Weak plot, great effects

Director: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor  

Starring:Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Dwight Yoakam, Carlos Sanz, Reno Wilson

Classification: 18

Imagine you're a top producer in Hollywood, and someone comes to you with a film idea. "Let's make Speed...but with a person! Say this guy, this reformed hitman, is injected with a Chinese poison that will kill him if his heart rate drops below a certain bpm...won't that make a swell film?" Most people would say, "Actually, no, it won't". But not Neveldine and Taylor, who evidently said yes to the pitch that became Crank.

The plot really is that silly, and for all its pretensions to scientific plausibility (enter the doctor who quickly asserts that the poison is actually an inhibitor and only adrenaline can overcome its effects and thus keep the heart beating), it is little more than a cunning excuse to cram as many chases, fights, gun battles and daredevil stunts into one film. And against all the odds - it works.

Cockney hardman Jason Statham plays Chev Chelios, a hitman who decides to retire before completing his last hit, but awakes to find himself injected with the Chinese poison by a rival gangleader, the odious Ricky Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo). Chev has one hour before his heart finally stops, and he decides that killing Verona will be the last thing he ever does. So he embarks on his madcap dash across Los Angeles that will see him rampage through a mall, go on the run in a hospital, steal a police motorbike and have sex with his girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart) in the middle of LA's Chinatown. The film looks and feels like a computer game - the action follows the same rules, the plot is guided down a narrow trajectory by intermittent moments of dialogue, and Google aerial maps move the action from one location to another.

It certainly makes for a clever addition to the action genre, and directors Neveldine and Taylor keep throwing inventive gimmicks in the screen in the hope that we'll remember this is a film, and that we aren't just watching someone play Grand Theft Auto. We see subtitles in reverse from the perspective of the person being subtitled; constant splitscreens allow us to see not only the two people talking on the phone, but also the person about whom they are talking; screen wipes take the form of people simply moving across the shot; and in one later scene a certain word is daubed on Statham's screen forehead as he gestures to himself.

It's all very clever but it has more than a whiff of David Fincher about it. The camerawork is also jerky, lurching around with constant jump zooms to remind us that this is An Action Thriller, and that we're been plopped down in the middle of a pacy, high adrenaline white-knuckle ride. Instead, it simply makes us feel seasick. It also makes me wonder if Neveldine and Taylor think that by making the film so difficult to see, we'll realise that there isn't actually that much going on in the first place.

Still, with a premise as simplistic as Crank's, it was never going to be Citizen Kane, and it's actually an oddly enjoyable film. The nature of the plot means it never slows down or drags, as action films occasionally have a tendency to do, and the complete lack of sentimentality is refreshing in a genre that petered out in the early 1990s. Statham is a joy to watch, and could well become the next Bruce Willis if the action film is to be resurrected to its 1980s glory days. If you're at a loose end one evening and you wander down to your local multiplex, you could do a lot worse than choosing Crank.

3/5 Oddly enjoyable