Crank (2006)

Love him or hate him, of which I know people do so in equal measures, Jason "The Stath" Statham has propelled himself from bit part indie player to fully fledged pumped up Hollywood action hero! And good on him eh! A Rough Diamond cockney Brit going over seas and showing them how it is done!

I may get to watch family movies over and over again during the weekend day time with my kids, but I know that I could quite easily watch The Stath movies over and over again in the evenings as my Caroline, my wife, fancies the right royal pants of the shaven headed hard man!

Despite The Transporter movies being his signature role, and they are good enough fun to watch ,this is easily his best movie to date.

I have always had a soft spot for "leave your brain at the door" action movies, I guess like how my grand dad grew up watching cowboy movies, I grew up with the Van Damme, Arnie and Stallone movies of the 80's early 90's. Then something went wrong.

Hollywood action movies lost it's brawn and testosterone and became all CGI effects and ballet dancing fight sequences. Thankfully though, The Stath is bringing back old skool style action flicks and for anyone wanting a quick 80 minute burst of mega fast paced action packed, laugh out loud crude comedy, this is a must!

Simple synopsis, Professional hit man, Chev Chelios (one of the best movie character names too don't you think :-)), played by The Stath, thankfully, in his native tongue so no dodgy American accents here, wakes up one morning to find a DVD of when watching, his enemy informs him that he has been injected with a "Beijing Cocktail", a lethal injection of which leaves our hero with only a matter of hours to live. So like a starting pistol the action begins as Chev Chelios (heeheehee, can't help but chuckle as I type his name) heads out to find and end the baddies lives before his does, thankfully, he finds out that if he keeps his adrenaline pumping, he prolongs his life, so follows some outrageous, hilariously funny and thoroughly entertaining set pieces of variously ways Chev keeps his heart pumping.

Seriously, you'd be pretty hard to satisfy if you don't find this piece of popcorn cinema mildly entertaining. It has very smart and fast and inventive directing from director/writers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor and the script, although featuring the usual cardboard cut out characters for most action movies, is actually quite clever and genuinely funny.

This movies knows how to take the pee out of it's self and with doing so comes across very fresh indeed and while through Vin Diesel and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Hollywood searches for its young and new action hero, the search need go no further as here it is with Jason "The Stath" Statham!

Crank: "Extremely fresh and fast paced with adrenaline pumping action and laugh out loud humour" *** 1/2