大象传媒

"Poison in his veins. Vengeance in his heart." So runs the tagline for Crank, an amped-up race-against-time thriller which plays like Speed without the bus. Jason Statham is Chev Chelios, a professional hit man with a lethal serum in his bloodstream that will kill him if his heart rate falls below a certain level. Cue 90 minutes of non-stop running, fighting and fornicating as our desperate hero zips around LA in search of a cure like a human Duracell bunny.

Directed by commercial supremos Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, Crank has an ingenious high concept that justifies all manner of breakneck lunacy: Statham riding a police motorbike dressed in a hospital gown, shagging compliant girlfriend Amy Smart in the middle of a Chinatown market, and battling bad guy Ricky Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo) while dangling out of a helicopter. Like Snakes On A Plane and Statham's own Transporter films this is more a video game than a movie, a parallel reinforced by his periodical pausing to refuel himself with energy drinks, candy bars and serum suppressants. The handheld camera, meanwhile, brings its own frenetic urgency to proceedings with its extreme close-ups, frantic tracking shots and crazy zooms.

"USUAL HARDNUT CONVICTION"

This is not, in short, a film for anybody who appreciates the simpler virtues of logic, characterisation and narrative credibility. That said, Statham brings his usual hardnut conviction to his ludicrously named protagonist, while the pic contains what is easily the best car chase through a shopping mall scene since The Blues Brothers.