Movie Reviews: Crank, and The Wicker Man

Sometimes, Martin goes to the movies. And lots of times, he'll see movies there. Stunning, eh? It's all part of a section we call...

RANT AT THE SCREEN!

Today's review is two-fold. Let's talk some about them. Starting with...

CRANK!

Los Angeles based hitman Chev Chelios wakes up to discover he has been injected with some Chinese poison while he slept by a local rival who wishes to take his position. If his andrenaline level drops too far, his heart will stop, and he will die. The only way to slow this process down is to keep the adrenaline pumping. So Chev does the only logical thing: Go on an over-the-top rampage in an effort to settle his affairs before the Chinese cocktail does him in.

We understand the plot within the first five minutes as we begin Chev's day with him. We follow him as his day speeds up, and never slows down. The movie grabs at the modern conventions of film-making, and screams in their face. It makes its own manic energy and style, from people who speak english but are sub-titled to racial disputes and rampant drug use. Statham's antics highly amusing, often slightly insane, and savage. He is the most like-able amoral killer I've seen portrayed lately. The stunts contain no wire-fu, martial arts, or bullet time. Every hit is murderous, and bone-crunching. The hits stay with you, and my friends and I were forced to convene shortly after the movie to discuss some of our favorite parts of our hero's last day.

I give Crank five out of five epinephrine shots.

The second movie this week is Wicker Man, which does not know what it wants to be. In this film, Nic Cage turns in a role as a wussy detective who eats salads and is rather sensitive, and gets looped into looking for a missing girl on a secretive island an island off Washington. He's genial enough, and things are suitably bizarre on the island to make you go 'huh?' However, the film's ending is telegraphed from a mile away, and the things a 'reasonable person' would do are far away from the actions of our hero detective.

My real problem with this movie are its themes. If you pay attention to the movie long enough, you begin to realize that there are a few things going on here. 1. Nic Cage's cop character is a pussy, and this is bad. 2. The only thing worse than him are women. The movie is misoginistic, in the same way this joke is. What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothin', I already told her twice. This movie hates feminism, wicca, and sensitive men. Not that these groups don't exactly deserve the occasional skewer, but the movie lays it on thick, to the point that Nic eventually starts punching out girls early in the last reel.

I would like to point out that I don't condone undeserved physical violence, but Nic's punching on women is one of the few moments of utter joy I experience in the movie, and is downright hilarious when it happens. If I was compiling some of my favorite moments of physical violence from movies, this would make the cut on shock-factor alone (just like the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse fight in Raising Arizona).

I give it two out of five obvious plot devices (one derived from lady-punching).