Movie review

Crank
The Wild

Crank
In "Crank," West Coast hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) discovers that he's been poisoned and that only adrenaline will keep him alive for a few hours. Determined to save his girl and extract some revenge, Chev goes on a frenzied rampage through Los Angeles that has him snorting cocaine off a drug dealer's floor, guzzling red bulls, driving through a shopping mall, stealing epinephrine from a hospital, taking electric shocks to the heart and making love to his girlfriend in public. Revealed in highly stylized, mind-numbing sequences made up of quick cuts, split screens, grinding music and repeated fades into Chev's chest to reveal his pumping heart, "Crank" effectively simulates the edgy feeling of being amped up on adrenaline. But you might as well leave your brain checked at the door as all the goombahs and bimbos are straight out of a cartoon. The cheap laughs include one particularly tasteful scene in which the pumped-up Chev flings a cab driver, evidently someone from the Middle East or Central Asia, onto the ground, yells "Al Qaeda" and drives off in his taxi while a couple of old ladies wrestle with the driver on the street. If you're a chronic narcoleptic, "Crank"'s frenetic energy will, at the very least, wake you up.
( Sherwin Das )

The film begins with assassin Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) being told via a video message that he has an hour to live after being injected with a deadly poison. Naturally, the first thing he does is call his sleazy personal doctor who tells him the only way he can stay alive is by producing as much adrenalin as possible. So Chev sets off on an adrenaline-fuelled rampage to kill those who injected him while waiting for his doctor to fly back into town to see if there's an antidote. "Crank" clearly sets out to be extreme and extreme it is in a very enjoyable and totally mindless way. You can only watch in dumbfounded fascination as the geeky directors find ever-more extreme ways for Chev to get his next adrenaline fix, from starting a fight with a room full of gangstas to having the first public sex scene since "Boogie Nights." "Crank" also contains one of the most blatant pieces of product placement I have ever seen. It might as well have splashed "This film is sponsored by Red Bull" across the screen. Ultimately though, it doesn't matter how many "Xs" you put into extreme. It will never be extreme enough for those without any imagination.
1/2 ( Tim Ochser )

The Wild
Disney's "The Wild" borrows generously from "The Lion King" and "Madagascar" but is not nearly as smart as those films. Ryan is an adolescent lion cub at the New York Zoo who lives in the shadow of his father Samson and is ashamed that he cannot yet roar. When he finds himself trapped on a ship to an African island, it's up to Samson and his zoo buddies to rescue him. There's an amusing Bollywood sequence with dice-throwing Indian city pigeons and funny turns by an army of wildebeests who stage an island coup to put themselves at the top of the food chain. But "The Wild" is frequently cheesier than many conventional live action films. The purported moral of the story is that it's what you have on the inside that counts more than any earthly heroics. But the framework for delivering this message is confounding: animals raised in captivity who have lost their natural instincts, fear the jungle and conclude that the real "wild" exists only in their hearts. "At least I got a chance to see the wild before it disappeared," declares Ryan like a tourist before an erupting volcano destroys the island. Good thing humans created zoos to protect animals from the perils of the natural world.
( Sherwin Das )

"The Wild" is an extremely tedious film that shamelessly rips off the far superior "Madagascar" to the point of almost being plagiaristic. In fact, it shamelessly rips off just about every animation film I can think of. Ryan (Greg Cipes) is an adolescent lion living in the imposing shadow of his father Samson (Kiefer Sutherland) in New York Zoo. Ryan just can't roar the way his dad can. So he escapes and gets shipped off to the wild and his dad runs after him along with an assortment of his animal friends. There are some impressive scenes along the way and children will almost certainly like it just because they don't know any better. But I just couldn't get over the fact that Disney had the audacity to bring this out so long after "Madagascar." The thrill and novelty of computer animation is also starting to wear very thin. The medium is so well-established by now that rubbish like this just won't wash. You have to wonder what story lines Disney and Pixar will churn out next, having used animals, both extant and extinct, robots, cars, monsters, fish, bugs and retired superheroes, among other things. Maybe they could try their luck with some lovely vegetables.
( Tim Ochser )