Chev Chelios is one angry man. He spent the entirety of the first ""Crank"" film keeping his heart pumping with the use of adrenaline. He had a snowball's chance in Hell of surviving, especially after falling thousands of feet from a helicopter directly onto the pavement, yet he is still alive. Now, in ""Crank: High Voltage,"" that indestructible heart of his is being stolen by Japanese doctors to give to an elderly Chinese gangster (kung-fu legend David Carradine) in poor health. Chelios (Jason Statham) is stuck with a battery-powered heart and needs to give himself a series of electrical jolts to keep the heart pumping. He's like the Energizer Bunny, but angry and British.
Sound implausible and foolish? It is. But what ""High Voltage"" lacks in plot, it makes up for by not giving a damn about the plot. The film brings back memories of exploitation films of the '70s, where the more violent and sexual a movie was, the greater an audience it got.
The violence matches the first film, though the misogyny has been amped up to unhealthy levels. Literally every female character is a prostitute, or, if they're a little nicer around the edges, a stripper. Chelios' girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart) has become a stripper, and much like the last film, she is portrayed as a dumb bimbo as she once again must have sex in public with Chelios to help his heart keep pumping.
Public sex is only one of the ways Chelios fights to stay alive, however. Whether he's getting hooked up to a car, rubbing against a little old lady for static electricity, or breaking open a transmission box on a telephone pole, Chelios brings new meaning to the phrase ""shock and awe."" Statham plays his role in his usual angry, sarcastic manner and strikes fear into gangsters' hearts even while lacking a true heart of his own. Statham is at his best when he has no moral compass or extrinsic need for emotion, and ""High Voltage"" lets him shine.
The average shot length of the film is remarkably short, giving audiences the same feeling of hurried panic as Chelios. Similarly, the editing is so frenzied and confusing it often feels more like a Japanese cartoon than a film. The characters are cartoonish as well, playing shallow stereotypes of themselves with unrequited glee. Ling Bai's crazed hooker is especially notable for portraying a character so far removed from reality that she might as well have been drawn onto the film. Despite this, audiences will enjoy the characters the same way a child will enjoy a Saturday morning cartoon. There are bad guys with paper-thin motives, morally ambivalent women wearing little clothing and one antihero who is the essence of cool.
If directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor hadn't kept their tongues firmly in cheek while making this film, ""High Voltage"" could have been a disaster. Instead, viewers who go into the film expecting nothing more than an absurd action flick full of unnecessary violence and depraved sexuality will walk out of the theater happy.
Grade: B
