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OK, so, trying something a little different here. Before, I was watching a lot of weird old horror movies (and lame sounding modern ones) trying to find stuff bizarre and cheesy enough to be worth mentioning, but I think that well's honestly getting kinda dry. Now, the best material would be more Ralph Bakshi movies and other such traumatic materials. That sort of thing is really legitimately traumatic though, and this gig pays like 2 cents a day on a good day. So... unless people start buying ad space at a price where I can, you know, measure the inflow in multiple dollars per week, I'm backing off the traumatically bad, and wandering into the mindlessly stupid. On a random whim, I recently rented the remake of Death Race, not expecting to see anything more than a mindless summer action movie, and thus, not consciousness streaming. I therefore missed out on the chance to share my realtime thoughts with you on a big dumb mindless action movie suddenly deciding that Mario Kart ? blocks were going to be a major element of the plot.
So this week, I'm sitting here about to watch Crank. A movie which I gather to be just a big long chain of action sequences wherein the main character has to keep finding new things to do to maintain an adrenalized state or else his heart will explode for reasons I'm sure are really stupid. The real selling point on this one for me was the realization that there is a sequel, where the main character, and it's the same guy mind you, has an artificial heart, and must therefore constantly electrocute himself. So yeah, we're looking at the efforts of a very promising writer here.
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Well, we start off with a retro-80s arcade game title screen, which I suppose is promising, then a weird first person shot of, presumably, the main character stumbling around his dump of a house, eventually finding a freshly burned DVD by his TV labelled "%$@# YOU" (censorship mine). He pops it in to find a bald guy with a bad stereotypical Mexican accent basically going "HA-ha! I injected you with crazy sci-fi poison that'll kill you within an hour! Pretty funny huh!" I kinda have to wonder how he knew what time he'd wake up in order to make that sort of estimate. Also, the whole first person thing is really reminding me of Siren, but mainly just because I've been playing it for like 2 straight weeks. Anyway, random boobs out of nowhere! Actually, wow, that was really random. Apparently Angry here just tried to call his doctor, and it turns out he was off having an orgy in Las Vegas, and thus couldn't treat his... improbably blood coagulation shot, or whatever it is. You'd figure he'd just go to the hospital as his next step, but instead he starts calling various friends and mobsters to scream at them and try and figure out where bad-Mexican Prankster is so he can at least go and kill him first. See, this is why I call him Angry. He kind of has the personality of a berserker here.
Anyway, while he still hasn't had any actual medical advice or plot exposition on the subject, he's already trying self-devised homeopathic remedies for DYING. The impression I get here is basically that if this heart goes under 60 beats a minute, it'll explode! Method #1- Beg the gangsters he's interrogating for some cocaine. Nope, that didn't help. Method #2, beat up a room full of 60 people! Seriously, he decides to just beat up everyone in the room in the hopes that it'll make him feel less woozy. Method #3- Get a whole bunch of cops chasing him and drive through a crowded mall. Partway through doing this, his doctor calls him back, and based only on "it's some kind of weird experimental poison from China" manages to diagnose him. Basically, he tells him that he's doing the right thing so far and should keep up the being a crazy berserker. So he trashes his car, runs around on food from the police for a while, eventually hops in a cab to ditch them. Method #4- Have the cabbie blare horrible country music and totally spaz out in the back seat from how lame it is. Method #5- Mug a convenience store, and drink all of their Red Bull! Oh, and while in there, pick up some flowers for his girlfriend.
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Then he takes a bit of a break to interrogate more people. Turns out there is no antidote to crazy chinese adrenaline poison. He does so in a swimming pool though at least, so, good cardio. So he goes back out to his waiting cab, the cabbie doesn't want him to get in wet. So he finally gets around to just carjacking him, and shouting "Al Quaeda!" at some random old ladies, who begin to beat him up. Then his doctor calls again and suggests he go to the hospital, which I've been saying for a while, not for proper medical treatment though, just to steal some epinephrine. Now, I should probably point out that I know how to spell that because this movie has a lot of fun with visual aids. While explaining what it was (the whole "adrenaline shot" popularized by Pulp Fiction) it spelled it out on screen in big letters. There's also a lot of CGI heart shots and random split screen stuff going on constantly.
So uh... before going to do that apparently, he goes and picks up his wacky stoner sidekick, then finds bad-Mexican's brother, chops his hand off with a meat cleaver, interrogates him, then has a fight scene with him in the alley. I'd like to point out the order of events here again. First, hand off. Second, talking. Third, fighting. You'd think the hand bit would be last. Or at least second. Anyway, yeah, that doesn't amount to a whole lot, then it's off the the hospital pharmacy finally. They refused to give the crazy angry man dangerous drugs over the counter for some reason, but a kindly druggie nearby points out to him that epinephrine is an ingredient in some nearby nasal spray, so he grabs and snorts a bunch of that. Then he steals a hospital gown off a dying guy, and wanders around the hospital until he sees people wheeling a crash cart around. "I know THEY must have epinephrine!" he says, and proceeds to hold them at gun point while demanding some! He also demands a nice solid zap from their defibrillator while he's at it. Again, at gun point. You'd figure he'd accidentally shoot someone when they zapped him, but nope. Oh, and cops are kinda on his case again at this point, but for some reason maintain a polite distance down the hall.
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Anyway, he injects himself on the way out of the hospital, and apparently it really does the trick because he starts screaming and running across town with a bad punk cover of the Trix slogan blaring. So he calls his doctor again, and is admonished for using the entire syringe. He takes a brief moment to watch a news report on himself on a TV near a crowd of people who are kinda creeped out by his hospital gown and highly visible epinephrine-overdose erection. They make a big deal of explaining it, so I am too. Deal. Next he finds a random cop, steals their gun, uses it to intimidate them off their motorcycle, and rides off, and stands up on the seat for a while. The wind takes this chance to blow his gown around and for some reason to facilitate his disguise by taking off everything else. So, if you ever want to see Jason Statham totally naked from behind, this is the movie for you!
Anyway, after crashing, and regaining consciousness, he calls his girlfriend to casually explain to his girlfriend in pretty much these words that some mobsters have poisoned him, and are probably heading over to her place to kidnap and torture her a bit. She kinda laughs this off, so he goes their to escort her to safety. Thankfully putting some pants on first. And while he's there, since she still refuses to believe the severity of the situation, he has to set the clock on her microwave. Uh-oh! Heart rate falling! Better do something insane! "Hey, the waffle iron's on if you want one!" So yeah, waffle hand! Pain is exciting, right? Anyway, a brief fight scene takes place out front while he's waiting for her to shut everything off, wherein a stray bullet flies through someone's window and causes their parakeet to explode into a silly green feather cloud. No, really, that happens. After that, it's off to a fancy restaurant to sniff some glue and explain to his girlfriend that he's kind of a professional hitman that recently was hired to bump off a Triad boss. Apparently he got cold feet though, so we can maintain our uh... heroic image of the guy who just mugged a heart attack victim and a cop for crazy drugs. Oh, and we also apply weird heart vision to random passersby and a pigeon. Girlfriend still isn't buying this wacky plot summary, but on the way out, he gets another crazy adrenal idea. Raping his girlfriend in the middle of a crowded chinatown street, with lots of little kids and old ladies watching! What the hell movie! Partway through putting this plan into action, his girlfriend gets way more into the idea than he is. As does the assembled crowd of hundreds of people. Seriously, WTF movie? So yeah, all these hundreds of people, along with his girlfriend, are suddenly disappointed when mid-totally-inappropriate-sex-scene he gets a phone call about where the guy who poisoned him is, and runs off. Wow.
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He takes a different cab this time, whose driver thinks he doesn't look too good and gives him a free vial of Crazy Haitian Voodoo Juice. Random weirdness later, more random questioning and then murdering of gangsters. Oh and apparently his girlfriend follows him to the big shootout location, STILL not believing any of this movie's plot is really going on, despite being directly involved in possibly the most insane scene of the thing. OK, yeah, now she's in on it, and is following him around just kinda beaming with pride at how she has such an insane murderous boyfriend. Really, she's beaming and saying "My boyfriend kills people!" to random uh... sweat shop workers? Anyway, girlfriend proceeds to interrupt a chase scene to look around in her purse because she forgot to take her birth control pill that day. It then turns into a car chase. Midway through the car chase, she suddenly comprehends the point of the crazy street rape scene, and decides to uh, run with that idea. So uh, after that, he gets sick of being in a car chase, gets out, walks over to the other car involved, shoots everyone inside, and then gets back to what he first set out to do here, go see his doctor.
Doc hooks him up to an IV drip of all kinds of crazy stuff, and observes the only remotely true medical statement this movie has had to offer thus far, that there is no logical reason for this dude to still be alive here. At this point we have a little break in the non-stop action, so let's take this time to question why someone decided to inject our uh, "hero" with mystery poison in his sleep instead of using any number of lower profile, faster acting means of killing him. Anyway, a meeting is arranged with bad accent and murder method man, and Angry Psycho to exchange the antidote for uh... whatever. The antidote I thought we established didn't exist. Anyway, taking some more drugs and hallucinating while he waits, he talks to some Japanese guy who is talking with various hallucinatory voices of other characters from the movie, and also Japanese guy actually talks, in subtitled Japanese, and the camera spins around to show us that the main character can actually see these subtitles floating in mid-air.
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So yeah, here's the big epic final showdown. There are some random girls in giant plastic spheres scattered around on a rooftop for no real reason, and some plot exposition that I can't see anyone caring about. The main character starts threatening everyone with his hand in fake gun formation. Everyone kinda laughs. Then he uh.. shoots someone with his finger and blows a hole out the back of his head. Everyone kinda WTFs at that for a second before it's revealed that oh, he brought random triad backup with him and one of them actually shot the dude. So yeah, big crazy gunfight with screaming bubble girls and live press coverage. Near the end, the main character starts feeling woozy, and has the last guy pinned down behind a huge row of lawn jockeys where are out here on a ledge in LA for some reason. He blows several of their heads off with misses, then eventually chases him to a helicopter, when suddenly, bad-Mexican accent guy comes out of nowhere, injects him with something, kills his own boss, and hijacks the helicopter. The main character shakes his head clear though, and suddenly we have some kind of crazy helicopter fight going on. Eventually they both roll out the door at high altitudes. Mid-free fall, out Angry Man breaks Bad-Mexican Accent's neck. Then he calls his girlfriend to say sorry for how it seems like he's dying here. There's nice sappy music. Also, you know, the ground approaching. Then time stops for a second, then he lands on top of a car, bounces way off into the air, lands on the pavement rather bloody, and blinks in surprise. Movie over.
This movie has a sequel. With the same main character. THIS MOVIE has a sequel. With the SAME main character! And the plot of THAT movie? Someone steals his heart. As in, the organ in his chest that circulates his blood. And he has to chase them all over the city to get it back. While periodically hooking his tongue up to jumper cables because the improvised replacement he has keeps having its batteries run down. The really freaky thing is, the people writing and directing these? I don't think they're at all aware of how disconnected from reality they are. This is unintentional humor here. Suppose I'm going to have to add that sucker to my queue now too.
