Crank: High Voltage (2009)
Directed by Mark Neveldine
Chelios faces a Chinese mobster who has stolen his nearly indestructible heart and replaced it with a battery-powered ticker that requires regular jolts of electricity to keep working.
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What critics compared Crank: High Voltage to
Co-directors Neveldine and Taylor, who don't go by their first names anymore, were not only clearly inspired by crazed Japanese auteur Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer, Audition), but they may have even outdone him in many respects.
It's an oddly amiable addition to the subgenre of deliberately ridiculous action comedies that include durable popcorn flicks like Crank: High Voltage and Smokin' Aces.
But a small cult audience (say, viewers who liked things like Crank , Crank: High Voltage , and Hardcore Henry ) may find Guns Akimbo similarly entertaining.
Baker ( Starlet , Greg The Bunny) traffics in the big and broad, but his aesthetic here is totally ratty; at times, the movie’s imagery, frenetic movement, and distorted wide-angle close-ups bring to mind Crank: High Voltage and Inland Empire crossed with a low-budget music video.
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The film’s well-made — cinematographer Brandon Trost (Crank: High Voltage, This is the End) makes our protagonists and New York both look great, although at one point when the three men are walking abreast in cold weather in great winterwear, you might be excused for thinking you’ve stumbled into a long, strange fashion article promoting That Awkward Moment more than you think about the fact that you in fact are watching a film called That Awkward Moment.
Given that the film’s basically plotless, it lives or dies on mood, and Roman Vasyanov’s on-the-fly, documentary-style cinematography — together with Gyllenhaal and Peña’s evident enthusiasm for the project — has that in spades, even if it does occasionally resemble cut material from Crank 2.
But sometimes I just need one that's nothing more than a joyous adrenaline ride; one that has nothing more on its mind than emphasizing the motion in motion pictures like “ Crank: High Voltage ,” " Live Free or Die Hard ," or “ Fast Five .”
Companion viewing: "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz," "Spaced," "Crank 2"…