Crank

What’s it about?
Sloth’s number one mancrush Jason Statham gets injected with a Chinese poison that will kill him in an hour unless he keeps his heart rate at approximately the level of a mosquito’s. Sorta like the movie Speed, with Statham playing the role of the bus.

Any chicks in the movie?
Amy Smart. Yeah, I’ve never heard of her either.* Whoever she is, she’s certainly game enough for this flick, which at one point asks her to get fucked in the middle of the street by Statham while he screams “I’M ALIVE!!!” as a gaggle of onlookers cheer him on. If I were her, I’d use that in my show reel for the rest of eternity.

Awesomeness Factor?
Through the roof. There’s nothing more entertaining than a stupid movie that not only knows it’s stupid, but luxuriates in it’s own stupidity like a pot roast basting in it’s own gravy.** The old-school videogame graphics during the credits give away the intentions of Crank: basically, we’re looking at the evolution of the action movie as recontextualized by the emerging dominance of first-person shooters and action gaming tropes. Or, to translate for the Laurier students reading this: Crank is mostly concerned with looking cool and being awesome, pretty much in that order. Making sense is, like, twenty-seventh on the list, just below “creating strong and empowered female characters” and “sensitive portrayals of Latino and Asian immigrant life”. The plot, such as it is, basically requires Statham to run a lot and look really pissed off as he jacks his body with cocaine, energy drinks, defibriliation equipment and (eventually) liquid adrenaline as he tries to kill all the motherfuckers what poisoned him. Sure, it’s stupid, but when the end result is scenes of Statham driving his car through a mall before wedging it sideways in an escalator or chopping off a dude’s hand with a cleaver and then using the gun the now-cleaved hand was using by pulling the finger that’s still in the trigger, it’s hard to give a shit about narrative integrity. Coming in at a lean 93 minutes, it’s also a movie that’s smart enough in it’s awesome dumbness not to overstay it’s welcome.

Mitigated By?
File Crank in the Statham pantheon after Death Race, but just before Transporter 2. Can’t wait for the sequel.

* Every time I see a blond actress in an action movie, I assume she’s a cast member on some sassy CW show about football or hairdressers or something.

** Note to self: Don’t write these before dinner.