Review of Crank (2006) by Markb. — 08 Oct 2006

This deliberately over caffeinated crime saga about a drug dealer (Jason Statham) who's doped up with a substance that will kill him if he sleeps, rests or even sits down for too long, so he has to keep his adrenaline way up while finding and taking revenge upon the culprit, borrows plot and thematic elements from both Speed (ironic, eh?) and the 1949 Edmond O'Brien film noir D.

O.A., but otherwise we're in Wannabe Tarantino-land once again. At least, unlike this year's other prime example of such, Lucky Number Slevin, this thing MOVES and doesn't have a leading man who's D.

O.A. in and of himself...but as Leonard Maltin wisely said of The Last Days of Frankie the Fly, the price we pay for Pulp Fiction keeps getting higher and higher. Statham (The Transporter, Cellular) is tremendously effective and as compelling to watch as Bob Hoskins was in The Long Good Friday, similarly playing a criminal kingpin whose empire is spinning out of control, and Jose Pablo Castillo matches his performance, but this movie--which also features Just friends' Amy Smart in a demeaning role as Statham's girlfriend that completely betrays the actress's name--is as relentlessly headache-inducing (visually and aurally) as being stuck in a video-game arcade with a massive hangover and no aspirin.

And even though I own ten years of National Lampoon magazine and am therefore nearly impossible to offend, damned if this flick didn't feature one bit that did it for me: Statham appropriates a cab from its Middle Eastern driver by yelling "Al-Qaeda! Al-Qaeda!" and getting a mob to beat the crap out of the hapless soul.

Well, I live near a city in which a Sikh was murdered right after 9/11, so please excuse me if something less ethereal and more solid than laughter jets out of my mouth.