A triumph for short attention spans

Crank (2006)
Lions Gate presents a Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor film, starring Jason Statham and Amy Smart. Written by Neveldine and Taylor. 83m. R for strong violence, pervasive language, sexuality, nudity and drug use.

3 stars

“Crank” will one day be regarded as the seminal film of Generation ADD, the movie that signaled a sea change in the way movies are shot, cut and presented.

Writer/directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor see the MTV-influenced style of modern films and raise it a hundredfold. Their frenetic pacing will cause the audience to feel as if it were being subjected to the Ludovico technique in “A Clockwork Orange,” only this time we’re watching the first 10 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan” on an unyielding loop.

Neveldine and Taylor’s innovative technique is a necessity to preserve the torrid tempo of their story, which begins with a hit man named Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) awakening to find he’s been injected with a poison that will soon kill him.

With nods to both Rudolph Maté’s noir “D.O.A.” and Jan de Bont’s bus bomb in “Speed,” Chelios must keep his heart pumping and his adrenaline up long enough to exact revenge.

Neveldine and Taylor treat their protagonist as if he were the star of a video game, commanding him to chug energy drinks, snort illegal narcotics, instigate fights, and make his girlfriend (Amy Smart) on a bustling Chinatown street.

Since the storyline cares little for exposition or dynamic characterization, “Crank” really is the perfect film for Statham. The English actor has built a cottage industry on menacing looks and brazen displays of violence, which is what this film desperately needs to attract fans of “The Transporter” series.

If “Crank” had just retread scenes of Statham dispatching bad guys, I don’t think it would have been enough, no matter how flimsy a plot made for the testosterone-induced, under-35 crowd.

With a background in commercials, Neveldine and Taylor lack the conventional ideology that is drilled into every film school brat. They shot “Crank” in high definition video because it’s cheaper and, even more important, portable. And they weren’t lost in the formulaic mire of establishing shot, medium close-up, shot, reverse shot, cut, print, because Neveldine prefers shooting on rollerblades.

The result is a chaotic, energetic, delightful mess that tracks Chelios as he races through stores, back alleys, and stairways to keep his heart rate racing and find his killer, Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo), before the drugs can permeate his system. Neveldine and Taylor splice shots without abandon, creating scenes that are simultaneously disorientating and intense.

The writer/directors ask their audience to come armed with a fully-functioning suspension of disbelief and a healthy sense of humor. We’re supposed to laugh at Smart’s shocking naiveté, for example, especially in moments when she acts clueless to the peril that surrounds her.

I suppose if the film gave us a minute to think about it, we would be disturbed by the plot’s misogynistic and homophobic undertones. But I’ll admit freely that I was engrossed in the whole affair, as I have a noticeable weakness for films about hitmen.

Neveldine and Taylor did not make a film for their mothers; they made it for guys who overuse the word “extreme” in daily conversation. “Crank” signals the start of something new. With bigger budgets and more recognizable casts, this collaborative duo may have a bright future ahead.