Crank (film)

""Fuck you, Chelios!""

A hitman named Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) has been injected with a slow-acting poison that will eventually cause his body to shut down. His doctor is far away and had the flight delayed. If he runs out of adrenaline, he will die.

Crank is a 2006 action film where Jason Statham kicks everyone's ass. Followed by a sequel, Crank: High Voltage, in 2009. After the events of the first movie, Chev pursues his heart, which has been literally stolen by Chinese gangsters. He must electrocute himself to charge his artificial heart and prevent himself from dying. Hilarity Ensues.

Crank has examples of:
""He my Kevin Costner!""
 * Action Girl: Eve has a moment of this in the sequel.
 * Actor Allusion: One of the characters comments that Chev looks like "that guy from the Transporter movies". That's because he is.
 * Also, when Chev starts to shoot a disabled Mook and the gun clicks empty, he says "You lucky bastard!" This was a reference to Snatch, another Jason Statham movie.
 * Anti-Hero - Chelios is a dick.
 * Asian Gal with White Guy: Throughout High Voltage Bai Ling's character (Ria) is determined to fulfill this trope after Chev accidentally saves her from a bad guy. Chev's lack of interest in her doesn't seem to matter.

"I'm gonna have to kick some black ass."
 * Ass Shove: at the beginning of Crank 2: High Voltage.
 * Auto Erotica
 * Back From the Dead: Chelios in the second movie. Several people openly comment on this.
 * Backup Twin: Venus in High Voltage.
 * Badass: Chev. Not surprising, since he's Jason Statham.
 * Bald of Awesome: Chev. Not surprising, since he's ... ah, you know.
 * Big Damn Heroes: At the end of the second movie,
 * Black Comedy: Occasionally crosses over into Dead Baby Comedy. A PERFECT example would be in the second movie, where an innocent bystander from the first movie gets therapy;
 * The second movie is entirely made out of this and intentionally offensive stereotypes.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: A scene in the first movie has Chev reading the on-screen subtitles. In the second movie, he
 * Bulletproof Human Shield: In Crank, Chev Chelios uses his friend's dead body as a shield.
 * Call Back: The first time Chev points his finger like a gun at someone's head and a bullethole appears, it had been planned out beforehand. When it happens again in the sequel, he stares at his hand with an expression that clearly says 'What the hell? It's happening on its own now?'
 * The Cameo:
 * Chester Bennington shows up a few times.
 * Ron Jeremy and a whole group of porn stars in the second movie. Made even funnier when you hear in an interview with Brian Taylor that they never intended for Ron Jeremy to be in the movie, he just found out about it and showed up.
 * Lloyd Kaufman
 * Maynard James Keenan
 * Geri Halliwell (formerly known as Ginger Spice).
 * John de Lancie
 * Career Killers: Chelios' job.
 * Cluster F-Bomb: FUCK YOU, CHELIOS! Even turns into a montage in the middle of the sequel.
 * Combat Pragmatist: Chev prefers to simply beat everyone to death if he isn't in direct possession of a gun.
 * He also takes pretty much every gun off of everyone he kills. Any time he kills someone with a better or just plain different gun, he picks it up and uses it to kill the next guy.
 * Country Matters: In the sequel, Chelios screams at a man: "MASSIVE HOMO CUNT!"
 * Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Venus. "You killed my brother, motherfucker. Prepare to die."
 * Determinator: Chelios is the living embodiment of determination. He not only displays new levels of badassery with absolutely every move he does, he does it while poison is slowly killing his body or when his heart has been taken out.
 * Disney Villain Death: Played with in the first film.
 * Dirty Old Man: Poon Dong.
 * Disposable Sex Worker: Played with in High Voltage: Chev (unintentionally) saves Ria from becoming one.
 * Played a bit more straight in the final battle:
 * A few strippers also die in the second action scene.
 * Doomed Protagonist:
 * Deus Sex Machina: In both movies, his problems can be solved momentarily by screwing or rubbing on little old ladies.
 * Eureka Moment: Early in the first movie, Chev remembers how his heart felt better when smashed the tv and sped in his car (raising his adrenaline).


 * Eve has one in the second movie, complete with a graphic of a lightbulb appearing next to her head.
 * Fun with Subtitles
 * Gorn
 * Groin Attack: Several.
 * Hand Cannon: The number of Desert Eagles used in High Voltage is close to insane.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: In-Universe example, one of the characters in the first movie notes that Chelios looks like "that guy in the Transporter movies."

"Statham: "I take it you're the faggot who's been hunting me all day?... (reads line) I'm sorry, the Ferret...""
 * Hilarious Outtakes: At the end of the second movie.

""You need me like Whitney Houston!""
 * Hilarity Ensues: While the first movie is (somewhat) sane, the second one is so ridiculously over the top that it qualifies as comedy gold.
 * Homage: The whole series is basically one long video game.
 * Humiliation Conga: While Chev is already a Butt Monkey for most of what he goes through, each movie tends to contain at least one segment where he has to stop being badass for awhile and just do some flat-out embarrassing things to stay alive.
 * Ironic Echo: "Experiencing a little twenty-twenty hindsight right about now, ain't ya?"
 * "It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It": His girlfriend wasn't exactly willing with the public sex at first... and promptly developed a fetish for it in the second movie.
 * It's Personal: Parodied with the transsexual's brother in the second movie.
 * Jerkass: Chev Chelios, in both movies - although occasional, fairly feeble attempts are made at portraying him as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, he seems by turns either genuinely uncaring or vaguely amused by much of the havoc he causes.
 * To make up for it, pretty much everyone he's up against also embodies this trope.
 * It's also thoroughly lampshaded in the second movie with a huge segment of "Fuck you, Chelios!" flashbacks going all the way back to his childhood, in which he's on a Maury-like show getting yelled at for being a little shit.
 * Jumping on a Grenade: One of the bad guys in the first movie uses his bodyguard to save himself from the blast. The bodyguard sees this as an honor, maybe because he didn't notice the grenade and probably thought his boss pushed him down to keep him from becoming a bullet sponge.
 * Kavorka Man: Chev's doctor is an old man with a hot girlfriend.
 * Knight in Shining Armor: High Voltage: Ria mistakes Chev as hers, says as much, and immediately developes a full-blown Bodyguard Crush on him.


 * The Last Dance
 * Living on Borrowed Time
 * Losing Your Head/:
 * Lost in Translation: The Mook with the shotgun stuck up his ass is supremely confused when Chev asks what happened to his "Strawberry tart".
 * Lyrical Dissonance: REO Speedwagon's "Keep On Loving You" is played in High Voltage as Chelios literally burns to a crisp.
 * MacGuffin: Johnny Vang's red cooler in High Voltage
 * Made of Iron: Chev Chelios, in both movies.
 * In the second movie, it is explicitly stated that his nigh-indestructability is the reason why various people are interested in
 * And the Chinese prostitute, who.
 * Man On Fire:
 * Memetic Badass: Chev appears to be one of these in-universe, to judge from the other characters' reactions to him. On the down side, that's exactly the reason why the Triads stole his heart in the first place.
 * MST3K Mantra: Invoked in-universe in the beginning of the second film. A news reporter (de Lancie) comments on the implausibility of someone falling from the sky randomly being "bullshit". His words.
 * No One Could Survive That: Arguably would probably also count.
 * Now It's My Turn: In the sequel - Chev's electric heart starts running out when a bunch of cops hogpile on him... then one of them brings out a stun gun.
 * One-Man Army: About 5 seconds after entering a whore house full of gangsters, every last one is tossed out a window or through a wall where a window isn't available.
 * One-Scene Wonder: David Carradine as Poon Dong.
 * Painting the Fourth Wall: The elevator scene near the end of the first movie.
 * Pet the Dog: Chev's behavior toward Eve, his girlfriend and arguably the doctor.
 * Phrase Catcher: "Fuck you, Chelios!"
 * Product Placement: Of all things, the heart. Chev's artificial heart is an actual thing, and they used the real name and company. They changed it up a bit for the movie, obviously (the real one doesn't have external batteries, but does have recharger ports), but the fact that it survives all the crap Chev puts it through and comes out whole at the end could be considered the ultimate (albeit heavily fictionalized) endorsement.
 * Rasputinian Death: Chelios... twice.
 * Rated "M" for Manly: As a review on Cracked puts it: "If you piled all the guns in the world on one side of a room and Crank on the other, Crank would still be the manliest thing in the room."
 * Refuge in Audacity: Mostly the second film.
 * Rule of Cool: Very, very little in either film makes any sense, or has any kind of genuine believability. Fortunately, it doesn't need any, either.
 * Sequel Hook: In the first movie, where, and in the second movie, where.
 * Shout-Out: There's a random giant rubber monster movie segment at one point in High Voltage.
 * The Chinese hooker in Crank 2 calls Chev "her Kevin Costner" and says she'll be "like Whitney Houston"
 * Sociopathic Hero
 * Tourettes Shitcock Syndrome: Averted in the second movie. Venus has "full body Tourettes", which causes him to go into full-body spasmodic convulsions, but actually swears significantly less than Chelios, who is just a jerk.
 * Unexplained Recovery: Chelios, in the second movie. One of the taglines is actually "He was dead... but he got better"
 * Unreliable Narrator: The creators mention in the commentary for the first film that everything that happens after Chev drinks the "plant shit" drug may not have actually happened, at least not the way the viewer sees it.
 * The Un-Reveal: "What kind of sick freak carries something like that around in a box?"
 * Vomit Indiscretion Shot
 * Why Won't You Die?
 * Willing Suspension of Disbelief: And you're going to need it for both movies.
 * Wouldn't Shoot a Girl: Chev has little problem beating the shit out of and possibly killing cops, but merely threatens the lone female cop to make her keep her distance while he's recharging/escaping. The only time he actually does injury to a female is completely by accident,.
 * Yellowface: David Carradine as Poon Dong.
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle: "This is not my fucking pumper!"