Crank: High Voltage

This is what hap­pens when there are no rules. It’s what hap­pens when things like log­ic and taste get hurled head-first out of a 10-storey win­dow. It’s what hap­pens when every­body says ​‘yes’. How about we have Jason Statham thrown out of a car wind­screen but he doesn’t get a scratch? Yes!

How about we have him fuck Amy Smart at a race­track but we pixel­late his balls? Yes! How about we have an ani­mat­ed sequence where we see how many fonts we can use to say ​‘Fuck you Che­lios’? Yes! How about we have a liv­ing head in a jar like they do in Futu­ra­ma? Yes! How about we have a fight in the style of, um, I dun­no… Godzil­la? Yes! Yes! Yes!

Crank: High Volt­age is beyond crit­i­cism. You can’t call bull­shit on a film that glo­ries in its own absur­di­ty. This sequel, set three months after Chev Che­lios (Statham) fell sev­er­al-thou­sand-feet from a heli­copter, sees him wake up (natch) in an ersatz hos­pi­tal hav­ing had his heart nicked by a Tri­ad gangster.

Chev ain’t lov­ing this, espe­cial­ly as the arti­fi­cial heart that the goons leave him with is only good for a few hours unless he keeps it juiced by plug­ging him­self into var­i­ous bits of elec­tri­cal equip­ment. Like a human plug, Che­lios is forced to track down a series of unlike­ly sock­ets includ­ing police Tasers, live-wire lec­cy cables and sundry oth­er very, very dead­ly forms of self-rejuvenation.

Any­way, that isn’t the point. The point is, Chev has to leg it around LA kick­ing the liv­ing shit out of every­body until, after 90-odd min­utes, he and we are left pant­i­ng in a pud­dle of our own blood/​sweat/​tears (delete as appropriate).

There’s some­thing per­verse­ly tri­umphant not just about the Crank series – as unlike­ly a fran­chise as it’s pos­si­ble to imag­i­na­tion – but about Statham him­self. He’s qui­et­ly – okay, loud­ly – carved a niche for him­self as Hollywood’s go-to action guy. Why? Because he’s very good at what he does. The proof of that is stamped all over Crank: High Volt­age which, every time Statham is off screen, slows to a crawl.

Direc­tors Mark Nevel­dine and Bri­an Tay­lor make a few too many detours with­out him (albeit in the admirable cause of giv­ing the love­ly Amy Smart more screen time), but have the good sense the rest of the time to keep their cam­era focussed firm­ly on Statham’s gran­ite-hewn chops. But it’s not just his looks, Statham is an under­rat­ed com­ic actor, with great phys­i­cal tim­ing and a fine­ly tuned sense of his own ridiculousness.

And it is ridicu­lous. That can’t be repeat­ed enough. But maybe, just maybe, it’s some­thing else too. On the one hand, High Volt­age is the kind of film that makes McG seem like an under­stat­ed auteur. But then again, the likes of McG, Bay, Ander­son (PW, not PT) and Rob Cohen wouldn’t dare make a film like this.

Fixed on the 15-year-olds, they haven’t got the balls to take it this far. Nevel­dine and Tay­lor have made what the Amer­i­cans like to call a ​‘Hard R’, but more than that, High Volt­age is a kind of anthem to the quick-cut – the apogee of ADHD film­mak­ing; the final fron­tier of the post-music video era. In that sense, it is absolute­ly of its time. More than that, it feels like an end game, a last act, an aes­thet­ic requiem.

That said, if you can res­ur­rect a man who’s fall­en out of a heli­copter, when it comes to what’s pos­si­ble in the future, all bets are off.