15 Dumb Movies Which Are Secretly Smart
7. Crank: High Voltage
The first Crank is a ludicrously entertaining action flick about hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham), who is poisoned with a lethal drug which cuts off the victim's adrenaline and eventually stops their heart.
In order to fight the poison, Chelios must keep his adrenaline flowing by putting himself in harm's way, getting high, getting laid and anything else that can keep his pumper pumping.
When a sequel was first announced, many groaned at the notion of the surprisingly solid first film getting a lazy cash-in sequel, and it really did just seem like a cynical, braindead attempt to milk the loony original concept.
Well, Crank 2: High Voltage is anything but lazy.
It is not merely a self-aware action film, but it damn-near dares to be postmodern, freely riffing on its own frantic pace - at one point even throwing up a "9 seconds later" title card - while delving into Chev's past through some surreal flashback sequences and homaging classic monster movies by having Chev grow super-sized (in hilariously low-budget fashion, complete with miniatures and cartoonish face masks).
This is also a film where a guy cuts his nipple off as an act of contrition to his boss, where Chev shoves a shotgun up a guy's ass and where another character suffers from "Full Body Tourette's." It has zero interest in appealing to good manners or good taste, but that has little bearing on its intelligence.
It is a film that gives the audience what they went while venturing into straight-up experimental filmmaking territory at times.
At one point we randomly cut away to a minor character from the first film - played by Dennis Reynolds himself, Glenn Howerton - who is seeking therapy after his run-in with Chelios, and just as he seems to come to an epiphany, a stray bullet flies through the window and kills him.
It's completely unrelated to the rest of the movie and bolsters that High Voltage is about as far as you could come from a churned-out sequel.
And seriously, when the hell are we getting Crank 3D? It's been 10 years.