Lionsgate [2009] 96′
country: United States
director: NEVELDINE / TAYLOR
cast: JASON STATHAM, AMY SMART,
cast: DWIGHT YOAKAM, EFREN RAMIREZ
Picking up just moments after 2006′s CRANK left off, HIGH VOLTAGE begins with ubermensch Chev Chelios [Statham] being scraped up from the Los Angeles sidewalk by minions from the Chinese Triad and thrown into the back of a van. Three months later he’s back on the street, his heart having been removed and replaced with a creaky artificial model whose battery must be kept charged through increasingly ludicrous means, on the hunt for the Chinese mafia lord who has his ticker and a problematic thug known as The Ferret.
Other characters enter and exit at random – lover Eve [Smart], unlicensed physician Doc Miles [Yoakam], Chinese prostitute Ria [Bai Ling], and full-body Tourette sufferer Venus [Ramirez] – as Chelios bounces from action setup to action setup.
Much ado has been made of the over-the-top nature of CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE, a crass, pretentious, and directionless exercise in quick-cut editing mayhem. If split second shots of Statham’s testicles being fried with a cattle prod or moments of mosaic-obscured public fucking extended well beyond all reasonable necessity are what pass for over-the-top these days, then it’s a sad sad time to be a film-goer. HIGH VOLTAGE plays a bit like Shinya Tsukamoto’s absurd industrial-punk fantasy TETSUO THE IRON MAN in terms of style, with writers/directors/producers Neveldine / Taylor substituting irritating ‘look how clever we are’ esoterica for substance.
There are extreme moments to be had in HIGH VOLTAGE [the much talked about early moment in which Statham unceremoniously shoves a shotgun up a boorish thug's posterior and an extended close-up examination of a man slicing off his own nipples, for example] to be sure, but none are handled with enough artistry or class to be effective, memorable, or even fun. Graphic violence has been done to death time and again, from first films of Herschell Gordon Lewis to the Eli Roth gore pics of today, and HIGH VOLTAGE offers up nothing new in that regard. The aforementioned public sex misses its mark as well, and one wonders why the obfuscation of naughty bits was necessary given all the other shots of testicles that are to be had.
I suppose that some of the characters are meant to come of as over-the-top as well – the constantly twitching Venus, a gang-banger with gold teeth and full body tattoos, and a Chinese whore who speaks in nothing but derogatory slang. They don’t. I suspect that cardboard cutouts or Fatheads wall mounts could have been substituted almost un-noticeably for the majority of them. Even a living disembodied head is rendered dull and uninteresting, and is only there in a lame attempt to earn HIGH VOLTAGE some extra absurdity points.
It’s no minor miracle that Neveldine / Taylor have managed to take as simple a premise as this [hit man loses heart and goes on bloody rampage to find it] and muck it up so royally. The meandering A to B to C narrative quickly loses focus – by the time Statham crashed into his third shoot out I was well past the point of caring. Neveldine / Taylor try to prop up their narrative shortcomings with left-field references to everything from THE PRINCESS BRIDE to Japanese tokusatsu flicks, but to no avail. Their handling of the lacking material is so obvious and flat footed as to suck any potential entertainment value from the screen, and all the step-frame montages of stripper clubs and bullet wounds in the world can’t save it.
When a smoldering Statham turns to the camera to give the audience the finger before the credits scroll it seems entirely appropriate – a final ‘fuck you’ from a film that ran out of original ideas before it even got rolling. CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE is just trash hidden behind loud noises and wiz-bang editing, packaged for dispersal to gullible audiences who’ve been led to think they’re watching something edgy. In the end, HIGH VOLTAGE crosses no boundaries and pushes no envelopes. It just lays there, writhing in all of its flashy, noisy pointlessness with nothing on its mind but box office returns.
It got my $5. Don’t let it get yours too.
Comments from Jim H. – 05/01/2009
I did like the reference to Tetsuo. I didn’t really think about that til now, but it makes some sense. Tetsuo has much more craft and skill put into it than Crank 2 though.
CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE is just trash hidden behind loud noises and wiz-bang editing
Swap out “hidden behind” with “presented with” and I think you’d have the right idea. It’s a trashy gonzo type movie, the sort of film Troma would make, only with a way bigger budget and a large theatrical distribution. For better or for worse.
I was entertained.
addition comments – 05/20/2009
Had a few more thoughts, thought I’d drop in again.
I had a friend who loved it as well, but I wouldn’t go that far. My friend said it was the film Shoot ‘Em Up wished it was. I find that to be untrue, as both are extremely over the top action films, but Shoot ‘Em Up obviously had far more time put into it – for the most part, you can tell Shoot ‘Em Up had a lot of love put into its numerous action scenes and some thought put into its writing. I was actually a bit underwhelmed with Shoot ‘Em Up after hearing it praised so much, but I can still appreciate what it does. Crank 2 feels like a film that was made up as they went, and its action scenes reflect this, without much excitement behind them beyond what its gonzo, crazed and admittedly fairly unique style generates. I also agree it is a weaker film than the original.
It’s the kind of film that I can totally understand why people wouldn’t like, and personally I doubt I’ll ever watch it again. But, I did find it entertaining enough to be worth the watch.
