Rent Crank 2: High Voltage (2009)

A really unpleasant & horrible sequel, which almost squanders the promise of the original - Crank 2: High Voltage review by Timmy B

When Crank came out in 2006, there was simply nothing else like it. Over the course of 90 minutes Chev Chelios, a recently retired hitman who was poisoned by a rival gangster, created carnage around the streets of L.A trying to keep his adrenaline up, whilst seeking revenge against those who had wronged him. And there were no limits to what Chelios did to keep himself alive, whether it was doing coke off of a filthy nightclub floor or starting a fight with pretty much anyone he crossed paths with. It was a proper, no-holds-barred action film, glorious in its ability to shock & offend.

However, when I watched it, I remember thinking that it should be left as a standalone film, a shot of genius with a perfect ending. But as it made a lot of money in comparison to it's budget and this is Hollywood we are talking about, of course a sequel was made. And it was as bad as I feared it would be.

After the events of the 1st film, Chelios is scraped off the ground & taken to a makeshift operating theatre, where his almost indestructible heart is taken out & a battery-powered one fitted. His heart has been demanded by mob boss Poon Dong, who has heard the legend of Chelios's heart & wants the organ to replace his failing one. Chelios escapes from the theatre & tracks down his heart, whilst continually shocking himself to keep the battery powering his artificial heart working.

Whilst there are many things I could fault with this film, one of the worst is the change in tone. The 1st film was, despite it's often shocking content, very light-hearted & funny, winking at you in the audience at how crazy this world it had created was. And this in turn made the film flow much better within it's unconventional narrative. But all of that has been jettisoned in this film. It has a really cruel, unpleasant tone, the writers/directors thinking that this is the natural evolution of the story. And alongside this, the pacing is all over the place. So whilst in the 1st film, very quickly things start moving, here the narrative stop-starts-stop-starts, making it extremely disjointed.

In terms of the changed tone, we now have violence which, whilst before was cartoon-ish, here is really nasty. Within 10 minutes of the film starting, Chelios tortures someone for information in the most sexually repellent way imaginable. I remember sitting in the cinema surrounded by people who were massive fans of the original, just feeling the atmosphere changing whilst this scene played out, no-one laughing, just feeling disgusted at what was on screen. There are several scenes of wince-inducing self-mutilation as well, again not funny but rancid.

We also have a new roll call of characters who are mainly poorly written & in some cases unbelievably irritating, none more so than Ria, an Asian prostitute with a screeching voice & behaviour so annoying, you just wish Chev would shoot her and put all of us out of our misery. Johnny Vang is cut from similar cloth, a sleazeball who Chev chases for most of the story, without a particularly good pay-off.

There are some funny moments amongst the dreck, plus as much as Statham clearly looks like he regrets signing on for this film, he is always watchable, even in rubbish. But Crank 2's biggest problem is that it feels the only way it can justify it's existence is to make everything so extreme that it then just becomes an exercise in tolerating rancidness. We are shown a conveyor belt of disgusting things, with the film throwing everything against the wall & hoping some of it sticks. But this then means the 1 or 2 good moments get lost in the bile.

There are plans for a 3rd film, but I hope it doesn't come to fruition, because there is no doubt it will simply go even more extreme & repugnant.