Common Sense Note
Parents should know that this movie is absolutely not for kids. It's designed to convey hectic, bloody, and relentless action. Violence includes shooting, needle jabbing, punching, kicking, stabbing, and falling. A couple has sex in public, upsetting and titillating a crowd on the street and in vehicles (skin not explicit, but act is rendered with heavy breathing and clothes-tearing). Scenes include bikinied and topless women, pole-dancers in thongs, and naked women encased in glass balls, apparently as decorations). A doctor's advice seems shady (he suggests smoking marijuana to calm down). Hero uses the n-word and other disparaging language to incite aggression and display his tough-guyness. Lots of profanity and drug use.
Families can discuss the effects of adrenaline: How does it distort judgment and behavior? How does the movie exaggerate action movie conventions, with regard to speed, style, and content? How does this exaggeration make fun of these conventions, or how does it reinforce the "video-gamey" effect of such films? How would you describe Chev's relationship with his girlfriend? Does he respect her? How well does she know him?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
Elaborately aggressive and provocative, CRANK is just what its title suggests: fast, ornery, and exhausting. And yet, for all its obnoxiousness, the film is self-aware and smart, borrowing its slim storyline from the 1950 film noir, D.O.A., starring Edmond O'Brien (weakly remade in 1988): A tough guy is poisoned and has a limited time to find his killer and exact revenge. There can be no good ending, only a series of violent encounters.
Here the victim is a hitman named Chev (the ever-terse, oddly charismatic Jason Statham), who swears he wants to go straight in order to please his mightily naïve girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart). Chev's pursuit of his killer, the utterly arrogant Ricky Verona (Jose Pablo Contillo), leads to run-ins with any number of brutish and shady sorts, including drug dealers, assassins, gang members, and thugs.
Chev appears to be a softie at heart, as he patiently waits for Eve to get dressed and tries to set her microwave clock when she asks (when he feels himself slowing down in the kitchen, he slams his hand in a hot waffle iron, to jumpstart his nervous system all over again). He saves her from villains, impresses her with his devotion, but can't overcome the effects of the deadly toxin, frequently referred to as "the Chinese s--t."
In order that the movie can race along for its 87 minutes, Chev is able to slow the poison by keeping his adrenaline geared up -- this according to an absurd diagnosis rendered by his doctor (Dwight Yoakam) over the phone. (Logic is not this movie's strong suit; it's like a ride, one crazy bit of business after another.) Chev spends his last minutes on earth trying to jar himself into excitement, taunting various enemies into fights, having sex with his girlfriend in the street, chasing and shooting goons point blank, stealing epinephrine from the hospital, driving very fast and jumping from an airplane -- without a parachute.
Families who like this movie may like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, The Transporter, The Professional (Léon), or Run Lola Run (1998).
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentRepeated shots of women in scant outfits, including strippers on poles, topless women around a pool, and naked women in glass balls; Chev runs through hospital/streets in hospital gown (you see his bare bottom, briefly, and a quick shot shows his giant erection under the gown); Eve and Chev have sex in the street in Chinatown; Eve performs oral sex on Chev while he drives (below frame); cross-dressing characters; references to "whores" and use of sexual slang. |
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ViolenceFrequent bloody fights, shoot-outs; flashbacks to Chev with gun pointed at his last target; DVD shows Chev that Ricky stuck needle in his neck; hand chopped off with meat cleaver (hand then picked up, bloody and gross); Chev shoots thug in head (bloody splatters); Chev burns his own hand in a waffle iron (to gross effect); Kaylo suffocated with plastic bag; Eve hits Chev; fight on helicopter; fall from helicopter to death. |
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LanguageOver 100 f-words, plus various other obscenities, all uttered in rage and frenzy ("'s--t," "damn"); disparaging uses of n-word (used by white man against black men to incite their violence), "faggot," and "Al-Qaeda" (Chev yells this about an Arabic man, to ensure he'll be tackled by crowd on the street). |
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Social BehaviorHitman wants to go straight, but is poisoned before he can; he seeks revenge on his killers before he dies, causing mayhem. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoBrief cigarette smoking; Chev snorts coke to stimulate his adrenaline; he inhales bottles of nose spray to ingest epinephrine; he injects himself with a needle of epinephrine; doctor advises he smoke "grass" Eve asks if Chev wants "pot;" cabbie calls Chev a "crackhead" and gives him a "Haitian" drug; villain drinks champagne; doctor says he's treated Chev with meth. |
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