Crank

Last fall, I was faced with a dilemma. I had one night at an airbase in Rota, Spain, and CRANK was showing at the base theater. I generally like Jason Statham movies, and I wanted to see this one. I’d been to Rota many times before and felt that the city had little new to offer. Nevertheless, it was Spain and I did know that CRANK would show up on Netflix after a while. Ultimately, I chose to go out. Even if Rota was a familiar city, after all, it was Spain.

I chose well, for, as it turns out, I am not CRANK’s target demographic. In fact, this film was made with such laserlike focus that anyone who is not a male between the ages of fifteen and seventeen is not CRANK’s target demographic. CRANK is pure adolescent male fantasy with a Nietszchian disregard for anything like the bounds of societal restraint. In the world of CRANK, every car goes fast, every gun makes a big loud bang, every normal person is either a target or an obstacle, and every woman is merely a vagina transportation system. This movie scorns everyone and everything, except for men with power, and it gets tiresome quite quickly.

I have no problem with Crank’s premise: a hit man has been injected with a compound that will kill him if his heartbeat gets too low, so he needs to keep the adrenalin flowing just to stay alive – now he’s got to keep his heart racing long enough to exact revenge. It’s a great idea, and Jason Statham is a great choice for such a role in such a movie. It’s the execution that bothers me: the fight choreography is pedestrian and the editing indecipherable; the only noninterchangeable female character is an insufferable idiot whose only redeeming trait is her nonstop sexual availability; and the postproduction work is so intrusive that not only did it keep reminding me that I was watching a movie, it kept reminding me that I was watching a bad movie.

If CRANK had trusted its premise, had trusted its star, had trusted in the moviegoer’s recognition that women are, in fact, human beings, it could have been a fun action picture. But then, what do I know? I’m not a male between fifteen and seventeen. I am so glad I went out in Rota.