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Copy or Quotation: What’s Wrong with Crank? |
Crank is fast. The first plot appears after about 30 seconds of past film time when Chev Chelios becomes aware that he has been poisoned during his sleep. The immediate search for his future killer is speeded up by Chev’s constant need for adrenaline to keep his heart beating. Fast scenes, sequences, and plots are the results. The second structural plot at the end of the film even competes the others dramatically.
Nevertheless, watching Crank, one subsequently starts wondering about what is wrong with this film. There are no diamonds, but drugs, guns, organized crime, gang like groups, a similar kind of humour, and Jason Statham as a killer lead to the assumption that this is Guy Ritchie’s second Snatch. Crank seems partly more developed than Snatch, as it employs Google-Earth to add new peaks to Ritchie’s edge cutting cutting techniques.
Admittedly, you can only experience Crank in this manner if you do not know that writer and director Guy Ritchie had nothing to do with the writing and directing of Crank. Whereas Snatch takes place in a throughout English setting with few American counterpoints, Crank is situated in Los Angeles, and the only English counterpoint is Statham. Accordingly, black and Mexican gangs of Los Angeles replace London’s gypsies.
Thus, Crank does have its own style or at least a personal note. But the actual co-screenwriters and co-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor would have done well in adding a bit more of their own particular elements, at least visually, so that Crank could have been recognized as a quotation rich film rather than a copy.
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