Crank : High Voltage

Medium : English
Starring : Jason Statham, Amy Smart
Directors : Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor

Most of the hollywood actors who are notable by doing hero oriented roles are ready to do negative roles at the same time. Jason Statham, is one such actor. You will be seeing him as a hero in 'The Transporter' series and 'Death Race', he will be doing supporting characters in 'The Italian Job', 'The Expendables', 'The One', 'The Bank Job' etc and at the same time he comes in a negative appearance in 'Cellular'. He had got a new release in lead role, 'Crank : High Voltage'. This action thriller is the sequel of 'Crank', that got released almost 4 years ago. It was heard that the new movie opens at the same point where the old version ended.

In the beginning Chelios (Jason Statham) is shown falling to the top of a car from a helicopter at height. Soon he is being removed from the place by a Chinese team. He has been attended by a group of doctors and they conducts a surgery, his heart is removed and replaced with an artificial one with batteries and wires. When he came to know that the team is planning to remove some other organ from his body, he escapes from the scene. On an action sequence, Chelios lost his artificial charger setup, he is contacting his friend through phone, who is giving him the necessary advice to stay alive. Chelios is in the news now, police is also chasing him and how he finds the gang leader, forms the rest of the story, told in an action packed manner.

The way in which Chelios charging the body, reminds us of the similar sequence in the tamil movie 'Enthiran', which is now a massive hit around the world. Though Jason Statham did the role in his style, the theme of 'Crank : High Voltage' is not a convincing one. The hero touching the high voltage electrical line is getting charged, nothing happens to him, which is shown as a thing far from logic. Only thing that can attract you is the high voltage action sequence. The television news visuals never felt realistic. The majority of the dialogues are filled with double meaning and bad words. The scenes at the pub, health club, horse race etc are vulgar as per the situation and thus the movie is not advisable for kids. The cartoon type representation for the fight scene at the power house is not a good custom. The climax fight has got an utter chaos and confusion, such an end for the story is not an acceptable one; it looks like the team behind wants to make another sequel using this theme.

Those who have watched the first version 'Crank' or a hard core fan of Jason Statham can try 'Crank : High Voltage'; others don't waste your precious time for a movie that has got an unbelievable theme.


Rating : 4.5 / 10

The Expendables

Medium : English
Starring : Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke
Director : Sylvester Stallone

These days, every week 4 or 5 releases from different languages are reaching theaters. So choosing a movie from them, to watch on the first day, would be a tough task. This time, the choice was unique for me, I have decided to watch one of the costliest and richest productions from hollywood (as far as casting is concerned), titled 'The Expendables'. Days before, seeing the trailer of the particular movie, I was wondering how could it be possible to make a 'Twenty 20' type project in English. The number of faces that came one after other in that video were beyond imagination as it included Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham ('Transporter' series fame), Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren ('Universal Soldier' fame), Mickey Rourke ('Iron Man 2' fame) along with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis ('Die Hard' series fame). The mega multi-starrer project is directed by Stallone, who himself is the writer and director of many action oriented movies.

In the beginning, a group of highly trained private defense force named 'Expendables' (Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren etc) has been shown, involved in a mission to save hostages in Somalia. Though they were successful in it, there happened a misconduct of a member (Dolph Lundgren) during the fighting and he is being thrown out from the group. Now they gets another mission (from Bruce Willis) to free an island in South America from the dictator military general. Two among (Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham) the gang, goes there and got successful in building a stepping stone for the fight. The leader of the gang getting into love at first sight with the General's daughter. How the gang frees the country from the military general and some ex-American officials are shown in an action packed second half.

The relevance of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis, who are there for a minute, is unknown. The only good thing happened there is Stallone making funny remarks regarding the President's role on Arnold. The end shots of the opening mission are confusing. The way in which the gang reaches the island and then move to the destination for the climax is not shown clearly. The family matters of Jason Statham is an old Indian concept only. Action hero from Asia, Jet Li has not been given a stable role. The tattoo expert (Mickey Rourke), giving sentiments about his family would have been a wastage of time if Stallone wouldn't get motivated to go back to see his lover. As usual, here also you have ultimate bomb blasting in the end killing all the soldiers, leaving the heroes with our much wounds. The action sequences are done well, especially the one involving Stallone and Statham in the aircraft.

As we have seen super hits like 'Rocky' and 'Rambo' series from Stallone in the olden days itself, it is difficult to support his creativity in this project. The director had used a darkish tone for telling the story. Though it creates the mood, it is not good to have such frames in night sequences. We will find it difficult to follow the incidents happening at night, due to lack of clarity.


'The Expendables' is an action movie with an old theme, the only advantage in watching it is that we can see so many action heroes together in a single project.


Rating : 6.5 / 10