Crank [2006]

This smart, exciting action movie cannily combines the premises of DOA - the 1949 film in which Edmond O'Brien learns he has been fatally poisoned and has only a few days to find out who murdered him - and Speed.

Cockernee-accented, Los Angeles-based hit man Chev Chelios [Jason Statham] wakes up feeling poorly and finds a DVD left behind by his flamboyant nemesis Verona [Jose Cantillo] - who plays up to his character name by claiming his evil scheme is 'some Shakespearean shit' - which shows that he has been injected with a 'Beijing cocktail', a deadly dose of poison which is supposed to kill him quickly. Chev gets his slacker rock 'n' roll doctor [country singer Dwight Yoakam, very good] on his mobile and is told that he can temporarily stave off the fatal effects by overproducing adrenaline. This means that so long as he is running, crashing, thumping, shooting, screwing or otherwise in action, he stays alive enough to dash around Los Angeles trying to get revenge on Verona, make time with his dim-but-nice civilian girlfriend [Amy Smart] and undo the links between Verona and his old boss [Carlos Snaz].

TV commercials superstars Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who get joint billing as Neveldine/Taylor [as if making television ads alone didn't make you want to kill them], direct and write in an aggressively 21st Century style. You get Hi-Def digital, fast-forward tracks, pop-up footnotes, enough splitscreen to evoke vintage Brian DePalma, many dialogue scenes done over mobile phones, long kinetic takes, pithily profane dialogue with a homophobic edge and an exciting, witty soundtrack mix which ranges from having Statham headbang along with 'Achy Breaky Heart' to doing motorcycle cruise stunts to 'Everybody's Talkin' at Me'.

Shaven-headed Statham, working in the vein of his Transporter movies rather than the dreaded Revolver, gets a role that really works for him. The business about having him doomed from the start gets round a natural problem of presenting a hero who might otherwise be impossible to put up with. We find out [token character development] Chev was about to quit the killing game and settle down when all this happened, but mostly he does a great deal of satisfying violence to horrible folks [and innocent bystanders] as he seeks bigger jolts to stay alive: forcing a hospital crew to give him epenephrin injections and electric shock from the paddles, having sex with his girlfriend in public in Chinatown, baiting cops by juggling guns, charging into huge shoot-outs and confrontations. The Dennis Quaid remake of DOA seems positively staid by comparison, and fans of the original noir will be delighted to discover Crank doesn't cop out the way that Disneyfied version did.
KIM NEWMAN

First Published In: Venue [issue unknown]

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