Crank High Voltage Review

Having an eight year old means watching pretty much every PG and U cert movie ever released. Which has its upsides -- 'Finding Nemo', 'The Incredibles' and also it's downsides -- pretty much everything else.

So it was nice to see a grown-up movie last night for a change. That's grown-up as in an 18 cert but not in any other sense.

I hadn't seen the first Crank movie and asked my brother-in-law if I might find the plot hard to follow as a result. He had a good laugh at that. Ten minutes in I kind of understood why.

Starring Jason Statham of 'Transporter' fame, 'Crank 2' bears certain similarities to those movies but appears to have ingested vast quantities of steroids and speed somewhere along the way.

Basically Statham's character (Chev Chevios) is a hitman who has his heart surgically removed and has to get it back before he dies. The end.

But in between there are 1001 great excuses for copious quantities of mindless violence, gratuitous sex and nudity, generous use of the F and C words, some nasty mutilation and several incredibly tasteless takes on tourettes and racial stereotypes.

So if that lot sounds a bit gross, I personally wouldn't bother, but if you fancy a laugh out loud, gross-out, knuckle-headed actioner where little old ladies get treated like 'his little whore' and a guy with tourettes attempts kung fu, then you've probably just landed in heaven.

Statham falls out a helicopter and survives, a girl gets hit murderously by a car and gets up and swears and a disembodied head even manages a few expletives, so it's fair to assume that events are not based on a true story.

But lots of things blow up, the body count could fill several morgues and there are more breasts on display than the average poultry processing plant can manage. And older viewers may be surprised to see not only Geri Halliwell but David Carradine making an appearance, both to no great effect, but it's just funny that they're in there.

Statham's body takes more punishment than all of Arnie & Van Damme's films combined and of course he's just fine (until the end anyway mwa ha ha), so don't fret about our hero queueing for hours in A&E like the rest of us.

Great soundtrack too though a few Velvet Acid Christ tunes could have added that extra little smidgeon of cinematic magic.

This is enjoyable, preposterously non-PC nonsense and great for escaping the harsh realities of well pretty much everything. Shocking to admit but I liked it.