Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

The last time we saw Chev Chelios (Jason Stratham) he was basically plummeting from outer space to his eventual death after gaining revenge on those who had killed his ass. Game Over. But not so fast my friends because apparently ‘Crank’ had made enough loot the first time around to warrant Lionsgate ponying up a few dollars more so that the directing team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor could make the movie they apparently REALLY wanted to make with ‘Crank: High Voltage’.

So Chev hits the ground after falling out of that helicopter, a minor event that you would think would kill a dude, but apparently Chev Chelios is a god. A van appears out of nowhere and quickly scrapes him off the pavement and Chev is soon carted off to destinations unknown where a backroom team of Chinese quacks begin to remove his vital organs. They only manage to get his heart out before Chev rights himself and gets down to the business of killing people and getting his heart back.

In the first movie, if you remember, Chev had to keep his adrenaline up to keep the poison that was injected into him from stopping his heart. In this one my man has an artificial heart with a bum battery and thus he needs to occasionally electrocute himself to keep to keep it beating. Jumper cables, electrical outlets, car cigarette lighters… you name it Chev shocks himself with it. Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam) has returned to inform Chev of the dire situation that he is in and tell him that he’s probably going to die. Yeah, right. His girl Eve (Amy Smart) has returned, but sadly believing her man to be dead, she is now in the flesh peddling business shaking her booty at a gentlemen’s club to make ends meet. A casual observance reveals that Ms. Smart has a Booty/Body ratio that is on the plus side. That’s a good thing, and rare for a California blonde so don’t you go starving yourself to bring that bring booty/Body ratio down to the levels of your sickly looking west coast sisters.

So as we have already established that Chev wants his ticker back which is being carted around by some Chinese dude who plans to give it to some 100 year old Triad boss. Meanwhile Chelios is being pursued by every single mobster in town and in turn is pursuing every other mobster in town… and that’s pretty much it as far as a ‘story’ goes.

So what can actually be said about ‘Crank: High Voltage’? Those attempting to ‘criticize’ it or find some kind reasoning behind it, well that’s just a plain silly exercise in futility. This task could be done with the first ‘Crank’ as it was an over-the-top action flick with at least some semblance of a real world base, but not this movie. Hell, I don’t even know if you can call ‘Crank: High Voltage’ a movie. What you do get is the first movie, minus anything that might’ve made sense, amped up to a degree of ten. The first movie had titties… this movie had ten times as many tittes. The first movie was plenty violent… this movie was ten times more violent. The first movie had Jason Stratham and Amy Smart screwing in front a few people… this one has Jason Stratham and Amy Smart screwing in front of a stadium full of people. And so on and so on.

I read somewhere where somebody complained that this movie objectifies Asian women. First of all this movie objectifies ALL women like most movies do, but more accurately is that this movie objectifies EVERYTHING! It objectifies guns, cars, bullets to the head, gays, Blacks, Mexicans, old people, white people, stupid people, mental illness, Godzilla, dogs, Lauren Holly, Silicone implants… This movie even managed to objectify mutha fuckin’ porn stars. I didn’t even think that was possible.

So I guess the question for me would be ‘Christopher, did you like Crank: High Voltage’? No, not particularly. I like an action flick and titties as much as the next cat but this movie really wasn’t my cup of tea. For the most part it looked like Neveldine and Taylor were making this up as they went along with a lot of directorial orders starting out with the statement ‘Man, you know it would be cool if…’ Like I said earlier, I even hesitate to call this a movie. Crank: High Voltage is to movies what Cotton Candy is to food. However I have also read where certain individuals love this movie so much that they’ve seen it four or five times in one evening. Of course that’s insane. Read a book. Get a girlfriend or a boyfriend. Learn how to make your own damn movie. Anything… not that I’m telling you how to live your life brother.

‘Crank: High Voltage’ is an acquired taste if ever there was an acquired taste, and if you have a taste for this kind of thing then you better jump on board right now because it’s gonna be a while before you see anything close to what this movie was. That is until ‘Crank 3’.