Entertainment Ireland

"If you stop, you die". Assassin Chev Chelios (Statham) has being poisoned with a lethal cocktail by gangster Verona (Cantillo) and has only hours to live. Staving off death by keeping his adrenaline high, Chev races around L.A looking for his killer and the antidote. That's the pitch, but no summation of plot can do Crank justice and the only way to get across the speed of which this film travels at is to write the review without any punctuation. Using every trick in the editor's handbook to keep the film operating at a hyper-kinetic pace, Crank employs crazy zooms, split screens, flash cuts, freeze frames, Dutch angles and whatever you're having yourself in this don't-stop-for-a-second, out of control, rapid-fire action flick. Statham, who more than likely checked into a hospital for mental and physical exhaustion after the wrap party, is on top form here. Sending up his own tough guy image, Statham looks like he's having the time of his life and his performance deserves a new Oscar subdivision - that of 'most energetic actor in the zaniest, wildest, crazy-ass film' (just imagine the opening sequence District 13 dragged out over 90 minutes).Everything in Crank is tongue in cheek: the cheesy dialogue, the character names (Chev Chelios?), the wanton violence, the gratuitous nudity, the awful, awful acting - everything here is for a laugh and writer/directors Neveldine and Taylor (if ever a film needed two directors, it's Crank) get most of the laughs it aims for. The comic highlights are Statham's efforts at keeping his adrenaline high: he snorts cocaine, sticks his hand in the waffle iron, sniffs nasal spray, fibrillates himself, has sex in the street while bystanders look on, stands on a moving motorcycle and listens to Billy Ray Cyrus. Violent, funny and physically draining, Crank is not to be taken seriously and if you go in thinking this is the worst film ever, you might come out thinking the opposite. Has to be seen to be believed.

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