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.

Oslo's so nice my enjoyment of it has been completely unimpaired by watching THE BEST MAN

Norway's a great country, especially when contrasted with the malfunctional war-zone that is Heathrow Terminal 4. Everything is well designed and built of solid wood by people who had a degree of professional pride. There's some beautiful architecture, a thriving jazz scene, and money to be made (hence my trip.) But there are also a bunch of cinemas. Now, the only film I hadn't seen of the many that were playing was THE BEST MAN. It's only when I got back to my room and onto IMDB that I realised the reason: THE BEST MAN went straight to video in the US and UK. No surprise. This is a truly lame-ass romantic-comedy. Seriously, it makes RUN FATBOY RUN look like WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.

The script is shite. Pure unadulterated cliche. Sweet girl is getting hitched to slimy yuppie. His best mate is a nice sensitive guy. The bride to be and the best mate fall for each other. The wacky side-kick engineers funny situations in which the bride realises what a sleaze-bag the yuppie is. Oh, and she also has a spiky best friend so everyone can couple up at the end. Unbelievable, unfunny. Just the worst. So, when I say that the actors are largely uninspired this is no real criticism. Still even here, we have a scale. Steve John Shepherd is at one end with a truly wooden performance as the yuppie. Amy Smart and Stuart "Coulda Been Aragorn" Townsend are fine as the bride and best man respectively. But the only actors displaying any real comic timing are Kate Ashfield (SHAUN OF THE DEAD) and Seth Green - who we all knew was a comedy genius anyways.

What else remains? Well, it's nice to see a London-set film where people hang out in Soho and drink lager rather than poncing round the Swiss Re tower.

THE BEST MAN opened in Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, Spain and Israel in 2006 and went straight to DVD in the US. It is currently showing in Norway.

CRANK - if Guy Ritchie pre-Kabbalah and LeTerrier had a love-child, and that love-child had Medical Coke, a grudge and a gun

CRANK is about the most mindless high-octane balls-out fun you can have in a multiplex. It's visually audacious, witty, self-mocking and has one of the most shamelessly commercial endings I have seen in a while. On an intellectual level, I feel I should despise its deep vein of misogyny and superficial thrill-seeking, but the movie feels so tongue-in-cheek and does what it does so well, I just love it. LOVE IT.

CRANK bites heavily on the style of Guy Ritchie before Ritchie bit on Madonna's bad cinematic karma. But it has a much simpler plot than Ritchie ever dishes out and amps up the violence and pace. We are in the murky underworld of L.A. and Jason Statham is a freelance hitman called, improbably, Chev Chelios. Chev has been injected by a lethal Beijing Injection whereby as soon as he lets his body slows down, he dies. Cue lots of running around and shooting people and outdoor sex in a bid to keep the adrenaline up long enough to settle all scores. Amy Smart plays Chev's dappy girlfriend. She serves as the straight man against which most of the comedy in the movie plays. SHAUN OF THE DEAD style, she can't quite believe her boyfriend is a zombie, sorry, hitman, and faffs around with her lip-gloss when she should be running for her life. Awesome.

CRANK is on release in Ireland, the US and Turkey. It opens in the Philippines, Greece, Denmark and Estonia next week and in Germany, Iceland and Latvia the week after that. It opens in Spain on October 6th, Sweden on October 13th and in Argentina on November 16th.

JUST FRIENDS - not half bad!

JUST FRIENDS is really not as bad as the critics make out. Okay, so it won't win a Nobel, but as far as harmless, funny date flicks go, you can do worse. The flick stars Ryan Reynolds, otherwise known as Van Wilder: Party Liason, and the hot bod in Blade:Trinity. Ryan was a fat guy in school and accordingly never "boinked" his best mate, the hot chick cheerleader. Ten years later he returns to town, a slimmed down, rich music industry exec., ready to win back the girl of is dreams. Cue lots of holiday-related slapstick comedy involving incendiary Christmas decorations and ice hockey. Reynolds is really very funny, but the show is stolen by Anna Faris. She plays the ditzy blonde Paris-Hilton look-a-like wannabe pop star than Reynolds is managing. Like I said, this is not the best romantic-comedy ever made, but it is laugh-out-loud funny in parts and has a surprisingly sweet heart considering it was made by the guy who directed Cruel Intentions. One for dinner and a DVD, perhaps?

JUST FRIENDS is on general release in the UK and US. There are no scheduled release dates for Continental Europe.