As much as Crank: High Voltage hates minorities, women, and homosexuals, you can be sure it hates leading man Chev Chelios that little bit more. Jason Statham returns as the track-suited impulse puppet, once again coerced into acting like a rampaging video game character. As usual, it's his ticker, or lack thereof, that is to blame. The adrenaline pumped stallion heart that saw him through the first film has become a hot commodity with ailing Triad bosses, leaving Chelios organ farmed and lumbered with a bum artificial replacement. Fucks sake! If Chelios doesn't keep his new mecha-heart juiced with ever intensifying electric shocks, it's game over.
High Voltage ditches the meth house glam of the previous film. For the sequel, characters are caked in a sweaty, shimmering, seventies sheen. Everything is lurid and grimy. If Grand Theft Auto piss-abouts were the original Crank's inspiration, then High Voltage is knee-deep in Japanese trash cinema. As the film rolls on, Statham's sprinting feats become explicitly superhuman, the frenetic edit collapsing into the kind of lumbering stop motion that recalls Shinya Tsukamoto's cyberpunk classic Tetsuo. There's a meat-headed man-in-suit power-up that brings to mind War of the Gargantuas via Electric Dragon 80.000V; you even get a sprinkle of Takashi Miike in how the last act prioritises some head-punting irreverence. High Voltage eventually winds down having covered a lot of the same ground is its predecessor. Can the bad taste superman survive sequel fatigue? Statham closes the flick as an abused action figure, all singed hair and indistinct features, but raring to go. What he really needs now is a rival.
High Voltage ditches the meth house glam of the previous film. For the sequel, characters are caked in a sweaty, shimmering, seventies sheen. Everything is lurid and grimy. If Grand Theft Auto piss-abouts were the original Crank's inspiration, then High Voltage is knee-deep in Japanese trash cinema. As the film rolls on, Statham's sprinting feats become explicitly superhuman, the frenetic edit collapsing into the kind of lumbering stop motion that recalls Shinya Tsukamoto's cyberpunk classic Tetsuo. There's a meat-headed man-in-suit power-up that brings to mind War of the Gargantuas via Electric Dragon 80.000V; you even get a sprinkle of Takashi Miike in how the last act prioritises some head-punting irreverence. High Voltage eventually winds down having covered a lot of the same ground is its predecessor. Can the bad taste superman survive sequel fatigue? Statham closes the flick as an abused action figure, all singed hair and indistinct features, but raring to go. What he really needs now is a rival.
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