Crank – High Voltage

Just as I was beginning to think that the era of quality man movies is back, we have the 3rd one which does not come upto expectations this year. After the resounding success of The A Team, there was Knight & Day which was average, Expendables which was average and now the ultimate disaster – Crank High Voltage. I say this probably coz I haven’t seen Crank and was not well placed to relate to the movie. But even in isolation if you consider the basic elements – Acting, Directing, Story and overall production, Crank High Voltage, miserably fails in an attempt to give us that something different. In marketing terms, we would call something like this a “niche product”. There was a segment of the audience which seemingly enjoyed the mindless stunts. So I guess there is a market for such inane productions. But then, there is a market for almost anything in this world


Chev Chelios, as the tag line says, “Was dead….But he got better”. An obvious reference to the fact that in the earlier part, he jumps off a helicopter from 14000 ft. The movie begins with the shot. But what do you know…. A straight dive from 14K feet isn’t sufficient to kill a man these days… and definitely not if you are Chelios. A few guys come up and clear the mess and before you know it, Chev has no heart left in him… I mean literally, in case you thought it was figurative. Turns out that the guys who picked him up are black marketing human organs and are harvesting him. Poon Dong, a wealthy don who has 1.9 feet in the grave is in dire need of a strong heart for which he would like the strongest heart in the world…. Who else would have that other than our close friend Chev.

Now Chev is not one to give up easily and he wakes up when they are about to harvest you know what. Rapid fight ensues and Chev successfully escapes. What he doesn’t realize though is that he doesn’t have his heart and it has been replaced by an artificial one which needs to be charged at frequent intervals. On advise from his close friend Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakham), who has been suspended from the medical fraternity, he goes about “charging” himself in a variety of ways such as – Jump Starting from a car battery, getting himself electrocuted and in the most pornographic of manners by having wild sex with his girlfriend, Eve (Amy Smart) in a race course in front on a few thousand people. As I was informed later, it would seem this was their regular pastime and nothing surprising.

Nevertheless, Crank - High voltage, as mentioned earlier is a movie filled with mindless action. Now I am a big fan of hard core action flicks but there has to be some remote method to the madness I say. Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor seem to have no talent for direction. Jason Statham as always seems to have a disagreement with life in general. The rest of the cast is vastly unmentionable. The attempt to create something different leads to a severe headache. The use of Sepia / black & white for a lot of the shots, interspersed with colour and a morbid use of the steady cam all in the name of cinematography is everything but entertaining. The only reason I could sustain the movie was the fact that I had seen “Hello Darling” before this . Maybe I was unable to digest the concept like a boy being initiated into Heavy Metal till it grows on him and he cannot do without it. Quite a sad attempt. 2 on 10.