Crank 2 Review

Crank 2: High Voltage is the freak show act at a carnival. It's so over-the-top that the phrase ceases to have meaning in this context. It's a bizarre concoction of testosterone, adrenaline, and psychedelics. It seeks not only to top its predecessor, Crank, but to outdo itself at every turn. The problem with all of this is not a lack of entertainment value but the sense of no longer watching a movie. There aren't any characters and there isn't a plot. It's an arcade video game (as is explicitly suggested by the opening credits) run amok, a series of sketches crammed together with no connective fabric. The experience of watching Crank 2 is so atypical that it passes unnoticed when the movie stops without ending (although, to be fair, loose ends are sewn up during the end credits)…read more [Reelviews]

There's all this awesome shootout scenes, and even though Chev just goes straight at them with his gun, he takes them out. If that was me, I would have found a good high point and sniped those asses. But, even so, I had a lot of fun. There was blood EVERYwhere, all kinds of awesome car chases and action scenes, and there's boobs! It was awesome…read more [Screen Junkies]

The joy of 2006's Crank, starring Jason Statham as poisoned hitman Chev Chelios, came from its cheerful contempt for reality: Statham was completely impervious to harm, which left the movie free to go crazy with style, plot, and most importantly, a sense of humor. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, and plausibility feels like deadweight.

So there's no sense batting an eyelash at the fact that Statham died-dropped thousands of feet to the concrete-at the end of the first Crank. High Voltage just scrapes him off the ground, literally: Asian gangsters simply scoop him up with a snow shovel and take him to a black-market operating room, where he learns his new fate. In the first Crank, Statham needed to keep his adrenaline pumping in order to slow the poison coursing through his veins…read more [A.V.Club]

The difference is, while Crank 1 was a proudly ridiculous action vehicle out to top most others in its genre, Crank 2 is considerably more interested in topping its predecessor, if not itself at every turn. That's the difference between seeing Chev chop off a foe's hand and use his own gun (in his own hand) to shoot him and seeing Chev lube up a shotgun before sticking it where the sun doesn't shine, and while both moments serve as a means to an end, the latter feels like shock for shock's sake instead of something morbidly inventive. And so it goes: elbows get chopped off, nipples get sliced off, breast implants have holes blown in them and proceed to leak, old ladies cuss, etc. The scene in Chinatown where Chev and his ditzy gal (Amy Smart) pump in public to supportive tourists? Now they're doing it on a race track as horses bolt by and the crowd cheers on…read more [Cinematical]

At this point I'm sure you get the idea – Crank: High Voltage, while completely implausible, hyper-ridiculous and borderline incoherent at times, is a wild ride and most importantly, it is a lot of fun. Over the years Jason Statham has become Hollywood's go-to guy for an ass-kicking good time, and with the Crank series he has done what can easily be described as his most ambitious work. Neveldine and Taylor, the mad scientists at the wheel of this crazy train, have once again created a hyper-real environment filled with bullets and characters that are equally as piercing. And its not just Chev Chelios, the heart of it all, that makes it work…read more [FilmSchoolRejects]

If there's any serious and successfully communicated subtext to Crank: High Voltage (behind the virtually incidental, libertarian explosion of offensive terms and incidental, objectified representations of women, gay men and various racial groups) it ends up being something not unlike the subject satirised in Ben Fold's Rocking the Suburbs (“You Better Watch Out, Because I'm Gonna Say F***”). The Crank films offer – and in the final image before this film's end credits, literally so – the scream of the angry, disaffected Waspish male…read more [/Film]

Being an exceedingly violent 18-certificate film, you can rest assured that there's an admirable quantity of claret on show: kneecaps and man nipples are neatly sliced off; there's a close-up or two of surgery; and, of course, it comes replete with the usual gamut of exploding body parts accompanied by ample red mist. Testicular probing, hedonistic lesbianism and overtly racist quips complete what most sane viewers might deem a perverse, toe-curling package… read more [TimeOut London]

What's The Deal: Bourgeois concepts like “good” and “bad” don't apply to filmmaking like this. It's flashy and as much like a hyper-caffeinated beverage commercial as it can be, it follows no logic beyond making Jason Statham look like the man who invented the idea of being the human equivalent of an indestructible iron tank, it adheres to his strict image-control policy of “I must look as though I have not recently shaved or, failing that, like I just shaved but I am so full of testosterone that this two-day stubble just shot through my face seconds after I put down the razor,” and it contains more extreme violence and torture than any Saw film but is presented in a way that's as aspirational and fulfilling as that wedding dress montage scene in the Sex and the City movie…read more [movies.com]

Crank: High Voltage is, like Crank before it, a celebration of the most ludicrous and over the top filmmaking possible. In another era it would have been a grindhouse film, relegated to sleezy, dirty movie theaters in back allies where people slink in for bullets, tits (sometimes exploding tits), foul language and the bashing of heads. It's somewhat amazing that a movie like this can exist in this day and age, and maybe even more amazing that they've somehow slipped it past the MPAA with an R-rating…read more [Cinema Blend]

You have to give the filmmaking duo credit — they bob and weave like prizefighters trying to work in past players (Yoakam's doc, Smart's Eve) while introducing a plethora of supporting weirdoes, including crazed Asian whore Ling, mullet-headed moron Corey Haim (yes, THE Corey Haim), and Carradine as chief bad guy Poon Dong. In fact, the name of the Kung Fu/Kill Bill's character is rather indicative of the level of wit expelled by this effort. Another example? Chelios and his gal pal create friction (to fuel his ticker's battery) by having unabashed sex in the middle of a horse track — right on the finish line — during the race. While it's not as goofy as the porn stars' strike (don't ask), it's par for High Voltage's crude course…read more [FilmCritic]

Adopting a grainy grind-house style that departs from the first film's slickness, Neveldine and Taylor cram their frames with guts and guns, car crashes and gratuitous nudity, pausing only to let Statham crack a quizzical frown before slamming back into the fray. Not everyone has a taste for gun-wielding strippers and Godzilla parodies, but for those who do, “Crank High Voltage” is like a 1,000-volt shot to the heart…read more [Cine Fundas]