The opening credits sequence pretty much hits the nail on the head with this movie: it’s a cartoon. Actually, I think calling Crank 2 High Voltage a cartoon credits it with a level of realism that it can never meet because it’s so profoundly ludicrous. It’s Keystone Cops by way of Grindhouse. It makes no sense what so ever and it doesn’t even try. Meanwhile, you sit there laughing at the sheer preposterousness of the proceedings, because that’s really the only thing you can do. Whether or not Chev Chelios (played again by Jason Statham) gets his heart back is inconsequential next to the amount of mayhem he can create while he tracks his missing organ down.

Crank 2 is lewder, ruder, and possibly even more absurd than its predecessor. Not that I’ve expended a lot of thought about that first Crank since I saw it theatres a few years ago. I sometimes noticed that it was going to play on TV and I thought to myself that I’d watch if I could find nothing better on, but I always did so I never bothered. Like it matters though. We’re not talking about a mythology driven franchise like, say, Lord of the Rings, after all. But it did seem to me that this Crank didn’t even try for even a stylized realism. It’s as dumb as mud and proud of it.

One minute, Chev Chelios survives a mile drop from a helicopter only to be scooped up from the street by Chinese mobsters with only a few scrapes, and then the next minute he’s kicking butt and collecting names despite the fact he’s got an artificial heart operating on emergency power. So Chev has super-death-defying powers, I guess. That’s cool, I can live with that. But what was more difficult to live with was the general gaming ambiance the filmmakers created. Thanks to the power of Google Earth (hope they got a decent royalty cheque), we can follow Chev’s Odysseus-like hunt across LA, so we know exactly where all the collective heads of the racial diverse stereotype gangs get their heads bashed in.

And then there’s the editing technique, which I can only describe as “search and seizure,” and by seizure, I mean an epileptic attack. Kind of like Venus’ (Efren Ramirez) FBT or “Full Body Turrets,” a condition where in at a critical moment, your entire body heaves and jives like Mexican jumping bean. Like one of those power drinks, Crank 2 can, at times, launch you into the stratosphere. But the come down is horrid and its effect makes regular fast-forward look like slow motion. In other words: it’s a brutal attack on the senses and can leave delirious with the slightest hint of an ice cream headache.

Performances? What performances? That would imply that people in this movie were playing characters rather than brief descriptions drawn from a hat during a particular boring round of Who’s Line is it Anyway? Story? What story? Chev beats some people up, shoots some people, beats up some more people, has public sex with his long-suffering girlfriend, shoots some other people, fights some goons, then big shoot out and the end. This isn’t exactly Charlie Kaufman here, although I think if they do a Crank 3, they should totally get Kaufman to write it. If I want my mind blown, I like his style, not the method by which it feels like the sheer loudness of the movie is pulverizing my brain against the far side of my skull. Note for later: self-awareness in a B-movie doesn’t make you smart, it makes you crass.