meta-action-porn: all the right moves with no emotion, we react to what the characters are doing but we don’t know why or feel the impact of what it means – it’s empty, like a roller coaster that won’t stop. At first it’s fun, then the second time around we still get a kick out of it, but soon we realize it’s not stopping, we get queasy and we want to get off, but we can’t because there is no off, all of life has become the thrill ride! There are no belts holding us in our seats, we can go anywhere and everywhere, but we can’t get off constantly getting off.

That’s what our entertainment obsessed world has become and that’s why Crank 2: High Voltage is the most artistic movie so far this year. It senses the Wind of Change and it puts it into form for us to see, feel and interpret.

And it’s mad at us for allowing this to be the standard that we want. It’s like the idealist who’s become a sarcastic cynic screaming at us to look at the sh*t we’re swimming in. It’s the father who caught his son smoking, so to teach him a lesson, locked him in a closet with a pack and told him he had to smoke them all, only to discover that when he opened the door, the pack had been smoked and the son was asking for, “more please.”

Crank 2: High Voltage scares the f*#k out of me – It’s like that nursery rhyme, “What are little boys made of, frogs, snails and puppy dog tails, what are little girls made of, sugar, spice and everything nice.” We’ll if we could adapt that, to ask, what’s early 21^st century American pop culture made of, the answer would be, “Reality TV, mainstream porn, violent video games, technology, stereotypes and dehumanizing disconnection and drugs.”

The movie ends with one of the best self-referential moment 4^th wall breaks in movie history. Chev has climbed up an electric pole and grabs the insulators where he’s juiced with so much power that he flies off, hits the ground and starts on fire. He finishes off the bad guys while being on fire and then as his flesh is burning away, he laughs insanely and gives us a flesh melting like ice cream middle finger.

I laughed for like a minute as the credits rolled. It’s like Ferris Bueller stripped away the 80’s kitsch and nostalgia, having been defiled of his innocence after maybe having had seen Sloane, Cameron, his mother, father and Jeanie sodomized by Mr. Rooney in after school detention. His cutesy “gee-aw-shucks” attitude has been replaced with a misanthropic psychotic hedonism.

That’s the message from the filmmakers, chill out audience, we know we’re making an absurd surrealistic insane action packed adrenaline pumping cinematic postmodern orgy, if you were expecting rules, f*#k you. There are no rules here. F your rules.

But, is it suppose to be taken lightly, as an experiment in pushing the boundaries of cinema and of the audience’s taste, or is this movie a mirror of us, of what we’re becoming? Is it a warning of where we’re heading?

Have our hearts been stolen from us, and replaced, unknowingly, or so slowly we didn’t noticed, by a mechanical version that needs content jolts to keep beating, to keep us going?

Are we at a place where the next rush has to be stronger than the previous one?

Are we becoming less human, less connected with others, relating to each other on the most animalistic primal level where we don’t care how or why we are the way we are, all we want is the stimulation of the here and now with a hip heart pumping thought distracting soundtrack in the background?

I can’t recommend Crank 2: High Voltage for everyone. It’s like watching an action version mashup of Faces of Death and Deep Throat. It’s a grenade of sex, violence and vulgarity. If your system is easily shocked, wait until you build up a tolerance for it.

But when you do see it, treat it as a Rorschach Test. It’ll be a test of your current boundaries, morals and beliefs. Remember, “We see the world as we are, not as it is.”

When and if you do experience it, after the lights come up and you re-emerge back into this unreality, you may just see it a bit differently, you may see the movie as more of a mondo-gonzo-meta-pseudo-documentary than a Grindhouse-action-fantasy.

You may rip open your shirt and check your chest for a scar, hoping that you still have a human heart...hoping that we all do.


	The Movie Preview Critic rates Crank 2: High Voltage:


	*Crank 2: High Voltage’s PLACE IN MOVIE HISTORY:*

	C
	C

CONTACT TMPC

COMMENTS@THEMOVIEPREVIEWCRITIC.COM