No really.
I vehemently argued against the notion there would be a Crank 2. Friends tried to convince me, “No man, he blinks at the end. He’s alive.”
I said no way in hell. I assumed it was budgetary constraints that kept the filmmakers from having Jason Statham simply explode in a million pieces at the end, after having fallen thousands of feet onto a car.
But no, he’s not really dead (guess the car broke his fall, huh?). And apparently he’s been implanted with an artificial heart, that requires electrical jolts to keep running.
Hence…Crank 2. Which is basically Crank 1. Which was basically Speed, only with a human being.
I for one am disappointed. Part of the appeal of Crank 1 was its take no prisoners ending. I was impressed to see a film that went out in the same spirit it was in during its entire runtime, and applauded them for letting their lead die.
And then this. If this isn’t the most shameless sequel-milking ever, I don’t know what is.
How can you shake the feeling that the freshness of the concept is gone? It will all feel like re-heated macaroni, really much like the trailer does:
http://movies.ign.com/dor/objects/14209302/crank-high-voltage/videos/crank2_nr1_trlr1_011509.html