For a movie premised on unrelenting action, Crank proves fatally turgid. The premise takes high concept to a new low. Chev Chelios (Jason Stratham), hit man extraordinaire, wakes up to learn he's been dosed with "the Beijing cocktail," a poison whose lethal effects can be fended off only by a constant surge of adrenaline. Thus, with utmost speed, in this retread of Speed, Chev rampages through Los Angeles seeking Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo), the rival who poisoned him, and the means of sustaining his neck-bulging buzz.
He chugs Red Bull, gobbles energy supplements, injects ephedrine, fondles a defibrillator, licks cocaine off a bathroom floor, snorts nasal decongestant by the bottle and rapes his girlfriend (Amy Smart, playing dumb) in the middle of Chinatown. Mostly, however, he's powered by rage, which he vents through explosions of violence and misanthropy.
The writing and directing team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor jack up the action with all manner of gore, gimmickry and hysterical camerawork, none of which is as vigorous as the equal-opportunity hatred they exhibit toward the denizens of Los Angeles, be they black, Latino, Asian, Muslim, gay, female or theater customers paying to see a decent action flick.
PHOTO COURTESY OF PANDASIA
That last demographic may feel most insulted of all when, in the climactic showdown, Verona holsters his gun to plunge another syringe of poison into Chev's neck — you know, the one that doesn't work — then turns his back to make a getaway. He may be one of the dumbest villains in movie history, but you've got to root for him. Dead, Chev puts everyone out of his misery.
The canonical shot of an East Asian city is a night skyline studded with towering apartment and office buildings, bright with neon and plastic signage, a landscape of energy and modernity. Another classic image is the same city seen from above, in which identical apartment towers march across the city, spilling out over nearby geography, like stylized soldiers colonizing new territory in a board game. Densely populated dynamic conurbations of money, technological innovation and convenience, it is hard to see the cities of East Asia as what they truly are: necropolises. Why is this? The East Asian development model, with
June 16 to June 22 The following flyer appeared on the streets of Hsinchu on June 12, 1895: “Taipei has already fallen to the Japanese barbarians, who have brought great misery to our land and people. We heard that the Japanese occupiers will tax our gardens, our houses, our bodies, and even our chickens, dogs, cows and pigs. They wear their hair wild, carve their teeth, tattoo their foreheads, wear strange clothes and speak a strange language. How can we be ruled by such people?” Posted by civilian militia leader Wu Tang-hsing (吳湯興), it was a call to arms to retake
Desperate dads meet in car parks to exchange packets; exhausted parents slip it into their kids’ drinks; families wait months for prescriptions buy it “off label.” But is it worth the risk? “The first time I gave him a gummy, I thought, ‘Oh my God, have I killed him?’ He just passed out in front of the TV. That never happens.” Jen remembers giving her son, David, six, melatonin to help him sleep. She got them from a friend, a pediatrician who gave them to her own child. “It was sort of hilarious. She had half a tub of gummies,
The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski’s F1, a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor. Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in Top Gun: Maverick, has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on Maverick, takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping
RSS