Crank

[Now Experiencing] [Film]

Crank is a bad, bad movie. It is what happens when films have incestuous sex and give birth to horrible little deformed babies. It should not, under any circumstances, be watched.

The premise is good. It could have been a fun movie. A man (who turns out to be a hired killer) wakes up to find that bad guys have been in his house and injected him with a lethal poision. The only way to stay alive is through the constant, uninterrupted production of adrenaline. So he has to be constantly producing adrenaline until he finds the bad guys, works things out with his girlfriend, and generally has a hell of a last day on Earth.

I said the premise was good, not the science behind it.

Crank has Jason Statham in it, who, it must be said, gives the best performance possible given the script and the directing. But if you've seen his ugly mug gracing the promotional material and naively hoped you might be in for more in the vein of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch, then you're about to be horribly and intimately violated.

Speaking of which, it seems the writer probably had a bit of a brainstorm during the creative process, and said to himself, "You know what's really sidesplittingly funny? Rape. I'll do a slapstick rape scene." Don't worry, folks - she consents eventually!

The film's almost so bad it's good, in the grand tradition of Snakes on a Plane. Almost. But it's not. It's just bad. So bad it's bad. It does a whole bunch of things which in more able hands might have been edgy or funny, but which just come off as lame and cringeworthy. The script has an immature, unpolished feel which leaves you seriously wondering whether it may have been written by a 14 year old. The movie as a whole is structured as though it's a one-act short film, cruelly stretched to feature length by use of some kind of medieval torture device.

Avoid it. Oh sweet Jeebers, do not see this film.