Crank: High Voltage

Prequel: “Crank” (2006)

Let it be said that this is not a typical review. I did not willingly volunteer to watch this movie. Not having ever seen the original “Crank” and knowing nothing about this, its sequel, I was convinced by some friends with very poor judgment to plop down five dollars and subject myself to this movie. What a mistake. “Crank: High Voltage” is a film so vile, so repugnant and evil that, by the time I left the theater, I felt like crying. I was filled with both anger and deep sadness after viewing it.

The plot of a film like this is really not worth discussing; the content completely overshadows any merit it may have as a movie. However, because I am obligated to cover it: Jason Statham stars as Chev Chelios, an assassin who was apparently dropped out of a helicopter at the end of the first film. He survived the fall and is scooped off the street by Chinese gangsters, who want to harvest his organs for sale on the black market. His heart is removed and for some reason replaced with a battery-powered artificial one. Chelios manages to escape the gang’s clutch and must spend the rest of the movie both running from the gang and electrically shocking himself in various ways in order to keep his heart running.

This paper-thin plot serves to harbor a mind-numbing amount of morally corrupt content; certainly the most I have ever witnessed in a movie. To try and list everything offensive in the movie would be a futile task. I suggest that if you do not plan on seeing this movie that you skip ahead to the last paragraph.

Bad language is pervasive, with every curse word imaginable spoken dozens of times. The F-word is said hundreds of times.

The sexual content is overwhelming. Explicit nudity of every kind is on display; with multiple scenes set in a strip club, there are many, many scenes with topless and fully nude women present. There are close-ups of breasts, buttocks, and genitals. The inside of a gay S&M club is glimpsed, where a man on a leash is seen being whipped. The film reaches its height of sexual perversity in an extraordinarily graphic sex scene on a public horse racetrack, with hundreds of onlookers, including children, watching.

As if that wasn’t enough, the violence in “Crank: High Voltage” seems determined to outweigh the sexual content. People are gunned down in virtually every scene, with blood and matter spraying from their wounds. A woman is shot in the breasts, and her silicone implants are seen oozing out along with blood. One man is tortured by having his nipples cut off, another by being shocked in the crotch with an electric cattle prod, and yet another by having the barrel of a shotgun stuck up his rectum. Chelios violently electrocutes himself multiple times in order to keep his heart running. The list goes on and on, but I don’t think I need to say any more.

This is sick, disturbing stuff. What left me truly rattled and shaken, though, were my fellow theatergoers’ reactions to what was happening on the screen. They were laughing. This wasn’t uncomfortable, nervous laughter either; indeed, they seemed to think the happenings on the screen was truly hilarious. There were young teenagers in the crowd, laughing along with everyone else. I’m not sure what to say about this, except I urge you to pray fervently that we as a culture do not become completely desensitized to sin. I went home feeling violated and defiled by this movie, wishing I could shower off the filth I felt it left on me. Psalm 101:3 says, “I will set no wicked thing before my eyes…” Take that advice. Don’t watch “Crank: High Voltage”.

Violence: Extreme / Profanity: Extreme / Sex/Nudity: Extreme

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