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Crank (film)
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Crank is a 2006 action/thriller film, written and directed by both Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. The film stars Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Efren Ramirez, and Dwight Yoakam. It was released in the United States on September 1, 2006 in 2,515 theaters.
class="link1" onMouseover='showByLink("m7451211",this)' onMouseout='hide("m7451211")'href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Contract_killing">professional hitman, Chev Chelios wakes up with severe grogginess and blurred vision. After stumbling around his apartment, he discovers a DVD that shows Verona, a rival gangster, has injected his unconscious body with a poison called the "Beijing Cocktail," claiming that it will kill him in an hour.
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Encyclopedia
Crank is a 2006 action/thriller film, written and directed by both Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. The film stars Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Efren Ramirez, and Dwight Yoakam. It was released in the United States on September 1, 2006 in 2,515 theaters.
Plot
A professional hitman, Chev Chelios wakes up with severe grogginess and blurred vision. After stumbling around his apartment, he discovers a DVD that shows Verona, a rival gangster, has injected his unconscious body with a poison called the "Beijing Cocktail," claiming that it will kill him in an hour. Chelios flies into a rage and speeds through Los Angeles in his Buick Riviera. In his fury, Chev notes that his grogginess has alleviated. He places several calls, first to his girlfriend Eve, but she does not answer. He then calls Dr. Miles, in hopes of having some sort of antidote, but Miles is not even in Los Angeles at the moment. Next, he calls his informant/friend Kaylo to pinpoint Verona and his associates' location.
Chev then heads to the clubhouse of the Sin City Deciples, an all-Black biker gang, and holds a gun up to a former affiliate, Orlando, to help track down the location of Verona. Since Orlando does not know where Verona is, Chev buys cocaine from him and then attacks his friends to pump up his adrenaline. As he speeds away, several police units begin to chase him. As Chelios flees the police, Doctor Miles calls and tells him that he needs to go to the hospital and get epinephrine. During the conversation, Chev evades police by driving through an indoor mall, crashes his car on the escalator and flees in a taxi. During the drive, he stops to rob a convenience store of mini-thins (an over-the-counter stimulant) and caffeinated drinks.
Chev goes to the mansion of crime lord Carlito, but he will not help Chev. As he speeds off in the taxi, Kaylo calls and tells him that Verona's brother is in a particular restaurant. Chev enters the restaurant and draws Verona's brother into an alley, where he kills him after a struggle. He pulls a necklace off of Verona's brother and tells him he is coming to kill him and his crew.
Chev then goes to the hospital, where the pharmacist refuses him epinephrine. A young man (Chester Bennington) nearby tells Chev that there is epinephrine in nasal spray. Chev grabs multiple boxes and begins snorting each bottle. Hospital security begin pursuing him, so he dons a hospital gown as a disguise, which proves ineffective. At gunpoint, he demands epinephrine from several doctors and nurses pushing a gurney with a patient on it. As a nurse (Glenn Howerton) fumbles with the gurney's medicine drawers, the security follow with guns drawn. The nurse eventually finds the epinephrine and gives it to Chev. Chev then tells the nurse to use the defibrillator on him, which throws him back into the elevator behind him. After the doors close, Chev injects himself with the full vial of epinephrine although he was told to take a small amount. With the massive amount of epinephrine in his body, Chev begins running crazily throughout the streets of Los Angeles.
News reports start broadcasting Chev's actions. Chev steals a police motorcycle and drives to his girlfriend Eve's apartment. When he gets there, he tells her that they need to leave and she gets dressed. Chev purposely burns his left hand on the waffle iron to spike his adrenaline, and as the two leave, Chev kills two assassins sent by Verona without Eve noticing. In a Chinatown restaurant, Chev reveals that he is actually a hitman, not a video game programmer as she thought. He tells her that he has been injected with poison, and that he did not complete his last assignment to kill the gangster Don Kim so that they could run away together. She angrily leaves the restaurant, believing that he is lying. He begins feeling weak again and asks her to have sex with him to wake him up. Eve initially fights him off, and in the course of resisting Chev rips her blouse, exposing her breast. She eventually consents, and they have sex with in front of the crowd. In the process, he gets a phone call from Kaylo, who says that Verona is in a nearby factory. Chev abruptly leaves Eve alone at the dispenser; he kisses her goodbye and heads off to meet up with Kaylo.
Once Chev gets there, he discovers that Kaylo has been suffocated by affiliates of Carlito. They tell him that he is embarrassing his former employer and should die quietly. Suddenly, Eve appears from an elevator. A gunfight erupts and Chev quickly kills the men and they escape through the factory to Eve's car. After avoiding the thugs chasing him, he goes to Miles' office. Miles treats Chev, but tells him that due to his overdosing on epinephrine, his condition is irrevocably fatal. Preferring to die fighting for revenge, Chev calls Verona and they set up a meeting to exchange his brother's necklace for the antidote.
On the floor of the meeting, Verona's thugs disarm him and escort him to an open-air patio. Verona awaits him, along with Carlito, who has joined forces with him. Chelios rides up to the top floor in an elevator, occupied also by an uninvolved Asian man (Toshi Toda). The man looks at Chelios and a strange dream-like sequence occurs when he begins speaking in different voices to Chev, including Verona, Kaylo, Carlito, his own mother, and even himself. Eventually, after his moment of drug-induced clarity, he arrives to the top of the building.
Chev asks for the antidote and Carlito informs him he only has more of the poison, and orders the guards to hold him down. Chev pulls out his finger in the shape of a gun and aims it at Verona and Carlito. As they laugh at him, he points it at a thug and mimes pulling the trigger. The bodyguard falls over with a gunshot to the forehead. Verona and Carlito are shocked to see Don Kim and his armed thugs standing behind Chev.
The two gangs begin shooting each other and Chev chases after Verona. Carlito boards his helicopter to escape the gunfight. Chev and Carlito grapple on the helicopter. Verona sneaks up behind Chev and injects more poison into him. Verona then shoots Carlito and takes his place in the helicopter. As it lifts off, Chev dangles out of the helicopter, pulling at Verona's leg. High above the city, Chev finally pulls Verona out of the helicopter and both of them plummet through the air. Chev snaps Verona's neck, plummets away from the corpse and calls Eve's answering machine to apologize that he will not be returning to her. After hanging up, his body smashes down onto a car and bounces extravagantly high and far before smacking into the pavement, his face inches from the camera. His nostrils flare slightly in what appears to be breath, then he blinks once. Seconds before end credits begin to roll, two faint, but steady, heartbeats, can be heard.
Cast
Themes
The film's plot and action are reminiscent of video games, and the film makes frequent references to video arcade games. The opening credits feature 1980s-style video game graphics and include an arcade-style highscore screen, with the first four entries being FUC, YOU, ASS, HOL in that order. After the end credits, a video game sequence shows Chev running around and shooting gangsters, then dying in the street. A blinking message then reads, "Insert coin to continue. (press 5)," "5" is the default key used to insert coins in the MAME emulator. Various scenes in the film show images or characters from the video game Berzerk, a classic arcade game with the grim reputation as one of the few games where a person has died from heart problems while playing it. At least one bathroom in the movie has the green stick figure character from Berzerk on it. Right before Don Kim's gang shoots out Verona and Carlito's bodyguards, you can hear Chev saying 'Presto." When Verona gets the final call from Chev about where to meet, it can be seen that the guy sitting next to him is playing Berzerk. Amy Smart's character Eve believes Chev to be a video game programmer before he confesses that he is a hitman.
Film critic Brian Orndorf from FilmJerk.com called Crank "The latest stab by Hollywood to cash in on the violent video game craze".
Box office
On its first day of release, Crank earned $3.3 million, the day's highest earnings. In the film's first weekend, it earned $13 million, putting it at second place behind Invincible which earned $15.2 million. The film grossed $27,838,408 at the domestic box office, with another $11,404,413 in foreign box offices, for worldwide receipts of $39,242,821.
Reviews for Crank were mixed, but generally positive. It currently holds a 60% "fresh" rating on Rottentomatoes.
Promotion
Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, along with actors Jason Statham and Efren Ramirez, appeared at the 2006 Comic-Con Convention in San Diego, California. The panel showed a short clip and promoted the film, mentioning that it was shot in HD and that no wires or CGI were used for the stunt scenes.
The filmmakers also made extensive use of web advertisement to promote the film. Lions Gate Films bought a featured spot on the home page of YouTube and paid several of its well-known members to advertise. Independently, Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor and Efren Ramirez appear in a vlog by a user known as biostudentgirl on YouTube as well as her personal site.
Soundtrack
DVD
The Crank DVD has been released by Lionsgate Home Entertainment on January 9, 2007. The DVD is available in separate anamorphic widescreen and fullscreen editions, each with Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 tracks. The bonus materials includes running cast and crew audio commentary, behind-the-scenes footage, gags, maps, making-of insights, and interviews with the cast. These features are all accessible via the "Crank'd Out Mode" - a pop-up window feature that allows access to the extras without ever leaving the film. The DVD also includes a "family friendly" audio replacement, in which the film is dubbed over as it would appear on a television broadcast. However, the violence, language subtitles, and nudity are still the same.
The Region 2 version of the DVD was released December 26, 2006, but it has no special features.
Sequel
External links
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