Crank: High Voltage is a real celebration of the phrase "Why not?". It's big, loud and brainless - and it's all the more glorious for it.
Crank High Voltage (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:64
Fresh:40
Rotten:24
Average Rating:5.7/10
Consensus: Crank: High Voltage delivers on its promises: a fast-paced, exciting thrill ride that doesn't take itself too seriously.
Rated: 18 [See Full Rating] for frenetic strong bloody violence throughout, crude and graphic sexual content, nudity and pervasive language.
Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
Theatrical Release:16-04-2009
Synopsis:
In the 2006 action hit Crank, hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) spent twenty-four hours in over-drive: fighting, killing, and keeping his adrenaline flowing at full-force to combat a deadly...
In the 2006 action hit Crank, hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) spent twenty-four hours in over-drive: fighting, killing, and keeping his adrenaline flowing at full-force to combat a deadly poison injected into his body. Now, in the high-octane sequel Crank High Voltage, Chev has managed to survive -- and is about to face a brand new day.
Picking up immediately where the first movie left off, Crank High Voltage finds Chev surviving the climactic plunge to his most certain death on the streets of Los Angeles, only to be kidnapped by a mysterious Chinese mobster. Three months later, Chev wakes up to discover his nearly indestructible heart has been surgically removed and replaced with a battery-operated ticker that requires regular jolts of electricity in order to work.
After a dangerous escape from his captors, Chev is on the run again, this time from the charismatic Mexican gang boss El Huron (Clifton Collins, Jr.), and the Chinese Triads, headed by the dangerous 100 year-old elder Poon Dong (David Carradine). Once again turning to Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam) for medical advice, receiving help from his friend Kaylo’s twin brother Venus (Efren Ramirez), and re-connecting with his girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart), who is no longer in the dark about what he does for a living, Chev is determined to get his real heart back and wreak vengeance on whoever stole it, embarking on an electrifying chase through Los Angeles where anything goes to stay alive.
Lakeshore Entertainment and Lionsgate present Crank High Voltage, a Lakeshore Entertainment / Lionsgate Production In Association with @radical.media; produced by Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi, Skip Williamson and Richard Wright. The film was written and directed by Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor, the duo behind the 2006 original.--© Lionsgate
Starring: Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Clifton Collins, Efren Ramirez
Starring: Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Clifton Collins, Efren Ramirez, Bai Ling, David Carradine, Reno Wilson, Joseph Julian Soria, Dwight Yoakam, Corey Haim, Keone Young, Art Hsu
Director: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Director: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Screenwriter: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Producer: Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi, Richard Wright, Skip Williamson
Composer: Mike Patton
Studio: Lions Gate Films
Reviews for Crank High Voltage
A self-consciously crazy action romp which overdoses on cartoonish violence and non-PC comedy.
The Stath is pretty much the most bankable name in action movies today, and his unhinged work in High Voltage, indulging in an explosion of murder and mayhem with gusto and glee, should certainly see him retain that title.
Stick two fingers up at the moral majority... then shove them in the High Voltage socket and get ready to have your socks blown off.
Proof that you can make good movies based on video games, as long as you don’t bother making a video game first. Juice us up for Crank 3D.
The whole film is a series of frenetically-edited action sequences and bizarre set-pieces roughly stitched together to form some kind of whole. It’s been made with tongue firmly in cheek and is often funny for it.
The admirably unrestrained Taylor and Neveldine just about manage to sustain the charge in this fizzing battery of a movie, which only starts going flat towards the end.
Not quite as much fun as the from-nowhere original, but still, y’know, fackin’ shocking.
It's a hyperactive, relentlessly violent and po-faced mean S.O.B. - and I guarantee you'll ¢¾ every minute.
This fest of violence, breasts, sex, swearing and dodgy plot turns can only be enjoyed if you don’t take it seriously.
Crank 2: High Voltage is still an entertaining sequel but it lacks the spark of the original film and never quite reaches the same delirious heights.
Thanks to Statham, it's often tremendous fun – and sometimes just surreal (check the Geri Halliwell cameo) – so it's too bad its demeaning, indefensible attitude towards women and casual racism leaves such a sour taste in the mouth.
Copping to how unrealistic your movie is by excusing it (no, no, it's a video game!), rather than running with it, is a mistake that Taylor and Neveldine never recover from.
...an agreeable companion piece to its admittedly superior predecessor.
Waking up in the aftermath of a meth-lab explosion might be less disorienting than watching this. And if you think there's no room for more, Neveldine/Taylor are probably a weekend and a bag of crack-filled Pixie Stix away from proving you wrong.
Basically the co-writers and co-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor sneer at any kind of rules, decorum or morality. Anything goes, as long as it's within the realm of exploitation-level "B" moviemaking.
Both exhilarating and exhausting, it falls just short of a fever pitch.
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