Written & Directed by Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor (upcoming Game)
Starring Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Efren Ramirez, and Dwight Yoakam
IMDB Plot Summary: Professional assassin Chev Chelios (Statham) learns his rival (Jose Pablo Cantillo) has injected him with a poison that will kill him if his heart rate drops.

Despite the obvious parallel between this movie and Speed (i.e. the protagonist loses if something falls below a certain level), Crank actually manages to stand on its own as a movie in that you’re not always thinking “This is a rip-off of Speed.” Unfortunately, it’s those unique elements that sets Crank apart that may be its own downfall.

What we have here is the feature debut of a pair of guys whose only feature-film experience was doing special effects (and not much, to boot). I think the Speed reference and the constant use of special effects (which sometimes are awkwardly used to achieve what I assume is an accidentally comic effect), especially in the beginning of the movie, are big red flags that these guys should’ve probably let someone else write the script. The concept is great and the movie would’ve been 10 times better, albeit different, in the hands of an experienced writer.

The highlight of the movie is clearly Jason Statham, who goes the extra mile to entertain us (especially by spending maybe 15 minutes of the movie in a hospital gown, which I’m sure made him the butt of jokes between takes). Statham’s trademark dry British wit created a character that would otherwise fail had someone else done it.

I do have to give writer/directors Neveldine/Taylor props for coming up with interesting situations the characters fall into, such as Chev and his girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart) having sex in the middle of a Chinatown marketplace in order to keep Chev’s adrenaline going; unfortunately some of the other situations were either too quickly done with or didn’t have sufficient punch (like when Chev has someone shock him with a defibrillator to juice up his heart).

It’s actually rather ironic that in the bonus features, Neveldine/Taylor talk about how the movie has rest periods or otherwise the audience would get strung out from too much action. I think the movie would’ve been much better had they taken the opposite approach, as it would’ve put the audience in a similar mood as what Chev was experiencing.

Posted on November 4th, 2007 by Enrique
Filed under: Movie Reviews