Crank

The films which I like the most usually contain a defining moment: a line of dialogue, or a scene which neatly encompasses the ethos of the entire movie in an easily-digestible chunk. Like popcorn.

In 'Crank', this moment comes shortly after the main character - a hitman called Chev Chelios - has finished conducting a meeting with a crimeboss in a swimming pool. Soaking wet, Chelios is trying to get into a taxi. But the taxi driver refuses the fare because he doesn't want his cab soiled. Chelios takes exception to this, so he drags the driver from the vehicle and throws him to the ground. For an instant, Chelios is unsure of what to do: he isn't thinking straight because he has a heart-full of fatal, adrenaline-suppressing 'Chinese Sh*t' with which he has been injected by his arch-nemesis. On top of that, he is on the run from the police and the mob. By assaulting the taxi driver he has kept his adrenaline up, but his conspicuity too. The crowd watch him with mounting suspicion, ready to alert the authorities. Chelios looks at the driver. He is of Southern Asian descent. Chelios looks back at the crowd. They are White Americans.

Chelios has an idea.

He points at the driver and yells 'Al-Qaeda'.

Then Chelios steals the taxi and leaves.

At this point the crowd begin to panic. Some flee. Others attack the stricken taxi driver. More join in. Then, an old lady grabs the driver's leg. She twists it as hard as she can, and it breaks with a crunch.

This scene tickled me. I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was due to Chelios's jet-black appraisal of the situation, and the means by which he applied his prejudices against American Culture to his predicament with such anti-social success. Or maybe it's because I like the idea that an old lady could break the leg of a grown man with her bare hands, purely by strength she could only muster in a fit of jingoistic rage. Either way, I was not expecting such black satire from a potentially-brainless action film, which, on the surface, is exactly what Crank appears to be: man gets injected with fatal drug by nemesis. Man can only stay alive by stimulating adrenal gland. Cue action set-pieces of steadily increasing ridicule. Simple.

But, using this basic central premise, Crank inadvertantly transcends its narrow action movie credentials to explore much greater themes. It explores the psyche of a man who is forced to suffer an existential crisis. A man whose relationship with his environment is altered beyond his control. Chelios finds himself a refugee from his preferred state of being. And, like most refugees, he wishes to return home. But he is told very quickly that this is impossible, and he must accept that even his continued survival is nothing more than a luxury afforded to him - by his ability to explore and understand his own stimuli.

Did I mention that this film stars Jason Statham?

Anyway, this revelation sets Chelios upon a journey into himself. By necessity he abandons all fear of consequence in an effort to discover what excites him. He embraces impulse: he takes drugs. He forces a medic to defibrilate him. He commits robberies. He listens to 'Achy Breaky Heart' whilst he grabs a car steering wheel and almost shakes it off its mountings. He Christ-rides a police Harley Davidson into a busy restaurant to the genteel strains of Everybody's Talkin' by Harry Nilsson - a song about feeling detached from ordinary human interaction. And it is absurd and beautiful. A bizarre Freudian pastiche.

A side-effect of the life-affirming death serum is that it gives Chelios a raging hard-on, perhaps due to his body sensing imminent expiry: the primal need to propogate the species. This urge leads Chelios to his lover, Eve. But, when he sees her, rather than consummate his passion immediately, he feels a different impulse: to tell the truth. To face the possibility that when he reveals he is not a video game programmer but a hitman, Eve will leave him. This seems to be the only impulse in the film over which he hesitates. The only consequence of which he seems genuinely afraid. And it is strangely touching.

Still, reveal this secret, he does. But Eve won't accept the truth. As they leave her apartment Chelios protects her from some hired goons of whom she is unaware. Absently she reveals that she hasn't taken her birth control pills. Once Chelios and Eve escape into busy streets, Chelios's heart weakens again. More adrenaline is needed. To get it he knows that he must follow his impulses: he must copulate with Eve immediately, in public, to generate the life-saving adrenaline he needs. But first, chivalrously, he questions her trust in him, which she reassures. Then he asks her to have sex. At first she refuses. Then, reluctantly, she complies. They make love on a bustling sidewalk. Suddenly a bus full of tourists appears. Their flashbulbs go off. Unexpectedly, Eve abandons herself to the moment. She makes a sacrifice of her dignity along with his so that Chelios might live. Eve bellows her encouragement to him. 'I'm alive' he shouts. And, he is - at the very apex of life: a creature of pure animal instinct, throwing off the shackles of ethereal social expectation to perform the hyper-real act of creation in the face of imminent death. And in the midst of all this, the public look on, impressed, almost as if they understand the gravity of the moment.

Some might say that this is smuttery: just a flimsy excuse for a gratuitous sex scene. In fact, the whole film is just one big flimsy excuse for a lot of gratuitous scenes. After all, this film stars Jason Statham - a man not known for playing great existentialists. These questions were not on his mind when he read the script. He probably just chuckled to himself as he flipped the pages over, thinking about how he always wanted to play a character who deliberately burns his hand in a waffle iron.

Some might say that I am reading into things - far too much.

But I like reading.

It gives me an adrenalin rush.

It makes me feel alive.