Crank (film)
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| Crank | |
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| Directed by | Mark Neveldine Brian Taylor |
| Produced by | Michael Davis Tom Rosenberg Michael Ohoven Gary Lucchesi David Rubin Skip Williamson Richard S. Wright |
| Written by | Mark Neveldine Brian Taylor |
| Starring | Jason Statham Amy Smart Efren Ramirez Dwight Yoakam |
| Music by | Paul Haslinger |
| Cinematography | Adam Biddle |
| Editing by | Brian Berdan |
| Distributed by | Lions Gate Films (USA) Universal Studios (UK) |
| Release date(s) | September 1, 2006 (US) |
| Running time | 83 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $12,000,000 |
| IMDb profile | |
Crank is a 2006 action/thriller film, written and directed by both Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. The Lions Gate Films produced film stars Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Efren Ramirez, and Dwight Yoakam. It was released in the United States on September 1st, 2006 in 2,515 theaters. The film was rated R by the MPAA for strong violence, pervasive language, sexuality, nudity, and drug use.
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[edit] Plot overview
After Chev Chelios (Jason Statham), a hit man, completed a job, he wakes up to find himself extremely groggy. He plays a DVD message from a rival hit man who reveals that Chev has been injected with poison and he has only an hour to live. Chev soon realizes that the poison can only be slowed by his own adrenaline. With what little time Chev has left alive, he plans to get his revenge on the people who injected him with the poison. He must fight and race all throughout Los Angeles to say goodbye to his girlfriend, Eve (Amy Smart), while keeping his adrenaline pumping. He will face-off against his employers at every turn as he searches for an antidote to save his life.
[edit] Detailed Summary
A professional hitman, Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) wakes up in his apartment after completing a contract. He is woken up by a cellular phone ringing in the background, feeling a distinct sense of grogginess. After stumbling around in search of the phone, he discovered a DVD with the words "Fuck You" written on the label. Once he starts the DVD, he discovered that he had been knocked unconscious by Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo) and injected with a concoction called "The Beijing Cocktail". The injection restricted his body's ability to secrete and deliver adrenaline to various parts of the body, eventually leading to death. Verona claims that the injection should kill him within the hour. Flying into a rage, Chelios destroyed the television playing the film, and ran to his car, speeding through Los Angeles.
At that moment, he feels that his condition has stabilized slightly, postulating that the angry fury presented on his departure has alleviated his condition to a certain degree. He places several calls, first to his girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart), but she does not answer. He then calls his friend Kaylo (Efren Ramirez) to pinpoint Verona and his associates' location. Immediately after, he calls one Doctor Miles (Dwight Yoakam), in hopes of having some sort of antidote, but is frustrated when Miles is not even in Los Angeles at the moment.
Chev then heads to a bar and holds a gun up to a former affiliate, Orlando (Reno Wilson), to help track down the location of Verona. Since Orlando does not know where Verona is, Chev buys cocaine from him to help increase his adrenaline. Once he opens the bag of cocaine, he spills it on the ground, and desperately picks it up and snorts it, much to Orlando's chagrin. After he finishes, he attacks Orlando's friends to pump his adrenaline and gets himself thrown out of the bar. He quickly speeds off and is soon chased by several police units. He gets a call from Doctor Miles who tells him what he has been injected with after Chev tells him the symptoms. Miles tells him he needs to go to the hospital and get epinephrine, a substitute adrenaline. Chev is still being chased by police and drives his car into an indoor mall. After crashing his car on the escalator, he escapes through the mall and enters a taxi. Chev escapes the police and directs the Middle-Eastern taxi driver to drive him to a convenience store. When he arrives, he grabs the attendant and throws him to the ground and grabs a nearby trash bag. He begins filling the bag with large amounts of energy pills and energy drinks. He re-enters the cab and begins devouring the pills and drinks.
The next scene takes place at the mansion of Carlito (Carlos Sanz), another crime lord who is now affiliated with Verona. Chev interrupts him in his swimming pool and jumps into the pool to talk with him, only to discover that he will not help him kill Verona. Chev leaves and prepares to re-enter the taxi, but the driver will not allow him to get in because he is wet from entering the swimming pool. Chev throws him to the ground and yells to the crowd "Al-Qaeda!" several times and the crowd viciously attacks the taxi driver. Chev then speeds off in the taxi and receives a call from Kaylo, who says that he knows where Verona's brother is. Chev meets Kaylo and enters the restaurant where Verona's brother is and heads to the kitchen. Verona's brother watched him enter the kitchen and heads after him with his gun drawn. When he enters the alley behind the restaurant, Chev takes a meat cleaver and cuts off the hand that is holding the gun. The two wrestle with each other, and Kaylo hits Verona's brother from behind with a rolling pin. The brother gets off of Chev and heads towards Kaylo. Chev picks up his gun to shoot him, but it is defective as a result from his plunge in Carlito's swimming pool. He picks up the severed hand holding the gun and shoots Verona's brother, killing him. He then calls Verona, who is surprised to see that he is still alive. He pulls a necklace off of his brother and tells him he is coming to kill Verona and his crew.
Chev then heads to the hospital, and once he arrives he heads to the pharmacy and requests some epinephrine from the pharmacist and she heads to the back of the office and calls the police. A nearby man (Chester Bennington) tells Chev that there is epinephrine in nasal spray, which is setting on the counter of the pharmacy window. He quickly grabs multiple boxes and begins snorting each bottle. He is soon spotted by police and he hides in a room of an elderly patient. He takes his clothes off and puts on a hospital gown and attempts to escape the hospital. However, he is quickly seen by the police officers and he begins running through the hospital. He sees several doctors and nurses pushing a gurney with a patient on it and puts a gun to the head of one of the nurses, demanding epinephrine. As the nurse fumbles with the available medicine on the gurney, the police are in quick pursuit. Eventually the doctors stop pushing the gurney and the nurse gives him the epinephrine. Chev then tells the nurse to use the defibrillator on him, and when the nurse does so, he is thrown back into the elevator. He pulls a man out of the elevator and the doors close. He injects himself with over 100mg of the epinephrine, instead of the 10-20mg recommended by Doctor Miles. With the massive amount of epinephrine in his body, Chev begins running crazily throughout the streets of Los Angeles and speaks to Doctor Miles again, who yells at him for taking so much epinephrine.
Chev soon comes to a TV store where a small crowd is watching a news report about an unidentified man who is wrecking the city. A mug shot is shown, and a man looks Chev over and realizes it is him depicted in the mug shot. When he looks down, he sees that Chev has a massive erection due to the injected epinephrine. Chev leaves the crowd and spots a motorcycle police officer. After stealing the officer's gun and throwing it off to the side, he steals the motorcycle and heads to his girlfriend's house who has been sleeping inside her apartment all day. When he gets there, he immediately tells her that they need to leave and she gets dressed. As she does so, she asks him to fix the microwave clock. Chev gets exhausted from doing so, and to wake himself up, burns his left hand in her pre-heated waffle iron. The two leave, and Chev kills two assassins sent by Verona without Eve realizing their presence. Chev takes her to a restaurant in Chinatown and tells her that he is actually a hit man, not a video game programmer as she thought. He reveals that he has been injected with poison, and that he did not kill Don Kim so that he could give up his job as a hit man and they could run away and live a better life. She angrily heads out of the restaurant, believing that he is lying. He begins feeling weak again, and grabs her, asking her to have sex with him in the middle of the plaza, surrounded by dozens of people. After initially fighting him off, she has sex with him as the nearby people watch, shocked and amused. While he is having sex with her he gets a phone call from Kaylo, who says that Verona is in a nearby factory. Chev kisses Eve goodbye and heads off to meet up with Kaylo.
Once Chev gets there, he discovers that Kaylo has been killed by suffocation by affiliates of Verona. They tell him that he should just go somewhere peaceful and die, as he is embarrassing the crime organization that hired him as a hit man for all of the destruction that he has caused in the city. Chev is about to kill the thugs when Eve appears from an elevator. He quickly kills three of the men and dodges bullets from a fourth thug by hiding behind the dead body of Kaylo. Chev and Eve run throughout the factory and he sneaks up behind the thug and shoves his hand into a sewing machine. They escape the factory after killing a few more people, and speed off in her car with two cars chasing them. As they are being chased, Eve discovered that he had sex with her to raise his adrenaline, so she proceeds to give him a blowjob. Chev then shoots the driver of one of the cars, causing it to crash into another car. He shoots the other car and when it crashes, he stops and kills the two men in the car as Eve looks on. After she asks him how he can kill people, he tells her because he is quitting the business. Doctor Miles calls him and tells him that he has been attempting to call him for half an hour. They go to the doctor's office, and Miles injects him with more chemicals along with meth to attempt to flush the poison out of his body. He tells Chev that he will still die no matter what, and the best thing he can do is put him on life support for a few days until he slips into a coma. Preferring to die another way, Chev calls Verona and tells him he will trade him his brother's necklace for the antidote. Verona agrees and they meet on top of a skyscraper to make the exchange.
When he arrives, Chev nonchalantly goes through Verona's security, allowing himself to be disarmed of his gun. He then proceeds to the bathroom where he adjusts an insulin injector rigged to pump epinephrine into his body. Once done, Chev enters an elevator with a silent Asian man. As the elevator rises Chev begins to hallucinate that the voices of people he has met are talking through the Asian man. At one point, with Chev's own voice, the Asian man implies that he is the Grim Reaper and will be seeing Chev very soon. Chev then stops hallucinating as the elevator door opens and the Asian man leaves, while Chev is escorted by Verona's men.
Chev is shocked to discover that Carlito is sitting with Verona. Chev asks for the antidote and they laugh at him, telling him there isn't one. Chev pulls out his finger in the shape of a gun and aims it at Verano and Carlito. As they laugh at him, he points it at a bodyguard and pulls the trigger. The bodyguard falls over with a gunshot to the forehead. Verona and Carlito are shocked to see Don Kim and his bodyguards fully armed standing behind Chev. The two gangs begin shooting each other and Chev chases after Verona. Carlito calls in his helicopter to escape the gunfight. Carlito jumps onto the helicopter and Chev is about to pull him off when Verona injects more poison into his neck. Verona then proceeds to shoot Carlito and throw him off the helicopter. Chev regains his strength and jumps onto the helicopter. Chev and Verona fight with each other as Chev dangles out of the helicopter which is continuing to escalate in height. He eventually grabs Verona and pulls him out of the helicopter. They begin falling to the ground and Chev snaps his neck. Chev then realizes that he is going to die upon impact and calls Eve's answering machine and tells her that he will not be returning to her. After hanging up, his body smashes on top of a car, and bounces off onto a city street. The camera shows a close-up of his face, he blinks once, and faint heart-throbbing sounds can be heard before the credits appear.
[edit] Taglines
- Poison in his veins. Vengeance in his heart.
- Was uns nicht umbringt, macht uns stark. (German Translation: What does not kill us, makes us strong[er].)
- There are a thousand ways to raise your adrenaline. Today, Chev Chelios will need every single one.
- Drugs. Sex. Adrenaline.
- The bigger the hit, the faster the rush, the sweeter the revenge.
[edit] Cast
- Jason Statham as Chev Chelios
- Amy Smart as Eve
- Efren Ramirez as Kaylo
- Dwight Yoakam as Doc Miles
[edit] Box office
On its first day of release, Crank earned $3.3 million, the day's highest earnings. In the film's first weekend, it earned $13 million, putting it at second place behind Invincible which earned $15.2 million. As of December 2, 2006 Crank earned $27,838,408 at the domestic box office, with another $11,021,094 of foreign box office, for worldwide receipts of $38,859,502, easily surpassing its $12 million budget.[1]
[edit] Internet advertising
- To promote the movie, Lions Gate Films used the website YouTube both by buying a featured spot on the home page and by paying several well-known members to advertise.
- Independently, directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, along with actor Efren Ramirez appear in a vlog by a user known as biostudentgirl on the website YouTube as well as her personal site.
[edit] DVD
According to Davisdvd.com, Lionsgate Home Entertainment will release Crank on January 9, 2007. The DVD with be available in separate anamorphic widescreen and fullscreen editions, each with Dolby Digital 5.1 & 2.0 tracks. The bonus materials will include running cast & crew audio commentary, behind-the-scenes footage, gags, maps, making-of insights, and interviews with the cast. These features will all be accessible via the "Crank'd Out Mode" - a unique new pop-up window feature that allows access to the extras without ever leaving the film.
The R2 version of the DVD will released on December 26th, but it will be a vanilla (no extras) disk. No Special Edition has been announced.
[edit] Trivia
- Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor along with actors Jason Statham and Efren Ramirez appeared at the 2006 Comic-Con Convention in San Diego, California. The panel showed a short clip of the film and revealed that the film was shot in HD and no wires or CGI were used for the stunt scenes. [2]
- One of the songs used in trailers for the film is Fatboy Slim's "Right Here, Right Now". - [3]
- Vocalist Chester Bennington of Linkin Park is making his film debut with a short role in the film. He plays the man in the hospital pharmacy stating that nasal spray contains epinephrine.
- The car Chev runs from the cops in, and drives through a mall, is a Fourth Generation "Boat Tail" Buick Riviera.
- Jason Statham did all of his own driving stunts.[4]
- Amy Smart said that over 200 people were watching the filming of the aggravated sex scene in a public place, which was almost unscripted. It was never publicly announced that filming was going on. There was also a standing ovation after the scene was finished.
- In the film's opening scene, a special edition DVD of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is briefly seen sitting on Chev's coffee table.
- Throughout the film, various locations in Los Angeles were shown with images from Google Earth, a satellite map program.
- Various scenes in the film show images or characters from the video game Berzerk, a classic arcade game with the grim reputation as one of the few games where a person has died from heart problems while playing it. Said scenes include Verona's transport (Berzerk is being played on a video console in the vehicle) and on a bathroom door at the high-rise for the antidote/pendant exchange.
- There are no explosions in the movie, even when a grenade is involved.
- Chev's falling scene takes place during the falling action of the plot.
- One scene has Chev driving through a mall in his car while discussing the situation with his doctor in a very nonchalant manner, which may be a reference to a similar chase scene from the movie The Blues Brothers. The actual mall that Chev drives through is the Montebello Town Center, a real mall in eastern Los Angeles.
[edit] Soundtrack
The soundtrack for the film was released on August 22, 2006.
The track listing:
- A Warrior's Death
- Metal Health - Quiet Riot
- Nasal Spray
- Trix Are For Kids - The Crowd
- You Stop, You Die
- Bandera - Control Machete
- Small Children
- New Noise - Refused
- Chinese Sh*t
- China Town - Paul Haslinger
- Hardcore Sh*t
- Kill All The White Man - NOFX
- Dipsy Doodle
- Everybody's Talkin' - Harry Nilsson
- Adrenaline Junkie
- Turn Me Loose - Loverboy
- Haitian Cab Ride - Paul Haslinger
- Achy Breaky Heart - Jarrett & Long
- Check List
- Adrenalina - David Rolas
- I Kill People
- Bring Us Bullets - Rocket From The Crypt
- Eve's Machine
- Let's Get It On - Gerald Levert
- Does She Know? - Paul Haslinger
- Stayin' Alive - The Sleeping
- How Much?
- Meva Juan - Roberto Tuscan featuring Erica Garcia
- Juice Me
- Guasa, Guasa - Tego Calderón
- It's A Miracle
- Miracles - Jefferson Starship
[edit] Movie posters
 Initial poster for the film |
 A graphic German poster |
 UK Poster Featuring Jason Statham |
