Crank (2006)

There's a moment in Crank where Jason Statham is doing something so spectacularly unhinged that you genuinely forget to question it. You're just along for the ride, gripping your drink, grinning like an idiot. That's the film at its best. It's also, almost to the minute, the film at its worst. Because once you've clocked what it's doing, it just keeps doing it, over and over, for ninety minutes straight.

The setup is beautifully stupid. Chev Chelios, hitman, wakes up poisoned, heart slowing, and the only way to stay alive is to keep his adrenaline spiking. Keep moving, keep fighting, keep the blood pumping or that's it, game over. It's basically a Speed premise with the bus swapped out for a human body, and directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor run with it like their lives depend on it too. The filmmaking is full sensory assault: pulsing soundtrack, shaky handheld camera, rapid-fire editing, neon everywhere. It genuinely feels panicked and breathless in a way most action films don't bother trying for. Like someone fed a video game through a blender and poured the results directly into your eyeballs.

Statham is better here than he gets credit for. He's not exactly stretching dramatically, but he commits completely to the absurdity while keeping Chev just human enough that you're actually rooting for him. There's a physicality and a dry wit to the performance that stops the whole thing collapsing into self-parody. He knows exactly what kind of film he's in, and he plays it straight enough to make the jokes land. It's the same quality that made him watchable in Death Race (2008), another film where the concept is doing most of the heavy lifting but Statham at least gives you someone to follow through the carnage.

The story is, let's be honest, basically nonexistent. There's a revenge thread running through it, a villain to get to, a few supporting characters who exist mainly to give Chev something to react to. None of it matters much. Crank isn't interested in plot. It's interested in momentum, and for a good stretch of its runtime, that's enough.

The trouble is, a gimmick this loud has nowhere to go except louder. And louder isn't the same as better. Around the halfway point, once the initial shock of the approach has worn off, the film has no new tricks to pull. It just keeps escalating, keep adding noise, keep throwing chaos at the screen. What felt genuinely inventive early on starts to feel exhausting and a bit numbing. The relentlessness that makes it exciting at the start is the same quality that makes the back half blur into one long screech.

It's the classic "turn your brain off" action film problem. You can only turn your brain off so far before you start noticing that what's on screen isn't actually as exciting as it wants to be, it's just very, very loud. Crank crosses that line maybe twenty minutes before the credits roll. Not badly enough to ruin it, but enough that by the time it ends you feel relief as much as satisfaction.

I've seen Hardcore Henry (2015) do a similar trick with first-person GoPro filmmaking and hit the same wall. There's something about these high-concept, full-throttle action films that makes them brilliant in theory and slightly deflating in practice. The idea is often more fun to describe than to sit through.

Wild while it lasts, forgettable the second it's over. Three stars.

I did watch Crank: High Voltage (2009) as well, so I can tell you the franchise goes even further off the deep end if you're curious where this particular road leads.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 2006  | Watched: 2025-09-03

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Brian Taylor: Crank: High Voltage (2009)
More with Jason Statham: Death Race (2008) · Crank: High Voltage (2009) · Snatch (2000)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)