| |
do you agree with this review? |
|
|
|
|
| |
To post a comment you must login or register |
A REVIEW BY BOB SINCLAR 09/06/2006
Question: what the hell happens when a LA hitman is poisoned by a deadly Chinese engineered poison (yeah these yellow people are just crueler than normal white people… notice how I am not anti-semite today and just racist. Ok that’s done, I can proceed with my review) and must keep his adrenaline level up to stay alive or just die by guess what… snake bite? Wrong! Just a boring-looking heart failure. Answer: a “kids on crack” Speed/DOA bastard movie is made about it featuring full-out trashy directing and some joyful cartoon violence and over the top vulgarity. Which reminds me Sandra Bullock in Speed with her dynamite belt on going…“oh my god Jack!!! Fuck me before I explode”.
Back to crank… I’m afraid I have no choice but to issue a “n00b directors trying too hard to be cool” alert! Believe it or not (but you should) they were two to deliver such messy junk directing. Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor are their names and, well, I guess one of them was taking over when the other one was too baked to direct anything or too busy playing video games (which was probably the smartest thing to do at the moment). Now, these two guys, when combined, could have had a great filmo. But they actually don’t. They both worked on Biker Boyz and that’s pretty much all there is to it… a movie which probably shouldn’t even exist.
Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor are just trying way too hard here to become trendy, and they’ll do anything, even creating a patchwork of the ugliest looking Los Angeles shots ever (maybe try with a cinematographer for the next one), using short shutter “Private Ryan” camera shots (ok this shit has been done to death), weird ass filters of all sorts, unsteady-cam shots, stupid looking Google earth ads, all that to put the viewers in the head of a Jason Statham on poison, on crack, on coke, on energy drinks, on synthetic adrenaline and on anything he can put his hand on during his hour and a half joyride across LA. The somewhat nervous editing is about as not subtle as the rest of the “creative” effort. Yes an effort was made though… I guess, along with some cool metal music, the editing tries to bring a bit of excitement and vitality to this whole story which really didn’t get me stimulated at all. You actually get bored right about the time when Amy Smart’s character enters the story and the lame flashbacks kick in. Not that there’s anything wrong with Amy Smart.
I guess now I’ll just go ahead and spoil the whole highlight of the movie for you guys. Check this out this is what’s supposed to raise this flick to the coolness supreme level. The high note of this film is a scene where Statham fuck-rapes his Amy Smart girlfriend (You’ll excuse him, the man needs to get some adrenaline pumping in his veins) in public in the middle of Chinatown, near downtown LA… one of the few areas of LA that actually has people walking on the streets. Well I was like “whatever guys”… you’re trying too hard to get noticed pretty soon it will become pathetic. Plus I though they’d come up with something edgy for once… For example why not have him screw a big dog, like a Dalmatian and maybe one of the dead bloody bodies he leaves all over the place. Now that would have been kick ass… maybe with a big video game score flashing on the screen that says “SCREWING DEAD CORPSE BONUS 10,000 PTS!!!” and some pac-man sound effects for the fun and an explosion in the background... -- Sarcasm mode off . Anyway one has to wonder what these young directors will do to get noticed. We already had that same mistake earlier this year of a director adding some fashionable sex scene trying to be all hip and edgy and shit, except, it turned out to be all dorky looking. Yes, that was Richard Shepard directing Pierce Brosnan in his stupidest sex scene ever in The Matador. They need some special advisors on these trendy sex scenes man. Which reminds me: This is odd, no matter how many bad movies Greg Kinnear makes lately, I still think he’s pretty cool…
Talking about cool actors, (nice transition) I went to see Crank by pure appeal to the overly cool cast featuring Amy Smart whom I really enjoyed in Just Friends (and particularly in Just Friend’s gag reel) last year and Jason Statham, who I really discovered like everybody else as the super sly character named Turkish in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch. I did follow him ever since especially during his refreshing french Transporter era that made him a rising action star. I just think it’s pretty cool when 2 intimate “enemies” like france and gay-land work together to create fun flicks that can become successes even in the US. By the way wanna see some kick ass action scenes?… check out B13.
Crank is a little weak on the action side really… making abstraction of all the superficial camera effects that act as big enhancers for the few action scenes on the screen, you’d wish a better use of Statham physical condition & talent was made. Statham, the bald kick ass mean movie bastard with the cool british accent and tough motherf*** look is not required to perform any of his karate tricks in Crank. He is left with nothing much to do, except looking menacing for 90 minutes while running around shooting people in the face and throwing a few british insults at other characters.
Some elements of this film were still enjoyable. First of all the cast was excellent and almost makes this worth seeing… Neveldine & Taylor also had some pretty good ideas, such as the funny subtitles (even reversed POV subtitles). And other tiny little details that made me still pay attention until the end, and I was definitely happily surprised by it. It takes balls to end your movie like that in today’s Hollywoodland. I liked the fact that the movie also didn’t take itself too seriously with it’s over the top violence and few good laughs. But sorry Neveldine & Taylor, you people are definitely no Guy Ritchie-Quentin Tarantino mutant director. Try again.
I would recommend to Jason Statham to kick whoever is his US agent in the face for that one. Sometimes you only get to wonder how that stuff like gets made.
© 2006 Tom H
|
 TO TOP |
do you agree with this review? | |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
EMAIL
PRINT
COMMENT 
ABUSE
WRITE YOUR OWN REVIEW NOW!
