i read the first couple sentences of some reviews of this and liked the concept enough to go see it without reading the rest of the reviews. an action movie that jumps right into the action with no setup, is basically in real-time and go go go - sounded promising. but in actuality crank does slow down and give backstory in places, and worse, it’s done to morally acquit the main character in the middle of a celebration of the act of sin.
i also had problems with the tone of the whole thing. it was borderline silly mostly and they jumped into silly with both feet at times and i think i wanted more seriousness and appreciation of the moment. i guess i just expected since it was mostly real-time to mostly be focused on real experience. it had some nice moments, like where he’s tripping from ‘the haitian shit’. and they set up for some very weird moments, like the bike-jacking, the 2 sex scenes, and also the first car chase in the mall, but they were self-consciously weird and silly and i would have liked them done with a straight face.
i know a big part of this action sub-genre is to revel in how badass the main guy is, but this was too much. and the validation from all races (the news interview of the japanese girl for one) was eye-roll-inducing.
the final showdown between the 2 gangs was pretty lame. accepting the borderline silly tone they wanted it still looked dumb.
there was a funny video game mentality to everything, so that when he’s constantly trading guns, even though those guys just shot off as many rounds as him, somehow made sense and was necessary.
after all that and a pretty bad soundtrack i give it two stars cause it still had the main character kicking ass and popping drugs left and right for nearly the duration and some appropriately gratuitous (not an oxymoron in this case) t&a. that helped smooth most things over.
