Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Crank: High Voltage (2009)


Dir: Neveldine/Taylor
Lionsgate Blu-ray

Urgh, what to say? Frankly I knew going in that this probably wasn't going to be a film for me, but I'll give most anything a shot. I was mainly interested in this because I had read that it was influenced by some of the more insane Japanese cinema of recent memory, and while I can see that the men behind this had probably seen the films of Shinya Tsukamoto and Sogo Ishii, I can't see that they got anything out of those viewing experiences. The works of those men are certainly non-conventional and oft times disturbing, but they still have something personally going on within them, even if it's not clear to the audience, Tsukamoto in particular, they're trying to work something out. The makers of Crank 2 just see disturbing and offensive imagery mixed with break-neck editing, therefore we get a film here that has absolutely nothing to say or do. There's not even much of a story to relay here. It's about Jason Statham chasing and killing a bunch of people to get his heart back. While I do appreciate the absurd, absurdity enough does not make the meal. The finished product here just feels like endless video game sequences that are constantly jumping around and contain such constant racism, homophobia, and misogyny, that those things lose all meaning. It leaves you numb and bored, counting the seconds until you're free to stare at a blank wall.

2/10

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