Crank: High Voltage (2009)

“Crank 2? Didn’t Chev Chelios die at the end of the first film?” Is what you ask yourself as the opening video game credits light up the screen. Now remember children at the end of Crank Chev Chelios goes splat, but the last thing you see is him open his eye (sorry spoiler alert for the end of Crank, don’t cry they show it all to you again at the beginning of Crank 2 anyway.

But wait, before I get into Crank: High Voltage let me just say this of Crank: Highly entertaining, insane, odd, quirky, bald, sexy (public sex with Amy Smart), and completely unbelievable; not give me my money back unbelievable, but just plain Ok-I’ve-had-enough-time-to-end-now unbelievable, and then it does just that. It ends exactly when you’re about to poke your eyes out with sticks.

So onto the sequel:

We open on Chev Chelios on the road. A black van pulls up and some conspicuous Asians and one shovel scrape the clearly Loony Tunes style indestructible Chev off the road and cart him away. We are treated to some cheap and cheesey IntelliVision style graphics and opening credits with cut aways to Chev’s heart being removed from him (somehow he’s conscious for parts of the operation), and then being replaced with temporary battery powered heart. Traditionally this battery powered heart is only meant to keep the body alive for a few days while the donor heart arrives. In this film however Chev’s only being kept alive so those wacky Asians can lift his other organs presumably to sell to the highest bidder. What they implied they wanted with his penis is never explained in the film, and they aren’t allowed to even attempt more than a glimpse of it because Chev wakes up and kills everyone in the operating theatre; and they’re off! Go Chelios go!

The rest of the film is basically crap wrapped in some great visuals which in my opinion were highly necessary since I would have been bored like piss of this film, and chucked it in the bin along with Jason Stratham’s contractual obligation to a Crank 3. There is of course the requisite Amy Smart as nude as they can get her, and fucking in public scene; the return of Kaylo (or his twin brother Venus who suffers from full body tourette’s); the OTHER Verona brother; the missing heart; David Caradine as one twisted ancient evil Chinaman named Poon Dong; and of course Corey Haim reviving his career by getting beat up by Amy Smart–too bad she couldn’t have done that to him in Universal Groove, then it would have at least had two name actors in it…

It’s all very fun, and tongue in cheek. Thankfully it’s obvious the filmmakers Neveldine and Taylor don’t take the film seriously, exemplified by the odd and jarringly placed Godzilla vs. Mecha-Godzilla style fight scene between Stratham and an asian dude who has far too many face piercings for my liking.

The film’s timing is impeccable as is proven by its ending  just before I wanted to ask for my money back. The film is following the same trend as the original by showing poorly in the box office, but picking up a following on DVD. Let’s see if it can perform well enough to give the Neveldine / Taylor duo opportunity to poison the theaters and airwaves with the dreck that’ll be Crank 3D–come on guys Amy Smart’s boobs aren’t big enough to warrant a 3D flick.

Overall Rating: Disappointing

IMBD: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1121931/

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2koYVqwzT4