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Oh hey, look what just came out on DVD! It's Crank 2: Electric Boogaloo! Well fine, "High Voltage" but that is totally close enough to actually rationalize it. As opposed to every other movie I compulsively call Electric Boogaloo. Anyway yeah. This is the sequel to that REALLY stupid action movie I covered a while ago. Which ends with the main character falling to his death. About that same character. I expect deep insights into the human condition and poignant character development, don't you?
Again, we start out with a montage of credits inexplicably in the style of an old arcade game, with crude little sprites depicting how the last movie ended, switching to live action just after he bounces off a car. At this point, a van full of punks pulls up, people get out with a snow shovel, scrape him off the pavement, load him in and run. A news report then pops on where Q (Star Trek Q, not Bond Q) explains this, pointing out how utterly implausible this is. And it is. So anyway. Here's some Triad surgeons giving our hero some open heart surgery, with one punk constantly putting out cigarettes on his intestines and spitting into the body cavity and such. Oh, and the main character is actually apparently conscious for all this. Also, it isn't really open heart surgery, it's... removing his heart and replacing it with a plastic one, which apparently is operated by external battery. He's like Iron Man! Anyway, apparently they want to harvest all his organs because, seriously, the fact that this guy is still alive at this point means he must have flat out the world's most surviviest organs ever. Seriously. That's why they cut his heart out.
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It turns out their boss has a handy flow chart of the order in which he wants his various organs, and next on the list is his mighty wang, so our... hero goes "%@#$ that!" kills the doctors, and one random topless girl later (because it IS paragraph 3 after all) makes his way up to the roof for a nice arbitrary firefight. After killing various people, he starts interrogating a fat guy to find out who has his heart, or as he calls it, his "strawberry tart." This confuses the fat guy, but a handy subtitle pops up explaining his arbitrary cockney that "Strawberry Tart = [heart]" and he nods in understanding. Oh, and the interrogation in question involves dipping the barrel of the shotgun he ended up with in some nearby motor oil and shoving it up his butt. Yeah.
So, he steals a car, hooks it to his battery for a quick charge, and calls his doctor. Oh, and as he pulls out there's suddenly some really upbeat J-pop on the radio. Remember his doctor from the first movie? He's kind of this crazy whore-mongering weirdo. Anyway, Doc explains that there's an internal battery too once the one on his belt that'll last one hour, with the help of a fun film strip. Oh, and then when he's asking a random mexican street racer for directions he kinda plows right into a median coming to a dead stop and flying through the windshield. This is a minor inconvenience of course. They give him directions, and have no problem with his request that they hook jumper cables to his nipple and tongue because his exterior battery smashed on impact.
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Anyway, step 1 is to go to this random house full of triads and hookers, and uh... fight people. The camera stays outside the house and you just see this hilarious stream of people falling out the windows. The guy with his heart escapes though, and suddenly we have this oddly long interlude of one of the random prostitutes smashing our second fat guy's crotch with a bicycle. She speaks in only "Me love you long time!"-ese and seems pretty set on being a major character here. Our hero manages to get directions and flee before she can accomplish this though. It seems Baboon Hearteo has been taken to... another strip club. Where some people are in the back room cutting someone's elbow off to intimidate the heart carrier into giving it to them. Oh, and the main character's wife is working here. She apparently turned to stripping to get by after hearing that her husband was dead. You know, like, an hour ago or so. She doesn't seem particularly shocked to see he's alive though, more freaked out that she was caught stripping.
Anyway, lots of random nudity in the background here, and MeLuvYu bursts in trying to lay claim to him. This starts a very silly fight between her and wifey, with bad kung fu sound effects, and also cartoon sound effects. Then the triads come out of the back room, and everyone pulls out guns. Everyone. Triads, main character, random patrons, all the strippers besides wifey... and we've got a big chaotic fight scene. At one point, one stripper is shot in the boobs and there is a "wacky" bit where the camera stays on her for a whole 2 seconds (which, with this movie's pacing is an eternity) so we can watch the silicon gel inside ooze out as her boobs shrivel up like deflated balloons. You don't get a screenshot of that though, because again, this whole scene has a distinct lack of clothing in it.
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Then cops show up! So our hero gets beat up by them for a while, and strippers are tossed into squad cars which is kinda weird, and all is looking bleak, but then one of the cops makes the mistake of zapping him with a taser. They clearly JUST BARELY resist the urge to play the Popeye theme as he powers up and explodes out, trashing the cops, hopping in the car with his wife and some other random stripper, and exposits a little. Apparently 3 months went by since he last saw his wife, so, I guess he actually had SOME medical recovery time after, you know, falling from a helicopter and all. Wifey points out that that's totally plausible, she saw it on youtube once! Oh, and while we're having this conversation the random stripper is trying to rape her. Which she finds a mild annoyance apparently. Oh, then after a couple more taser blasts, and he calls his doctor again, before driving off to an odd cameo scene.
OK, there's a bunch of porn stars holding a protest blocking the road. I assume these are all actual famous porn stars because they all get quick close ups. Plus one of them is Ron Jeremy, the porn star everyone recognizes, because he's massively over-exposed! The main character doesn't particularly want to deal with this, so he gets out, abandoning his wife apparently, steals a shock collar off some jerk's dog, zaps himself more, gets chased by more cops, and is spontaneously rescued by the twin brother of the brother of some friend of his who I suppose was killed in the first movie but he doesn't look particularly familiar. This guy has "Full Body Tourette's" which strikes me as the sort of condition that should preclude motorcycle ownership, but whatever. He's out to avenge his brother, and is really disappointed that our hero kinda already killed like everybody who was in the last movie.
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About now, we're overdue for trying to find another way to recharge the heart battery. A call to his doctor recommends static electricity, and specifically to rub up against random people. So... he starts doing so. With random punks and old ladies. Then his wife shows up, hears the situation, gets a cartoon lightbulb over her head, seriously, and figures hey, let's have another one of those public sex scenes, it worked in the first movie! This ends up happening in the middle of a horse racing track. Mid-race. And yes, everyone in the stands DOES cheer them on. Including the bad guy with the heart in the cooler. Seriously. This goes on for a WHILE too. It's like up there with the uh "love scene" from Team America. At one point a horse is forced to jump over them and his wife grins in surprise as she and the audience are treated to an extreme close-up of its penis. Eventually a greenskeeper gets sick of this, hoses them down, and we go back to having a crazy chase scene. I would point out how the premise of all this is incredibly flawed, but you know that, and there's a new stupid thing I'm not talking about yet.
OK, so, guy with heart hops in a race car and starts racing down from the top of a multilevel garage. So our hero just starts wall jumping down to race it to the bottom. He just barely misses them, but he and seizure boy get a ride from some other Triad type boss for some exposition. Seizure boy gets tossed out though because it's annoying trying to have a chat while someone is having a seizure. The main character is also kinda distracting what with sticking his finger in the cigarette lighter. Anyway, turns out there's some ancient god-like Triad martial arts master- ferret balls? OK, why do we suddenly have an extreme close-up of ferret genitalia here? Uh, anyway, so yeah. There's apparently some ancient legend that somewhere in the world is a guy with a heart so awesome that it can withstand their deadliest poisons... and seriously partway through this conversation they just stick in this extreme close-up of a ferret with huge testicles thrust towards the camera and... what the hell movie! That was a total non-sequitur! Uh... the exposition doesn't really go anywhere, a gunfight occurs inside the car, he gets out, grabs a high voltage power box, and... we get a chance to catch our breath.
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Here's Q again! Covering the race track sex scene, and they're interviewing the old lady he was rubbing himself against. Uh... so meanwhile in gang member land, this tattoo covered guy is being forced to slice his own nipples off as an act of contrition for losing the heart, I guess. Meanwhile, Wifey encounters her new boyfriend who is just kind of a weirdo and this scene really is just kinda totally incoherent. She gets sick of his weirdness, beats him up, and throws him into a car. Then she walks past seizure boy and the camera decides to follow him instead. Actually, it's kinda wishy-washy. She gets arrested, then we go back to him, making a phone call with a crazy long country extension to... a gay nightclub in South America? To ask about some famous gangster called The Ferret, which... I guess is what was up with that weirdness before.
So now here's our hero hopping into the back of an ambulance, rushing one of the random triad dudes he recently gunned down to the hospital. He holds the EMTs at gunpoint, gets a recharge from them, then hops out as he sees the heart being carried by. And oh hey! It's MeLuvYu again! She sees him from across the street, runs over, and goes flying through the air as a car comes out of nowhere and plows into her. Good. Anyway, now we're running after triads with the heart again and everyone's shooting at each other. Suddenly, we have this crazy Rube Goldberg sequence where a stray bullet bounces off 5 random objects. Cut to one of the hospital workers from the first movie talking about his trauma with his psychiatrist who... is really dirty minded and suggests he go get a hooker. Then the bullet finishes ricochetting off 3 more objects to come through the window and hit him square in the temple, killing him.
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The chase continues, leading to a major power transformer. Foolish punk! Don't you realize that electricity makes him stronger! ... oh WOW. Crashing into something with very very high levels of magic electric juice in it, he starts actually shooting lightning out of his fists... and then I have to stop to movie and take a deep breath. OK, see. Here's the thing. You know how I just made that obscure reference to Godzilla Vs. King Kong? Well... apparently the movie heard me and decided to run with that. Because, just now? The main character and the punk he was chasing just spontaneously grew into city destroying sized rubber suit versions of themselves and started roaring. I am not making this up. This movie really is that insane. I'm sure it's eventually going to prove to be some kind of dream sequence, but still, what the hell movie? Also, giant rubber punk bears a really weird resemblance to Alex Kidd. And seriously, this turned into a full blown Kaiju movie here. Including the crazy implausible totally horizontal weirdly slow jumping charges you get in those. Eventually, the camera zooms in on two tiny onlookers who wonder if they should call the cops and the improbability drive powers down restoring us to some semblance of sanity. Which is a shame, I'd have been fine with this suddenly turning into a Very Different Movie like that. Also, it turns out it ISN'T his heart in the cooler, but rather something which the main character calls him a very sick person for carrying around. Turns out his heart was actually transplanted into Mystic Weirdo 3 weeks ago.
Attempting to interrogate the weirdo some more, pointing his finger at his head, a bullet goes through said head, causing the main character to ponder, for the second time if I recall, if he can really kill people with his finger like that. But no, just random gang members, possibly trying to help out, because they're clueless on what they were talking about. Cut to the old man in question... who is apparently Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China. He's cruising around in his classic car, trying to pick up hookers. I like him. He's totally silly and inappropriate.
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Uh... suddenly we cut to a bunch of neon signs being read aloud, all of which say "@#$% You Chelios!" in various forms. This being the main character's last name. This then transitions into a British version of a Jerry Springer type show, but not the one that actually exists and was featured in Shaun of the Dead, where we're discussing a 10 year old version of the main character. He's sitting there twitching, while his mother talks about how all he does is play videogames. He apparently also gets in a lot of fights and steals stuff, including a car. Part of this include a flashback within the flashbacks to him pounding on a kid at school with a trash can, and getting into an improbable chase scene. Jumping back to the present, the random gangsters who interrupted him earlier are dragging him behind their powerboat and peeing on him.
Meanwhile, Seizure boy checks on MeLuvYu and they decide to team up, maybe. Suddenly Seizure boys gay biker backup, shows up to give him a ride, and Wifey, who, we now have confirmation, is actually Girlfriendy not Wifey but hey, is getting interrogated by the cops. She isn't taking it very seriously though. Getting back to our uh, hero... we have just pure visual chaos. Apparently they did... something to his balls, possibly putting them in a vice. We get an extreme close-up on that, then this weird kaleidoscope montage of uh... highly detailed statue wang and sunbathing nude girls. Apparently we are now within the lair of The Ferret, who's seeking vengeance for the deaths of some random goons in the first movie. Possibly including the random jerk who arbitrarily poisoned him at the beginning of the first movie. Who, as it turns out, is not actually dead! He is, however, a head floating in a jar. He gets to talk in a robot voice while he watches The Ferret whip our hero with a cat'o'ninetails for a bit, when suddenly, it's the gay bikers to the rescue! Cue big chaotic fight scene, with lots of people using random nude girls as shields.
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Someone hits our hero with a shock baton, letting him get back in on the action. Seizure boy goes all kung-fu and whips out nunchuks, because apparently it's 1990 or something, which would actually kind of explain a few things about this movie. Our hero drop kicks the severed head into the swimming pool,, and then sees overhead, his salvation. A telephone pole to climb! Meanwhile, the random hooker his doctor sent out to find the heart forever ago successfully pulls in Lo Pan for Doctor to steal the heart back from. Anyway, after grabbing the power lines, our hero, now on fire, beats up The Ferret and tosses him in the pool. Seeing MeLuvYu, but suffering from Crazy Vision as a side effect of massively electrocuting himself so much, he hallucinates that she is his wife (and also surrounded by horses and sunbeams), he pulls her in for a nice hug and kiss with some happy Journey music. Then we cut back to real vision as he lets her go. Did I mention he was on fire? So yeah, now also on fire, she runs off screaming trying to put it out. Then, again, still very much aflame, he turns to the camera to give it the finger. Then the credits start, interspersed with scenes of his doctor transplanting his heart back in, and more of that videogame title screen. He apparently, finally, dies during this surgery. But of course, we all know that when I say that, it means as soon as everyone leaves the room his eyes snap open. That's a total given. Also, between his general levels of superhero strength and endurance, and being totally bandaged from, you know, walking around for quite some time, you know, on fire and all, he kinda has the whole Darkman look down now. Oh, and then there's some out-takes in the credits.
I'm stunned. I really am. I was expecting an insane incoherent mess of a movie. I was expecting this general vibe that everyone involved in the production was hopped up on a combination of cocaine and Mountain Dew. I wasn't expecting logic to factor in anywhere... but I absolutely was not expecting to see this turn into a Toho movie for 5 minutes. By the way, as the previews here reminded me, the presumably absolutely deplorable movie Gamer currently in theaters as I write this is by the same people as this. That fact is ALMOST enough to get me to actually see it. I hear it really fails to live up to the standards of crazy they establish here though, plus, you know, on at least some level it's horrible propaganda against videogames... despite the players of such being the target audience. So yeah, I'm going to pass on that.
