Crackhead? Crackhead. Crackhead!

The Movie: Crank, directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor
Recommendation: Me
Reason: It looked like a cool little brains-off action movie. We're kind of Jason Statham fans.

With a tagline like "Poison in his veins. Vengeance in his heart." you pretty much know what you're in for. I first heard of Crank due to a SpikeTV preview clip, and due to my devotion to Statham's acting career I knew I had to see it. The storyline's convoluted in a simple sort of way. The bad guys injected Jason Statham's character with a poison. If the bus...er...Statham goes below a certain adrenaline level, he starts to die. It's Speed, only it's a guy, not a bus. That's about as wrong a definition of Crank as you're going to get, but it's the easiest way to explain it.

There's no way you can say that a movie in which Dwight Yoakam is cast (in all seriousness) as a doctor is going to be factually accurate, but Crank makes its intentions clear from the opening frames. This is not a movie about realism. This isn't even a movie that gives a damn about plot or anything much beyond pushing the action-movie envelope as far as it can go. It's almost a parody of the action genre, cutting close to a sort of Scream trilogy satire. It's so over-the-top that it can't be taken seriously, but it's a heck of a ride. Statham completely dominates the rest of the cast with his usual sardonic persona (this could practically be The Transporter 3: On Foot and Angry). He's funny and physical, managing the standard Stathamisms of creative action sequences and growly English.

The style of the movie is wonderful. It blatantly rips off the GTA series of games, and in fact it feels like you're watching a video game's cutscenes most of the way through. Even the placement of little mini-movies inside of the scenes add to the Playstation feel of the whole thing (and of course, the map-view that moves the story from location to location). Those little touches really pulled Crank from 'decent action movie' to 'rewatchable scenery-chewing'. It was a fun thing to watch.

-13/365 down, 352/365 to go