Crank: High Voltage

It took a little more than a decade, but someone finally did it: the internet has been made into a movie. That movie is “Crank: High Voltage,” a hyper-kinetic mash-up of the all the sex, violence, casual racism, stupid humor, cameos by washed-up celebrities, video games and sick videos that collect like artery-clogging sludge in the series of tubes that make up the internet. It’s a cinematic endurance test that is quite possibly the harbinger of the next generation of B-movies. “High Voltage” is a movie meant to be consumed, not pondered, and thinking too much about it as about as useful as thinking about a can of Monster Energy Drink.

“High Voltage” picks up immediately where “Crank” left off: hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) lands in the middle of a downtown L.A. intersection after falling out of a helicopter. He’s scraped off the pavement with a shovel by some no-account thugs and taken to a seedy medical clinic. Chev’s heart is torn out and replaced with an artificial ticker that requires constant electrical recharges to keep working. He’s rather displeased about this development and so begins a murderous rampage across the city, searching for the thief that stole his heart. It’s a multi-media rampage, with a Google Maps-style trip through L.A., some educational slideshows about Chev’s artificial heart, and a mid-movie talk show that provides a glimpse into Chev’s troubled childhood.

No matter what flavor of mindless debauchery you crave, it’s probably in “High Voltage.” Graphic self-mutilation? Gun-toting strippers? Fight scenes that turn into Japanese giant monster movie-style battles? Explicit sex that involves (though not directly) horse genitals? Yup, it’s all here and turned up to 11, stuck on fast forward and injected with a concentrated dose of some vile trailer park amphetamines. During a chase scene, the action abruptly stops and flashes forward nine seconds, just in case maybe you were getting bored with the non-stop running and shooting. It’s not the sort of movie you watch—it’s the sort of movie you download directly into your brain and hope it doesn’t short circuit everything.

Whether feeding the kind of deviant perversions that make up “High Voltage” directly into your head is a good thing is debatable. “High Voltage” has the sort of manic spirit and crass energy that’s normally found in a Troma flick, but with a bigger budget, and there’s something charming about a movie that’s so go-for-broke in its pursuit of base thrills. The aforementioned graphic sex takes place on a horse track, and in the span of a few minutes, Chev and his lady friend Eve (Amy Smart) go through most of the Kama Sutra to the great joy of the audience. As if that weren’t enough, at the moment of climax, a horse leaps over them and the audience is treated to a lingering slow-motion shot of a massive horse penis. There’s no low that “High Voltage” won’t stoop to, really, and while that’s fun, it’s also a strong case for all that’s wrong with modern pop culture.

But it’s best not to think about any of that when watching “High Voltage.” Or think about anything, really. What can really be said about a dude getting a shotgun stuck up his rectum or a grievously-wounded stripper spurting silicone and blood out of her fake books? It’s sick and kind of gross, but writer/directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor know their audience well: energy-drink addled young men who stay up way too late playing video games and checking out crotch-injury videos on YouTube.

At the very least, Jason Statham is a good sport about it. He’s the B-movie action star Vin Diesel should have been, possessed with a cool confidence and suave charm that’s balanced with his admirable ass-kicking abilities. In another 15 years, the internet (which by then will be hooked directly into our brains), will be full of Jason Statham jokes instead of Chuck Norris jokes—that’s a fact. The rest of the cast is equally enthusiastic, with Dwight Yoakam reprising his role from “Crank” as the shifty physician who is Chev’s only ally; Smart as Chev’s long-suffering, ass-kicking stripper girlfriend, and a cameo by David Carradine as Poon Dong, the aged, horny head of the local Yakuza. Porn legend Ron Jeremy also shows up, as does Corey Haim, sporting a wicked mullet and a shirt that reads “Nice Jugs.”

Like any chemical-induced high, “High Voltage” crashes to an abrupt halt, ending suddenly in a hail of bullets, blood, fire and a stirring power ballad by REO Speedwagon. As a gang of leather boys and strippers fights to the death with a bad-ass Latin gang, Chev Chelios turns to the camera flashes a flaming middle finger. Is it a gesture of triumph or a sign of contempt for an audience enamored with shocking thrills? Perhaps it’s a sign we’re square on the path toward movies like “Ass,” the fictional film in Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy”–a movie about a giant ass farting on screen for 90 minutes. It’s a few years away, but at least until then, we’ll have “Crank: High Voltage.”