Hitman Chev Chelios is kidnapped by a mysterious Chinese mobster. Three months later, he wakes up to discover his nearly indestructible heart has been surgically removed and replaced with a battery-operated ticker that requires regular jolts of electricity in order to work. After a dangerous escape from his captors, Chev is on the run again, this time from the charismatic Mexican gang boss El Huron and the Chinese Triads, headed by the dangerous 100 year-old elder Poon Dong. Once again turning to Doc Miles for medical advice, receiving help from his friend Kaylo’s twin brother Venus, and re-connecting with his girlfriend Eve, who is no longer in the dark about what he does for a living, Chev is determined to get his real heart back and wreak vengeance on whoever stole it, embarking on an electrifying chase through Los Angeles where anything goes to stay alive.

The first Crank straddled the line between outrageous yet almost plausible all the while leading you on a wild ride that was highly entertaining. Crank: High Voltage not only steps over the line of plausible but steps over so far that it seems to be mocking you as audience to shut your brain off so much that you somehow become brain dead to just accepts half of its plot. At almost no point in the entire film are you able to say well that’s unlikely but I guess it could be plausible instead you are left to scratch your head and think to yourself what the hell were they thinking when they made this movie. Every action sequence, every escape, every single plot point of the film from Chev somehow managing to survive a fall from a helicopter sans parachute to Chev lighting himself on fire by hooking up to power lines goes so far over the top it almost leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Sure the movie could be fun, almost entertaining at times but it expects so much out of your ability to buy the ludicrous as everyday and to shut your brain off so effectively that it loses most of his entertainment value in doing so. It was as if they were trying to make a movie that made you say “what the #$&%” as many times as possible during a ninety minute timeframe. I don’t mind the far fetched movie but honestly there is only so much one can take before you want to yell at the film makers to try and come up with a plot rather than just injecting more ludicrous and entirely implausible action sequences to hide fact that they didn’t feel like hiring screenwriters to come up with a plot.

I guess it was only a matter of time in today’s world of short attention spans and electronic devices that there came a movie that embodied all those things. You don’t have to wait long in between the action sequences in the movie nor do you have to wait long for an endless stream of plot holes to present itself. Geared for a modern audience that can’t sit two hours without playing with some electronic device the film tries to inject every single moment with something exploding so you will keep your eyes on the screen instead of your cell phone or PDA. Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay eat your hearts out.

I really like Jason Statham but if there is an actor in Hollywood that is lost its Statham. He could easily be the next big action star ala Stalone or Arnold but from some reason he stays under the radar by never taking any huge Hollywood type of films. Crank is a perfect example of that as the film has all the elements of being a massive success but tanks itself by seeming low budget and a head scratcher with all its what the $&#@ moments. Amy Smart once again appears as Chev’s girlfriend but she is little more than eye candy and nothing else. The movie has its moments but at the same time could have been vastly better.

Grade: C