So I've been waiting to see this since it hit theaters months ago because it looked good from the commercials. I got it last night from Ballbuster and was lucky enough to be able to get the last one there as they had a whole wall dedicated to this film and all were gone. This one had just been returned. Wow! Talk about luck! Uh...not really...
In short, this movie sucked. I knew within 5 minutes that it was crap and within 20 minutes I found myself looking at the clock hoping to see that it was almost over. The editing was out of a music video...and not even a good one. I guess it was supposed to look artistic and all but all it managed to do was make me p**sed off. The story was almost non-existant too. The basics that you got from the commercials...well, that is the whole story line right there.
It was also hard to even give a crap about the lead character (Jason Statham) and root for him because he was pretty much an a***ole from start to finish. I assumed he would be played as his cool character from the Transporter, forced into having to keep his adrenaline pumping but from what I gathered throughout the film, he was a little whacky anyway and I just hated that as a main character and kept hoping he would die.
The bad guys...one word: Cliche...all of them. Of course I kept hoping they would die as well just because A) I couldn't stand looking at them B) I couldn't stand listening to their dialogue C) A&B again.
I wanted to like this film and it had so much potential but it seems that it was made simply to put Statham into outlandish situations to keep his adrenaline going. Did I already say the editing and camera work sucked?
I found it to be so ludicrous, outrageous and over the top that I found it quite entertaining. I can't say it was ultra-memorable, but still solid. The mondo editing style was at times unappealing, but I thought for the most part it was done well.
I found it rather enjoyable. It's very entertainning, has some decent action and the whole thing is so over the top you end up liking it. I didn't mind the aggresive editing for once, I though it was justified.
I could have done without the Amy Smart character, though. she was very annoying, and the scene in Chinatown was quite tasteless.
I give Crank a *** out of ****.
I thought it was fun, and while I'm not the biggest fan of this hyperkinetic style of filmmaking, I thought it fit the subject matter like a glove.
Man, I watched this last night and I freakin loved it!
I knew I was in for something special as soon as I saw the title card all done up with the 8-bit animation. Then after a small bit of exposition, The Refused (one of my fav bands) kicks in and the movie just takes off from there.
The only problem that I really had with the film is that it packs so much action into the first 45 minutes or so, and then when it slows down - it really really really slows down. Overall though, I thought it was kick ass.
I'd say that it's a tie with Running Scared as far as the best action film to come out last year. Great to start seeing really hard R action flicks.
Nice...so I'm the only one that didn't like this? Seriously?
All you guys got together and decided to say you liked it just because I didn't...right?
Quote from: odinn7 on January 17, 2007, 09:37:49 AM
Nice...so I'm the only one that didn't like this? Seriously?
All you guys got together and decided to say you liked it just because I didn't...right?
Not at all Odinn.
I don't know what it was. It may have been that I wanted some mindless entertainment after working yesterday and then two and a half hours of a programming class. The film just seemed like the perfect thing for me last night. It was something that I didn't have to think about, and could just sit back and watch the ass kicking.
Going into "Crank" I knew it was going to be a no brainer. Yes its ludicrous to the extreme, and very over the top, but it's quite a bit of fun. (And though the Chinatown scene is "tasteless" I freakin' loved it! LOL!) I dunno Oddin, maybe you were going into the film expecting a plot or something? :bouncegiggle: Didn't you see "Transporter" and "Transporter 2?" Those should've easily prepared you for "Crank."
"My name is Chev Chelios, and today is the day that I get into multiple car crashes, bang my girlfriend in the middle of Chinatown ("I'M ALIIIIIIIVE!"), pick a few fist fights, get into some gunfights, inject myself with various drugs, snort crack, and electrocute myself. Oh yeah, and I'm gonna die too. OY!" :teddyr:
Jordan, you'd better edit those spoilers or at least place a spoiler warning before anybody notices...
Quote from: Jordan on January 17, 2007, 12:18:41 PM
I dunno Oddin, maybe you were going into the film expecting a plot or something? :bouncegiggle: Didn't you see "Transporter" and "Transporter 2?" Those should've easily prepared you for "Crank."
Not at all...I didn't expect much for a plot here and I saw both Transporter films and liked them very much but this was nothing like them at all.
See, I think I was just on the same wavelength as the film. It had great music, action and the acting was pretty decent considering the source material. I need to pick up the soundtrack. Some great punk on there.
I will give you that Skaboi...the music was good.
Hey speaking of Crank, can someone tell me what i missed (you can message me if you don't want to spoil it here.)
Supposedly there's something after the end of the credits, but we didn't fast forward through the end to see them (was watching the film with someone else and they turned it off shortly after the "end").
Thanks!
Whoops my bad Neville. Truthfully though, I don't think I really dished out any major spoilers and I'm pretty confident that no damage has been done by lil' ole me. If anything, I listed plenty of reasons for folks to see this flick. :teddyr: But I will try and be more careful in the future.
Oddin, amazing how subjective we can all be towards films isn't it? But that's the beauty of it all. What a boring world it would be if we all enjoyed or disliked the same things.
And I didn't realize there was something after the credits... maybe I'll go watch "Crank" again and see what's there. Mwahahahaha! :bouncegiggle:
Watched it last night, and liked it for what it was, a no-brain morally irresponsible b-movie getting everything it could out of an R rating.
Made me laugh a few times, like in the Chinatown sequence. I agree it slowed down to its own detriment in the second half. The girlfriend was there for plot movement and motivation for Chev, would have liked it better if she weren't so nice and duped by his cover "life". He needed a scuzzier girl. Noticed that "forgot to take my birth control" line as well when she dropped her purse.
Overall fun flick, not perfect, but I liked it better that Snakes on a Plane which I watched the other day. It reveled in how "bad" it was just a bit more, using the corpse as a shield, been done before I know, but this was messier; and the ending made me like it even more.
BTW, the thing after the credits is a clip from faux-old school-style Crank video game, think Game Boy Color, with a heart gauge in the corner that bursts when Chev gets killed in the gunfight in the game. A nice touch actually.
Quote from: BTM on January 17, 2007, 11:57:23 PM
Hey speaking of Crank, can someone tell me what i missed (you can message me if you don't want to spoil it here.)
Supposedly there's something after the end of the credits, but we didn't fast forward through the end to see them (was watching the film with someone else and they turned it off shortly after the "end").
Thanks!
Once you make it past the credits, there is a quick flash of a scene. It's the scene with Chev putting the gun up to Don Kim's head, but changed around quite a bit.
The shooter is not visible (if I remember correctly), and it's Chev sitting in the chair with the gun to his head. Not sure what that means, but it's there anyway.
My wife wanted to watch the film last night, since she wasn't home when I originally watched it. I finally was able to put my finger on what I loved about the film. It's the best video game film ever made. It's not based on a video game but I'll be damned if it doesn't play out as one. The scenes with Chev chewing down the energy pills and such are him using power-ups! Genius!
I liked some parts of it, namely some of the editing styles and some of the action scenes.
But I have to say, I really really dislike the people who made this film.
Mainly the writers. I just loathe some of their ideas to the point I wanted to smash the tv screen to stop the pain [though of course, sucker that I am I didn't stop the film.]
Just some utter nonsense which could have made it a great film, but instead made it a mildly entertaining one once you got past its [very bad] flaws.
SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The scene where he steals the cab and yells 'Al Qaeda' to the people watching was pretty much what set me off. Such ignorant a moment, probably meant to be funny, because 'old people beating up a defenseless cab driver for being called a terrorist' is a laugh!
That sort of attitude makes me hate the filmmakers most of all. I'm all for using terrorism as a joke at times, but that was just too terrible a moment to even be the least bit 'funny' to me.
On top of that there were many other bad points to be had:
The Hospital Gown: sure I can actually forgive this one, but the only reason why they had him dress up in it was to be able to hide for all of two seconds [the practical reason given in the film] when in fact the only reason why he did that was so the jokes later on could be 'check out the guy with the bare ass on the motorbike' or 'check out that crazy hospital guy's boner!'
I can forgive it for what it was trying to acheive, but am angry at how useless the set up to it was. At least have some fun with it rather than have a plot point that is useless!
The other was the girlfriend. Only there to take her kit off and essentially get raped in the middle of chinatown. Having lecherous asians giving the thumbs up to what must have looked like rape is just a bad way to try and be funny. Oh wait, but she liked it in the end? Well so what? The lead up to the 'I like it' part was clear grounds for the people watching to step in and stop it. Sure have a public sex scene, I got no problems with that, but at least make it watchable!
There's something being said about how much the makers of this film must hate their audience when they stop the sex scene right after she [finally] says 'yes' and the majority of it was just plain wrong wrong wrong!
SPOILERS END!!!!
Anyways, those are the main problems I had with the film. I think it mainly stems from me seeing so much lost potential in the film. All the problems I had were just from the utter uselessness of the scriptwriters in fulfilling the potential their jokes had, and it just fell flat because of it.
But besides all that, it was good to just zone out and watch, so I shouldn't complain too much.
Oh and Skaboi, you're spot on with the video game reference.
Dean hit on part of the "morally irresponsible" things about the movie.
This kind of movie laughs at believability, but if there had been people turning away as well as people cheering Chev on it might have worked better. I can see why he was repulsed by the scene, but you kind of knew she wasn't going to pull out a rape whistle or lecture him on respect of women in a movie like this. see if they had given him a scuzzier girlfriend like I suggested, they could have written it so that she was into doing it in public places in the first place. Make it her idea to get his energy level up rather than the way it was done that dean objected to.
They couldn't let him "finish" in Chinatown, just like the girlfriend not "finishing him off" in the car, he would get tired or fall asleep afterwards.
I can also see the problem with the "Al Qaeda" scene, it was one of those "that's awful but I'm laughing at how in bad taste it is" moments. Plus it seemed like the kind of thing a character like Chev would do. Just like his picking the fight in the black club to keep going. That one bothered me a bit (must be a Southern US thing) when he said it but it confirmed the direction the makers were going with the movie.
I am accused of having absolutely no morals so pretty much nothing offends me, other than Kathy Bates' nude scene in About Schmidt.
Quote from: Torgo on January 19, 2007, 06:27:07 PM
I am accused of having absolutely no morals so pretty much nothing offends me, other than Kathy Bates' nude scene in About Schmidt.
OH GOD!! FLASHBACK!!!
Now I'm blind for the next minutes....
Quote from: Yaddo 42 on January 19, 2007, 06:55:47 AM
see if they had given him a scuzzier girlfriend like I suggested, they could have written it so that she was into doing it in public places in the first place. Make it her idea to get his energy level up rather than the way it was done that dean objected to.
Yup I totally agree. The character just didn't work at all and was just handled so poorly. If she was a, say, Julliette Lewis type character, then I would be thinking better of that scene.
Quote from: Yaddo 42 on January 19, 2007, 06:55:47 AM
They couldn't let him "finish" in Chinatown, just like the girlfriend not "finishing him off" in the car, he would get tired or fall asleep afterwards.
See, that works in the story, sure, but I just figured if you're going to have a public sex scene, at least have more of the fun parts rather than an idiotic quasi-rape scene, despite how much we as the audience knew she'd be all over it anyways. I wasn't so much annoyed at the rape part, but at the thinking behind it. That is, someone actually sat down and thought "Let's have her scream "NO" in the middle of a busy street. Come on guys, it's both funny and HOT!" :lookingup: This is opposed to "let's make it a great, fun, sex scene which really has the potential to be both entertaining, and sexy, and yes, ridiculous'
I guess I just would have handled things differently.
Quote from: Yaddo 42 on January 19, 2007, 06:55:47 AM
I can also see the problem with the "Al Qaeda" scene, it was one of those "that's awful but I'm laughing at how in bad taste it is" moments. Plus it seemed like the kind of thing a character like Chev would do. Just like his picking the fight in the black club to keep going. That one bothered me a bit (must be a Southern US thing) when he said it but it confirmed the direction the makers were going with the movie.
I'd laugh at how bad taste it was normally, since that was a great line, it was the reaction to which it was given that just annoyed me. Old people beating a taxi driver just because someone stole his car yelling 'AL Qaeda'? I hate to sound like Wyre Wizard here, but it just seemed plain stupid to include it. I think as a joke/entertainment it just fell completely flat for me, and instead of making me laugh it just made me hate the film.
Not much offends me, but I really do get angry when a good idea for a film is used in such a terrible way, and I just can't forgive it for being so damn idiotic. You don't need to make it believable to make it a good film.
dean, to be honest I thought the Al Queda joke was hilarious. But my taste of humor and film and my (some would say apparent) lack of political correctness are probably to blame. To each his own. As for the Chinatown scene, I just watched this film again tonight with my girlfriend. (She got a kick out of it by the way, ESPECIALLY the Chinatown scene! Whoda thunk it?!) It wasn't really a rape scene because Chev's girl totally eggs him and on after she fights off his first advance. Once he starts railing her on the mailbox, she starts loving it. My point: You can't rape the willing. :wink: :bouncegiggle: