Crank: High Voltage is the sequel to Jason Statham's frenetic sex-and-violence vehicle Crank. The premise of the first flick is that the hyperactive, superstrong street scum Chelios (Statham) gets injected with an evil Chinese gang drug. If he ever lets his adrenaline fall below psychotic levels, he'll die. Though he falls out of a helicopter at the end of Crank, he manages to survive into this sequel in grand videogame style. Some Chinese gang dudes peel him off the pavement, give him open heart surgery in a massage parlor (managing to get only a little cigarette ash into his chest cavity), steal his mega-heart, and fit him out with a total artificial heart powered by a laptop battery.

Of course, Chelios is awake during his open-heart surgery. He seems pretty content to just chill on the table until the doctors let it slip that the next organ they're going to harvest is his monstrously huge cock. That's when he gets up, kills everybody in sight, and sets out on his new quest: To get his awesome heart back. His first bit of intel comes from the lone remaining gangster after the slaughterfest. The guy is begging for his life on his hands and knees, but he won't tell who has the heart. So Chelios dunks the tip of his semi-automatic gun in oil, and jams it deep in the guy's ass.

This movie is some fucked up shit, yo. And it's glorious. This is the videogame-amped, YouTube-poisoned, porn-soaked, gang-controlled future that suburban America fears most. And so it's nothing short of cathartic to see every pop nightmare unscroll before our eyes in a lurid parody like the best dirty joke that Larry Flynt ever dreamed up. Crank 2 is thrilling because the filmmakers have blasted away their self-censorship mechanisms and let flow the unexpurgated contents of their blackest (and silliest) hearts.

Chelios' Los Angeles is pretty much the same semi-imaginary city where Grand Theft Auto takes place, a world of gangbangers and whores who exist entirely to be killed, and hopefully in a way that is memorably bloody. Just when you think the action can't get any more fucked up, Chelios will follow the gangsters who've got his heart into a strip club. Where a guy is being tortured by having his elbows chopped off. And strippers who've been shot in the chest run through the club screaming as silicon goo streams down their stomachs and their breasts deflate.

To keep his heart battery from running down, Chelios has to keep shocking himself. His underground heart surgeon, doing medical research while boning yet another hooker, checks in on the cell phone every once in a while to dispense heart-maintenance advice to our beleaguered hero. Try rebooting it by clamping jumper cables to your nipples. Try tazering your cock. Try creating a bunch of friction by rubbing another person! That last order ends well, with Chelios fucking his girlfriend (the hilarious Amy Smart) on the racetrack while a bunch of horses run over their heads, flashing their horsey cocks.

Meanwhile, we take several gratuitous detours into sex-violence slapstick, as Chelios has to cross a picket line of striking porn stars (yes there's a cameo from Ron Jeremy), and meets up with a gay sidekick who has "full body Tourettes" (WTF?) but later saves Chelios' ass with his giant gang of butch queers. No surprise that this movie exhibits Grand Theft Auto's idea of multiculturalism, too: Everybody (including the white dude) is a racist stereotype; everybody is a sexist stereotype; and everybody is equal in their sleazy, homicidal abandon. It's Jackass Darwinism - survival of the biggest fucking asshole.

Eventually it turns out that a Chinese gang leader – played with parodic racist aplomb by David Carradine – has installed Chelios' heart in his own chest. So it's a race to get the pumper out of Carradine's chest and back into Chelios. Things get even more science fictional as our characters head into a showdown on Catalina Island that plays like a hellish cross between the movies of Ron Jeremy and Eli Roth. And by that I mean: OMGWTFBBQ.

I've been accused before of being immoral for enjoying movies like Crank 2 – for admiring their savage honesty, their brutal parodic punch. There is something undeniably disturbing about a story that is so plainly intended to degrade every character in it. And yet that is its charm. Nobody tried to excuse the sex and violence here in the service of art or politics or some kind of warning about the nasty future our terrible videogame habits will lead to. But at the same time, Crank 2 does recognize its own self-destructive sensibility. That's why the movie's refrain – repeated in many languages, by many people - is "Fuck you Chelios!"

Crank is so crazy, especially the scene where you and Jason have sex in public. So how did you top the scene like that in Crank 2?

They definitely topped it. They basically took the same premise from Crank, but now he has an artificial heart. So he has to make friction with his body to keep the battery charged so he can keep his heart working... They found many more outrageous things that you can do to keep his heart rate up.

Involving you specifically?

Yes there is another Chinatown scene involving me specifically.

I read that you pole dance in this movie, how did you prepare for that?

Well, because of her scene in Chinatown last movie, she became very sexually liberated and decided to use pole dancing to continue that exploration. I took a number of pole dancing classes to prepare for Crank 2 where she's pole dancing happily.

I heard you and Bai Ling get in a big cat fight, what was that like?

She's hilarious, we actually have a cat fight in the strip bar. She kind of tags along with Jason and my character is stripping and has a boyfriend played by Corey Haim. My character thinks he's dead, and then he shows up. There's a little competition between the girl that he's been tagging along with [and me]. It's really funny. She has this really wild energy.

Did you kick her ass? Was it choreographed?

Yes, it was choreographed. We have to look good in the film. It's so much fun, we have a really great big bottle to work with. We're pushing and grabbing each others hair.

When the directors come to you (with outrageous scenes) how game are you to run through these crazy scenes?

Initially, I'm excited to do it because it's so outrageous. I really enjoyed doing the first one, I had so much fun filming it. It's another way to live out a fantasy, because it's not real life, because you couldn't do this in real life. It's completely over the top. Half the takes are messed up because we end up laughing, it's so funny. I'm not scared to look like a complete fool in front of someone.

What was it like roughing up Corey Haim and working with him?

He was a lovely person and so great to work with. He was so grateful to be back at work after all of this time. He has really good comedic timing, he plays my pimp/boyfriend in the film. And he has this really funny mullet and he thinks he's such a tough guy.

Is Jason Statham always down for getting naked on screen and having sex in front of thousands like in the first movie?

No, he's much more shy than that. He's a great badass on screen. But he's definitely shy at times. It helped that we were both being so completely outrageous together. It feels like you are on a roller coaster ride, and you're climbing up the tracks at the top and you know you're going to surrender to this crazy ride. That's sort of what it is when you're doing these crazy scenes in these movies... It has that real adrenaline rush because you're putting everything on the line, and hoping everything to comes out OK.

Can you talk about any particular moment that got your adrenaline up?

We definitely have another Chinatown scene. I don't know if I want to give away. I'll just give you two words: Horse Racetrack.

What is the craziest thing you had to do in this movie, where you couldn't believe you were doing?

It's hard to say [in] this one. There's a part in the film where I'm getting sprayed with a firehose down a horse racetrack. It's one of those massive water hoses that can literally spray 30 feet. That just felt so disgusting and I'm in that mud, there is horse shit in the mud and I felt dirty and gross and I just needed a shower.

Has there been any talk if this movie is successful will there be a 3?

I know definitely that they are talking about a third film but I have no idea what the story would be.

Crank 2: High Voltage is released Friday April 17th.

We were lucky enough to spend some time with Bai, whose well-known zany sense of humor was on full display. (When we asked her where in China she originally hailed from, she told us she'd actually descended from the Moon, via satellite, and had landed in Asia.)

But then she did tell us all about Ria, her character in the movie: "She's totally crazy, and she's very free and she's hilarious. She'll make you laugh..." When we first meet Ria, she falls from a second-storey window, onto the street.

The film's hero, Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) saves Ria's life, and afterwards, Ria says, "I'm yours, you saved my life!" Chev is in a hurry to track down his superpowered heart, which an elderly Chinese gangster has stolen. So he tells Ria that he doesn't need her. And Ria says, "You need me like Whitney Houston." The madly-in-love Ria starts following Chev around, and eventually helps him track down the bad guys.

But first, Ria has to have a hilarious catfight with Statham's girlfriend, played by Amy Smart. "She beats me, too. She's tough. It's fun." She calls it a "rollercoaster" of a movie, a 90 minute adventure that feels like 20 minutes. There are tons of crazy moments where Jason Statham goes around electrocuting himself to keep his artificial heart beating. Statham gets pumped up like a cartoon character, grabbing wires that are attached to devices with "DANGER" written on them, and he gets blown down the street but still survives. All the while, he's searching for his missing heart.

"There's a great message in the movie: Looking for a heart," says Bai. "Aren't we all looking for a heart?" Especially in the modern world, with everybody spending all their time on computers and interacting with technology, this is a message she feels resonates.

And Bai explained that she improvised a lot of her dialogue in the film:

My character's supposed to be funny, because it's a comedy. They ask me to read specifically what they've written, because they think it's funny. I ask, "Can I do something else?" They say sure, so I start to improvise. And then after that, they say, "Wow, you're hilarious!" So they let me do whatever I want to do, and say whatever I want to say. "Just keep going, Bai Ling!" Okay, if you encourage me, I'm like a kid. All these weird things come to my mind. Everything I say is like strange - it doesn't make any sense to you, but in her character, when you hear her, it makes perfect sense.

Not only that, but she did all of her own stunts, including one sequence where she gets hit by a car and goes flying up in the air. The wirework backfired, and Bai nearly smashed her nose on the pavement.

They had a stuntwoman there, who looked exactly like her, but Bai insisted on doing the stunt herself, even though the stuntwoman said, "You're crazy." But the directors said it was okay. She had straps attached to her legs and waist. She's chasing after Chev, and the car comes out and hits her. She's flung up in the air, and falls upside down, and the pavement rushes towards her face. She was supposed to flip over and land on the sidewalk, but she hurt her arm in the process.

Bai also said she developed her own "silly but crazy" fighting style for the film. And when directors/writers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor told her how her character ends, she decided that wasn't fun enough and came up with her own final scene. They let her choose her own guns - which turned out to be way too heavy and overwhelming for her to handle. And she came up with a "very spontaneous" ending for Ria. (But it sounds like Ria doesn't die, because Bai says she's hoping to come back for Crank 3.)

I asked her if she's comfortable with the way Crank 2 portrays Asian people, since its main villain is Hu Dong, a 100-year-old Chinese gangster. She responded, "I don't consider myself an Asian actress or an Asian American actress. I'm just one of the creatures in the world, happy to have the gift as an actress [who's] working." People might point out that a lot of actors from Asia or Eastern Europe play prostitutes or "somebody's girlfriend," but "a lot them in real life are." So there's nothing wrong with showing it. And there's no point in having a lot of anger, or being caught up with criciticizing one aspect of a movie. "There is a Chinese mafia, and they do a lot of bad things. So it's fine for this film to show that. It's their choice."

The best thing about Crank 2 is that it's not the type of "fashionable action movie where everything's polished and beautiful. Everything's raw, like the street." Neveldine and Taylor shot the movie in the worst parts of Los Angeles, and filmed from weird camera angles. The directors shot some of the movie themselves, racing around on roller blades. There were eighteen cameras, and Bai couldn't even tell where they all were. Once, she asked where the camera was, and the directors pointed directly under her skirt. (At this point, she mimed looking down, locking her legs together, and pulling her skirt down tight.)

Bai said she hopes she'll return to Lost at some point. "They told me it's like the pyramids. Every character, every element is planned. I love that show."

She also talked about how she had to learn French in two weeks for Luc Besson's 2003 film Taxi 3, in which she plays a leading lady who "says philosophical things." She managed to memorize the French in the movie, in time to audition for the film, but was so embarrassed afterwards she ran and hid in the bathroom. But then Besson came and found her and said everybody adored her performance because it was funny. "After that, I learned the potential of the human mind," she said.

Crank 2: High Voltage is in theaters April 17.

Jason Statham has one hour to live in this exclusive spot that can only be found at io9 right now…and it looks like he'll rub up against anything to stay alive.

I am so ready for Crank High Voltage to come out, we desperately need more Chev. I especially enjoyed the moment where our dear anti-hero is getting tasered by a group of cops and then proceeds to take down all five of them in one swift movement. Or is it Bai Ling running around in a bikini with guns? No, it's definitely getting glimpse of what I'm hoping is another segment of gettin' busy in public with the delightfully dirty Amy Smart.

Crank High Voltage opens April 17th.

In this episode Chev isn't dead (despite that whole deadly fall in the first Crank) and Statham wakes up mid-surgery. His heart gets replaced with a mechanical ticker, and now Chev has to jolt his body every hour or so to keep it running.

Crank 2: High Voltage opens April 17th.

Chev (Jason Statham) gets scraped off the ground and thrown into surgery. A mob boss starts harvesting off his organs starting by replacing his big heart with a mechanical one. He escapes, but now he has to charge up his fake heart every so often with electricity — or else wild, wild sex with Amy Smart.

Crank 2: High Voltage opens April 17th.

[IGN]

Chev Chelios is back in Crank 2, kicking ass despite being saddled with a mechanical heart that needs to be pumped up every few moments with electricity. And probably having sex with Amy Smart in a public place, again.

Crank: High Voltage is being released in theaters on April 17, 2009.

Crank 2 is one of those ratshit insane movies that makes me proud to be alive. The plot follows Statham's character, Chev Chelios, who is going to die unless he does something to keep his heart pumping at an insane speed, which means grabbing onto exposed electrical wires and having wild sex with his lady friend Eve (Amy Smart). Even the mighty bad boy Statham is nervous about how far this movie goes. During the Death Race press junket he said:

Poor Amy Smart, that's my concern. There is a very indulgent sex scene on a race track. I don't want to give too much away.

But deep inside he knows this movie will be top-notch ridiculous action. He added:

They have all the capabilities of making it the crazy action movie that they wanted. It's like Crank 1 but times 1,000.

For those of you who are hoping for a smiple verdict on the movie, here it is: the car stunts are breathtaking, if occasionally confusing. Stuff blows up real good. Joan Allen is magnificent as the prison warden. Jason Statham is Jason Statham. The movie holds up pretty well, until it fizzles completely in the last 15-20 minutes. (Seriously, I can't remember when I've seen a movie take such a steep nose-dive in its last reel.)

It's true, as director Paul W.S. Anderson says, that the new Death Race isn't as overtly satirical as the 1970s original, Death Race 2000. This movie is actually too sledge-hammery to be a satire. It starts with a voice-over (and captions) telling us that it's 2012 and everything has gone ass-up. The U.S. economy is rotten, there are no jobs, and everyone's in prison. Prisons, meanwhile, have all been outsourced to private corporations, which try to make a profit through entertainment. First, it's just cage matches and stuff, but eventually it gets more elaborate, leading to the Death Race, which is a huge road rally of mutilation inside the prison grounds, broadcast on the Internet.

Then we see Jason Statham on his last day, working at a steel mill, which is closing down. The mill's owners cheat Statham and his fellow workers out of most of their final pay, and then call the riot cops on them before they can even grumble. "Self-fulfilling prophecy," Statham announces to the camera. The workers try to invoke working-class solidarity with the cops, but to no avail, and the violence begins, with the cops firing rubber bullets and beating the crap out of the downtrodden workers. From there, the movie zips forwards through the murder of Statham's sexy wife in his inexplicably nice house, and in a jiffy he's in prison for his wife's murder. His only hope of release: to take part in the Death Race and win.

We quickly realize the evil prison warden (Joan Allen) had Statham's wife killed and framed Statham, so he would take part in the race. And not too long after that, we're shown that Allen's character never intends to let anyone win enough races to get out of prison. The game is (say it with me) rigged. There are little video-gamey "power-up" symbols that you're supposed to drive over to get weapons or defenses, but they only work when Allen wants them to. Just like the steel-mill's owners, Allen has everything fixed in her favor. (I mentioned this movie was subtle, right?)

Whatever Anderson paid Allen to be in this movie, he should double it. She's easily the best thing about the film, enjoying the hell out of playing a one-dimensional monster. (As I mentioned yesterday, there's a shortage of decent villains, and Allen's character is up there, until the aforementioned terrible ending.) She's purely interested in profit, and driving Internet traffic to the webcast of the Death Race, and she'll do anything to get more online subscribers. The only time she's freaked out or flustered is when she thinks she won't get enough hits. The rest of the time, she's supremely in control — like in one scene where she's talking to Statham with one finger on the trigger of a gun under her desk, aimed at his crotch. It's Allen who really sells the movie's crazy premise, as a smiling yuppie surrounded by working-class men who fear and/or worship her.

We're constantly reminded, through fancy graphics, that this the Death Race is a webcast and that you have to pay to watch. It's a particularly web-savvy vision of a dystopian America in 2012, where the economy has collapsed and everybody's a prisoner one way or the other.

Did I mention this movie is kind of pornographic? It is. From the early shots of molten steel and sweaty men at the steel mill, to the numerous excuses for the camera to linger over Statham's bare torso and his encyclopedic muscle definition, to the cars themselves, men and machines are fetishized. Oh, there are women, too, besides Allen's long-legged warden. The prison buses in female convicts to be the "navigators" for most of the male drivers. Every time one of those women walks across the screen, the movie goes into slow-mo (literally) and a hip-hop song about sexy girls plays. The same song, two or three times, as if Anderson could only afford to license one sexy-girl song. But because of the movie's breakneck pace, it doesn't do too many of those slow-mo girlie shots, and most of the time, the only body we linger on is Statham's.

It's fitting that Death Race ends the summer that began with Iron Man. In Iron Man, we see Tony Stark's naked torso, and it's slightly flabby and vulnerable, symbolizing how fragile he is now that he's mortally wounded. In Death Race, you could write an anatomy textbook using Statham's naked muscles for reference. Robert Downey, Jr. is a rich guy who becomes part machine, pretty much working on his own, with some slight help from Professor Expendable in Afghanistan. Jason Statham helps to build the perfect driving machine, but he's working with a whole team of mechanics. And Statham isn't separate from the mechanics, just because he's the driver — when he's not on the track, he's working in the pit, as a junior mechanic. (This is mostly because it's supposed to be a secret that Statham's character is the masked racer Frankenstein, so he's posing as a mechanic. But it also establishes that he has solidarity with the grease monkeys, and much is made of his auto-mechanic training.)

Oh, and this wouldn't be a prison movie without a gay subtext. Luckily, the movie designates Tyrese Gibson's character, Machine Gun Joe, as the sole bearer of that burden. Machine Gun Joe is the only driver who has a male navigator instead of a female one, supposedly because his navigators tend to die quickly and the viewers would be too squeamish to watch that many women get killed. But his navigators are sort of his "bitches," and there's a running joke where people call his character gay, over and over. At the end of the film — major spoiler — he gets street clothes for himself and Statham, and they're super-faggy. Statham says "Anyone would think the guy who got these clothes..." And Gibson finishes the sentence: "...had no taste." They share a little "We're not really gay" laugh.

(Actually, the movie is mercifully free of "funny" rape, which is a trend I hope to see continue in prison movies.)

So yeah, Death Race is not a particularly smart or subtle movie — even Statham, in interviews, has been saying things like "It's not the Godfather." But it is an interesting spin on a dystopia where a tiny minority of powerful people screw over everybody else — and then sell us front-row seats for our own destruction, via the Internet. Sometimes, a movie doesn't have to be smart if it's vaguely topical and has lots of cars going boom. If it wasn't for the wimpy ending, I would recommend Death Race whole-heartedly, but as it is... it's okay.

I'm having a little bit of trouble figuring out why this trailer is restricted to grown-up audiences. I don't consider cock sucker to be that bad of a word, even if it is coming from Joan Allen. What's so violent and graphic about this trailer. You don't actually see anyone die, is it Statham muscles that need the warning?

And here's 15 minutes of behind-the-scenes Statham action:

[Spoiler TV]

[Deathrace Official Site via IESB]

We've blogged about this movie a couple times, but not recently. In a nutshell, Butler is Kable, a convict who's stuck in a deadly online multi-player game (like Death Race, but without cars) and if he wins 30 games, he gets his freedom. A resistance group that opposes inventor Ken Castle's online games sees Kable as a crucial part of their effort to take down the game. Acording to Neveldine and Taylor, there's a huge action sequence involving a battered old truck and two snow-plows. The movie also features B-movie babe Amber Valletta, in a candy-floss blue wig, and Milo Ventimiglia (Peter from Heroes) as a nasty guy named Rick Rape.

The duo are currently working on Crank 2, and they speculate about how cool it would be to have Crank star Jason Statham fight Game star Butler in a cage match — or maybe the two could star in a gay porn together. (Tonight, we bareback in Hell?) [Empire, via Rama's Screen]

Jason's hardened castmates include Machine-Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson), the mean prison warden (Joan Allen) who forces Jensen to enter the Death Race, and Jensen's curvy navigator Case (Natalie Martinez). And here are a few new shots of the Death Race cars, including one tripped out bug with what looks like a group of missiles strapped to its back.

[MTV]

Our previous spoilers detailed an angry 100-year-old Chinese mobster who stole Chev's heart in order to make him a 'horny teenager' again. The gangster, Hu Dong, replaces Chev's heart with a battery-operated machine. On top of it all the machine stops beating every so often and Chev needs to shock himself to keep it working.

Hopefully Chev will get his randy heart back in time for Crank 3. In an interview with Collider, writer/directors, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor revealed that Crank 3 would be in 3-D. Photos by INF/Goff. [Collider via Staham Fan]

• One line synopsis: "Competitors race for their lives. What's not to love?" Slightly longer synopsis: Statham is a prisoner who's forced to take part in a "death race" for entertainment purposes, where the reward is not getting horribly smushed.
• It's like "Mario Kart on steroids." When the drivers drive over little sword-and-shield-shaped markers on the road, they get offensive or defensive weapons activated on their cars.
• The movie has really intense violence, including people getting run over and impaled. One tattooed driver gets splatted incredibly graphically as he's trying to escape the shattered wreckage of his own car. People also get blown up and "shot to hell." You get to see Jason Statham's butt when he gets hosed down in prison, in one scene early on.
• It's a "silly action update" of the 1970s cult classic. And there's a Frankenstein mask.
• Joan Allen plays a Cruella Deville-type baddie. Ian MacShane steals all his scenes, and Tyrese is hardly in it despite being the other main character besides Statham.
• It has a really, really weirdly abrupt ending, with very little resolution of what happens to the characters.

Did you even know they were making a second Crank movie? Me neither.

Crank 2's villain is Hu Dong, a 100-year-old Chinese gangster who steals Chev's super-heart to rejuvenate himself and become "as horny as a teenager." Two Chinese doctors perform the heart transplant on Chev, although it's not clear why they bother to give him an artificial heart. They wrongly believe that Chev is too heavily sedated to cause trouble, so they decide to harvest his testicles as well — at which point Chev wakes up and kills them. At one point, Chev finds a 65-year-old woman at the race track and rubs against her to get "static electricity back into his system." She later "delightedly and profanely" relives the moment on live TV.

Meanwhile, Chev's cowardly physician, Dr. Ankleson (pictured above), has an irritable female therapist who orders him "off the couch and back to reality," with disastrous results.

And yes, the film will give us deep insights into who Chev really is, deep down in the heart he no longer has. A casting notice seeks people to play:

• Chev as a young boy
• 
  
• a campy talk-show host who interviews the young Chev and Chev's mom
• 
  
• a baffled detective who tries to understand the bond between Chev and his girlfriend Eve, and
• 
  
• a young (possibly naked) stripper who's in the back of a car which Chev and Eve steal.

• You may have heard that Greg Ellis (who just appeared in Knight Rider) will be Olsen, the Enterprise's chief engineer in the new Star Trek movie. But here are more details: Simon Pegg's Scotty will take over as engineer at some point during the film, just as Kirk takes over as captain from Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood). We may actually see Scotty as a civilian for part of the movie. And rumor has it that Scotty has "a midget sidekick." Who, one hopes, can hold his/her Scotch. [TrekMovie]
• Some more details about Death Race from star Jason Statham: It's not really a "remake" of the Roger Corman classic, so much as a "tribute" to it. Statham is an inmate who's a few weeks away from parole, until he's forced to take part in a deadly cross-country race by the prison warden (Joan Allen). The cars, built by inmates, include ejector seats (yes!) and spray oil and napalm. Rock on! [SliceofSciFi and SciFi Wire]
• Another mutant we'll meet in Wolverine: Wraith aka Kestrel, played by hip-hop star will.i.am. Wraith is part of the Weapon X team, along with Wolverine, Silver Fox, Sabretooth, Maverick and Mastodon. [IESB]
• Lost spoilers: the person who dies in an upcoming episode is an "original 815-er," and his/her death differs from the norm in significant ways. Cynthia Watros will be back as Libby in at least one episode, and possibly more, this season. Also, Ken Leung's Miles is now a "series regular." [Ask Ausiello]
• And here are two more clips from Thursday's Lost episode, in addition to the two we already posted: [E! Online]