After the disaster that was Transporter 2, this movie was actually much better than I was expecting. Not to say that it was great, by any means, but a much better "mindless fun" movie than Transporter 2. For one thing, Crank doesn't even attempt to take place in the real world, so clearly impossible stunts and overtly stupid acts don't seem to matter as much. Crank is set in a bizarre video game world, where the opening credits are cribbed from Robotron, power-ups (in the form of ephedrine jolts) are located in various places around the game field, and Google Earth is used to visualize scene changes. It's one of those movies where the directors pull out every digital filter in the toolbox, but it's not quite as distracting here as in some other movies (like, say, Natural Born Killers or Domino).
So as long as things are kept moving along, we can just switch our minds off and grin at the inanity. And things do mostly move along here, with just a couple of short lags. Jason Statham seems to have settled into a basic character groove now, which should be good to carry him for a few more movies before he either comes up with something new or drops down into Straight-To-Video Land. I'm not sure the already planned sequel is a particularly good idea - unless they somehow can convince us that Chev got enough points to get an extra life. Three stars.
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