Mark Neveldine
Crank

An idea recycled from "Speed" (with a person instead of a bus), a forced screenplay, a series of chilling sequences, an actor you'd wish dead after the first five minutes, directing that might have been good for a 30-second commercial (and guess where the director comes from?), in the service of a frenetic MTV-style editing from the first to the last minute (real-time narration, split screens, absurd multi-angles, shots lasting less than a second, it seems the director experimented with all graphic functions in the editing room). Crank is a Trash Movie that offers an hour and a half of pure entertainment! To hate if you're a lover of that snobbish, auteur cinema, but to love if you're an enthusiast of that B-movie kind of cinema that entertains so much in its ugliness. Crank is this (even though the technical level here is excellent).

The "ridiculous" plot is this: a killer is poisoned in sleep with a substance from China that stops the heart when adrenaline drops! So the only way to counteract the effect is to keep adrenaline constantly high in the body. To do this, you need the following ingredients: Cocaine, Red Bull, drugs, public sex, violence, shootings, and exhilarating things! 

Basically, in China, they've invented a drug that turns you into an IDIOT!  And here's the message to the young viewers: you have to rock the world! Run, shoot yourself up, have sex in the middle of the street, stand on your bike, shoot, cut off hands, drink Red Bull as much as you want, that's what being truly Cool means!!!  From the Trash Cinematheque!

In this spectacular editing high-ridiculousness sequences alternate, one badass scene after another! It starts with soft stuff, like "turn up the car radio because I have to dance, otherwise my heart stops" and goes up to true pearls of action trash. Like when he goes to visit his girl in the apartment. While trying to explain the facts to the girl (a relaxation moment) the heart starts showing signs of failure, adrenaline must be increased immediately! On his right, the girl in panties bent over at a 90 degrees, on his left, a toaster. What will be our hero's adrenaline-fueled wise choice in a movie like this? Obviously, he toasts a hand!! But in the next scene, in town, in broad daylight, the hero has another faint, and this time, in the absence of the toaster, he decides to bang his girlfriend! In the middle of the street, before the eyes of passersby, the only problem is he can't get an erection, and so what does he do? He beats himself up! And the adrenaline manages, maybe for the first time in his life, to reach his penis, and there goes a nice public romp! Among those who saw this film in a preview was probably Alvaro Vitali, who died of envy seeing such a scene.

But now comes the good part, to increase this damned adrenaline, he injects himself with a substance... of adrenaline! The result is a nice ride standing on a motorcycle with his ass in the air! Of course, with an erection! You can't get more badass than that! Or can you!

The ending is shocking! Numbed by hallucinogens and obscene acts in public, our Trash-hero, with only an hour of life left, heads to the villains’ lair and makes a massacre! Starts blocking bullets with his fingers and hangs onto a helicopter like a worthy successor of Jackie Chan! But suddenly he falls... he's falling... he's falling... Could the director not have another stroke of genius? Oh yes he does!!! The trash pearl is served! Our hero takes out his cell phone and leaves a message on the girl's answering machine! Of course, always while... he's falling... beautiful sequence! It's like seeing him lying on a sofa talking to a babe, but skyscrapers approach beneath him. After the poignant message, a nice thump on a car with a bounce and BOOM splattered on the pavement. "Please Mark Neveldine! One last thing! Please," I kept telling myself! He fulfilled me! The hero... blinks for the last time! THE END. A cult movie! I'd like to tie Morando Morandini to a chair and force him to watch this film for 24 consecutive hours! It would be a dream.

In conclusion: Crank is a film that entertains! Well-edited, decently shot, and full of involuntarily (or voluntarily?) funny scenes!

It's a bad movie that plays in favor of pure entertainment! Just the way I like it!

The real laughs come from watching these movies! Not those atrocities of Scary Movie! With their extremely forced and annoying humor.

This is spectacular Trash!