CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE - ridonkulous

Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) is an East End hitman who inexplicably lives in LA and dates a ditzy stripper called Eve (Amy Smart). In the original CRANK flick aforementioned triads injected him with an adrenaline-inhibitor. As a result, Chelios had to run round town after the anecdote, periodically re-charging his heart with adrenaline by, among other things, engaging in random outdoor sex. In this sequel, the triads are so impressed with his capacity for survival, that they decide to transplant the famous Chelios heart into an aged gangster (David Carradine). Chelios wakes after surgery, wired up to an external battery, with only a few hours to get his old heart back and into his body.

The one good thing about CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE is that it knows, nay it glorifies, in how ridiculous it is. It's a movie that is deliberately designed to be balls-out ludicrous - more guns, more violence, more insane out-door sex, more crazy Asian gangsters, more revenge. It even has the juvenile wit to cast Corey Haim. It's like watching a live action video game on fast forward. There's little plot and less care for political correctness. Asians are Chinks, women are whores, and the audience is expected to laugh when a stripper gets shot in her fake tits and they deflate.

I laughed.

But I didn't laugh as much as I laughed during the original movie. Call me sentimental, but some of the innocence has gone. CRANK 1 was a simple low-budget cheap-thrills action flick starring Jason Statham. Statham's career is simply absurd: he's basically a skinny bald kid from Essex who can't act but has somehow muscled up and become a B-movie star. CRANK was the perfect vehicle for Statham - mirroring the absurdity that is his continuing success with its drug-induced aesthetic. Still, for all that, it had a semblance of a plot, and there was the thrill of getting to know these absurd characters. The sequel is just more of the same, but so much more that it's dizzying and, finally, boring. The movie builds to a crescendo with an open-air sex scene and then becomes plain dumb. The precise depth of dumbness is achieved in a pointless Jerry Springer parody sketch with a young actor failing to replicate Chelios' East End accent and Geri Halliwell aka Ginger Spice as his ChavMum.

CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE is on release in the UK, US, Germany, Kazakhstan, Russia, Estonia, Lithuania, Taiwan and Greece. It opens next weekend in Iceland, Bulgaria and Romania. It opens in Turkey on May 8th; in the Czech Republic on June 23rd; in Sweden on July 31st; in France and Australia on August 20th; in Belgium and the Netherlands on September 10th; in Brazil and Spain on September 18th; and in Argentina on September 24th.

DEATH RACE (2008) - does exactly what is says on the tin

Back in the 70s schlock movie maestro Roger Corman produced a drive-in hit called DEATH RACE 2000. It starred David "Kill Bill" Carradine as Frankenstein, a racing driver in a dystopian future where the US government runs gladiatorial cross-country violent auto races to keep the plebs happy. Racers get points for how many and what type of people they run over - therein the social satire. Brit helmer Paul W S Anderson's DEATH RACE is less a straightforward remake than a loose re-working. In fact, bar the violent car racing, I thought DEATH RACE (2008) had more in common with the Schwarzenegger classic, RUNNING MAN, where death-row inmates fight each other on national TV for a chance at freedom. Like RUNNING MAN, DEATH RACE posits a dystopian future in which ratings are king and pay-per-view dollars don't so much grease the wheels of justice as steer the driving wheel. A demure-looking Joan Allen plays the greedy capitalist bastard at the top of the pile. She hams it up as Warden Hennessy, the Madam running the show. Her job is to select the appropriate drivers from her prison full of murderers and wack-jobs; drum up the publicity; milk the pay-per-view dollars; and then run the three-day Death Race. Simple as. Only problem is, her most lucrative driver, Frankenstein, is dead, and she needs a replacement. Here steps in Jason Statham as the patsy in the driver's seat. He doesn't do anything more than the typical Jason Statham performance - gruff voice, buff body - this man's career is a glorious triumph against all rationale! To watch Statham try to force up some emotion at a picture of his baby daughter, or to try to register intellectual effort as he works out whodunnit, is comedy of the purest form. Anyways, he's joined in a souped-up racing car by sexpot Nathalie Martinez. You have to hand it to Paul W.S. Anderson: there's something wicked about being so blatantly exploitative but then writing that exploitation into the social critique in the film. He HAS to cast a hot chick because that's exactly what the Pay Per View Death Race execs would do! Anyways, there's a bunch of car races. There are horrific mash-ups. Heavily tattooed men of many ethnicities die. Eventually, Statham figures it out and we all go home. Job done. It's not pretty, it's not intelligent, and it's nowhere near as brilliantly trashy as RUNNING MAN, but if you want mindless entertainment, look no further. 

DEATH RACE was released last month in Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, the USA, Indonesia and the Ukraine. It is currently on release in Iceland, Russia, Estonia, Romania and the UK. It is released next weekend in the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Poland and Spain. It opens later in October in Belgium, Egypt, France, Hungary, Mexico, Turkey, Brazil, Finland, Sweden and Argentina. It opens in November in Venezuela, Slovakia, Italy, Norway, Germany, Denmark and Japan. It opens in Chile on December 4th.