Rent Crank (2006)

Crank The Transporter - Crank review by CP Customer

If you like Jason Statham in the transporter, you will love this. He plays the same character but slightly more for laughs in this film. He plays an assassin who is given a lethal but slow acting poison. He can stay alive as long as he keeps his

Heart rate up (like a human body version of 'speed').

Some great and also funny scenes in this, and Statham is a great 'hardman'. Its not Shakespeare but its very entertaining - very good 'lads' film.

A completely off-the-chain, crazy & brilliant slice of action with a never-better Statham - Crank review by Timmy B

Crank is a totally bat-s**t crazy film. If you explained the basic concept to people, they would immediately think along the lines of a Speed-style film, with the ticking bomb scenario, but in this case keeping adrenaline up to prevent a heart attack. What would never enter into their head would be the ways this adrenaline is kept up, from snorting coke off the floor of a grimy nightclub to taking massive doses of artificial stimulants which have awkward side-effects... But this is where Crank goes from being a good premise to an outrageously fun romp.

Chev Chelios (a typical name for a Londoner living in America...) is a professional hitman who has just retired & plans to live a quiet life, keeping a low profile. He wakes up with a splitting headache, beaten, bruised & with a heart that is barely beating. Upon playing a video message left for him by his attackers, he has been poisoned by gangster Ricky Verona with a deadly substance, which will stop his heart unless he keeps his adrenaline up. He then pursues Verona & his associates across L.A, whilst keeping his adrenaline up in ever more outrageous ways.

For me, the two things I love about Crank is firstly Statham's performance (which I will get to later,) and the way this film literally throws all the rules that films are supposed to follow out of the window. Clichés? So what? Logic? Never heard of it. A standard storyline? You're watching the wrong film mate. From the first moments (in what other opening do you see a gangster being filmed boasting about his criminality, as well as poisoning someone, then leaving the footage for him or... errrr.... the police to find, giving them the most open-and-shut conviction imaginable,) you know this is something different. Crank revels in the absolute chaos it creates. Whilst the L.A. setting is one you initially recognise, scratching the surface you will find a collection of people who are anything but normal.

We follow Chelios as he drives like a maniac in cars & bikes, instigates mass brawls in nightclubs & strip-bars, alongside many other crazy ways to keep his heart rate up. And all the while, there is a crazy grin on your face, as you wonder what the hell he is going to do next. In many ways, Crank is the most pure video-game style film you could imagine, with Chelios it's demented avatar.

But this film would be absolutely nothing without Statham's performance. Quite simply, if there was any self-consciousness from him or awkwardness, the film wouldn't work. He fully commits himself into every crazy situation the script throws at him, from expletives appearing on his forehead to riding a motorbike in a hospital gown with his bare-arse on display to running around streets with an erection that could crowbar-open a bank vault. You are mesmerised, horrified & laughing all at the same time.

Jose Pablo Cantillo also deserves special mention for his equally crazy big-bad, a Latino gangster who it is clear harboured animosity towards Chelios before the events of the film, but is now scared & furious in equal measure at the one-man wrecking ball coming his way.

And when you put all this together, it makes for an incredible movie. There is literally nothing else like Crank that you will have seen before & precious little after it which is as well-made and engrossing as it is. The craziest thoughts in your head will probably be nothing compared to what is up on screen. I absolutely loved it and it is the type of movie which you were staggered got made/financed when it did and can never be replicated, despite a sequel which upped the outrageousness but lost the originality.