Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Crank: the best action movie of all time

As a semi-avid movie watcher and DVD collector, I have a list of my top fifty favorite movies of all time. Shaun of the Dead tops this list, and is followed by a few obvious choices (Fight Club, Pulp Fiction), and a few not-so-obvious choices (The Machinist, Lucky Number Slevin, Matchstick Men). Amongst those in the latter category is a 2006 film starring Jason Statham and Amy Smart, titled Crank. This action/black comedy film, directed by first-time directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, is one of the most action packed movies I have ever seen. It's about a hitman named Chev Chelios (Statham), whose bloodstream was injected with a poison that will kill him if his adrenaline drops below a certain level. There are gun duels, car chases, and what is easily the best sex scene in movie history. As you can imagine, this movie is completely improbable. But that's the beauty of it. I'm not sure about the rest of the movie-watching world, but when I go to see an action movie, I want to see things that will never, ever happen in real life. I want gun fights with insane people, car chases through malls, and tons of shit blowing up. If every action movie was like Crank, the world would be a better place. This holds the top spot as far as pulse-pounding action flicks go. I highly, highly reccomend you see this movie, even if movies like this aren't what you usually watch.
The sequel, Crank 2: High Voltage, comes out next April. It takes place seconds after the first movie ends. The plot synopsis is as follows:

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.
Words cannot describe how excited I am for this movie. If it is anywhere as good as the first one, it'll be great.
Here are some behind-the-scenes pictures from the filming of a dream sequence for the movie. Note the stylized Statham mask. I love it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's the same exact plot.