FILM REVIEW OF ''LIVE BY NIGHT" (2017)

Two-time Oscar-winning writer & director Ben Affleck of “Good Will Hunting” and “Argo” has helmed an above-average, old-fashioned, Prohibition Era gangster epic “Live by Night” (***1/2 OUT OF ****) with himself as star that bears greater resemblance to Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984) with Robert De Niro than Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” (1972) with Marlon Brando.  At the same time, Affleck has tampered with the violent, empire-building gangster film formula.  Mind you, “Live by Night” isn’t strictly traditional in its depiction of gangsters.  Instead of machine gun massacres in the urban canyons of a northern metropolis, “Live by Night” stages machine gun massacres at luxury resort hotels amid the scenic splendor of rural southern Florida.  Like the antihero that Affleck portrays with considerable style, charm, and restraint, “Live by Night” doesn’t abide by all gangster movie rules, particularly the tragic ending.  Nevertheless, crime still doesn’t pay for the protagonist.  As in most gangster movies, the mobsters count on avarice, treachery, blackmail, and betrayal to achieve their infamy.  Affleck’s armed and dangerous anti-hero, however, displays neither the aggressive pugnacity of Edward G. Robinson in “Little Caesar” (1931) nor does he behave like James Cagney’s trigger-happy hoodlum in “The Public Enemy” (1931.)  Instead, he imitates Robert De Niro’s Jewish gangster David 'Noodles' Aaronson in the Leone masterpiece.  Affleck’s Irish-American hooligan Joe Coughlin knows when to say ‘no’ and abandon the business before his rivals riddle him with bullets to kingdom come.  My only complaint—and it constitutes more of a quibble—is the 2 hours plus running time. This chronicle about a self-proclaimed ‘outlaw’ who ascends from the ranks of blue-collar, unaffiliated thieves and emerges as the white-collar chieftain of a mob-supervised, multi-million-dollar enterprise doesn’t exactly lunge off the screen.  Affleck allows things to develop gradually and steeps the logistics of crime in atmosphere galore as well as memorable characters.  Strong villains make the best movies with their notorious skullduggery.  Faithfully adapting the second novel in Dennis Lahane’s Coughlin series, Affleck tangles with three unforgettable dastards. 

The son of an incorruptible Boston Police Deputy Superintendent, Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck of “The Town”) refuses to accommodate his father, Thomas Coughlin (Brendan Gleeson of “Gangs of New York”), when it comes to being a law-abiding citizen.  Joe survived the devastating trench warfare of World War I in France as a U.S. Marine while men around him perished by the dozens on the battlefield.  He has come home to Boston with nothing but utter contempt for the politicians who sold out the troops at the international treaty negotiation.  Joe vows never to take orders again.  Things don’t pan out exactly as our hero had anticipated.  Initially, Joe and two masked accomplices knock over an illegal, high-stakes poker game with a paid-off insider, Emma Gould (Sienna Miller of “American Sniper”), who knows her way around Boston.  Eventually, one of Boston’s most notorious gangsters, Albert White (Robert Glenister of “Safe Conduct”), learns that Joe has been raiding his venues.  White insists that our protagonist join his gang and use his skills for something more appropriate to his talents.  Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the jealous White, Joe has been sneaking around behind White’s back with his mistress Emma.  Mafia crime boss Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone of “Angel with a Gun”) summons Joe and asks him to kill White.  Adamantly, Joe refuses to attach himself to the Italians.  Maso threatens to inform on Joe if he doesn’t eliminate White. 

Meantime, Joe plans a big bank robbery so Emma and he can flee to California with some capital. The robbery goes sideways.  Three policemen die trying to nab Joe and his accomplices.  Eventually, White catches up with Joe after Emma betrays him.  White brutally beats Joe up.  He is poised to finish him off when Thomas Coughlin rolls up with the Boston Police in tow.  Thomas arrests Joe, but he convinces a harsh judge prosecute his son on lesser charges since Joe’s accomplices killed the cops.  Furthermore, Thomas informs Joe that Emma died when her getaway car plunged into the river.  Joe sweats out forty months behind bars in the Charlestown State Prison.  After his release, Joe offers to work for the Pescatore family, and Maso dispatches him to Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, to handle their rum-running enterprise.  No sooner has Joe set up shop than the evil White dispatches not only his own henchmen but also hooded KKK gunmen to make life miserable for our hero.  Joe creates an enormously profitable operation for Maso.  Nevertheless, he doesn’t abandon his yearning to wreck vengeance on White for what he did not only to him but also Emma.

“Foxcatcher” production designer Jess Gonchor, “Tree of Life” costume designer Jacqueline West, and “Forrest Gump” set decorator Nancy Haigh has painstakingly recreated both the glory and the squalor of the Prohibition Era.  The gangsters attire themselves lavishly in posh suits with fedora-style hats, while their dames doll themselves up with equal magnificence.  The gangsters cruise around in vintage cars of the period, and their henchmen wield that indispensable weapon of the day: the .45-caliber, Thompson submachine gun with drum magazines rather than stick magazines.  Indeed, Affleck has preserved virtually all the elements of the classic gangster movie during the Depression about illegal rum-runners.  After fate cheats Joe with Emma’s sudden death, he gets involved romantically with a gorgeous Cuban lady, Graciela Suarez (Zoe Saldana of “Star Trek Beyond”), who participates in the business of selling illegal rum with her brother.  “Live by Night” doesn’t dwell only on the gangsters and their illicit business, but also in the lives of the supporting characters, particularly a young woman (Elle Fanning) who suffered from the adversity of heroin addiction and later becomes an evangelist to protest vice of any kind.  The cast is superb, and nobody gives a bad performance.  Despite its leisurely, slow-burn pace, “Live by Night” manages to present the exploits of gangsters in a setting and manner that few gangster movies have, especially with its lukewarm finale.

FILM REVIEW OF ''LUCY" (2014)

You'll love "Lucy."  French filmmaker Luc Besson, who helmed "Le Femme Nikita," "Angel-A," and "Colombiana," takes the feminist-oriented action thriller genre to the next level.  This outlandish but entertaining hokum chronicles the mutation of a defenseless damsel-in-distress into an invincible dame with heretofore unimagined mental powers.  Our provocative protagonist comes to rely more on her brains than her biology.  Comparably, "Lucy" reminded me a little of the 2004 foreign movie "Maria Full of Grace."  Columbian drug traffickers planted cocaine in the stomach of a teenage girl in "Maria Full of Grace" and used her to smuggle their smack into the United States. Happily, this savvy babe turned the tables on her captors!  Similarly, our heroine in "Lucy" finds a pouch of exotic synthetic drugs sew into her tummy and given a plane ticket for America.  The last thing that her savage, cold-blooded captors are prepared for is her improbable reprisal.  Lucy turns the tables on them in ways that not even she could have thought before she encountered these merciless hooligans.  Indeed, actress Scarlett Johansson would be the whole show if Morgan Freeman weren't lecturing in cutaway shots as a prestigious physician, Professor Samuel Norman, whose ranks as the foremost expert on gray matter.  When Professor Norman isn't delivering lectures to enthralled audiences about the percentage of use that humans derive from their noodles, Besson treats us to illuminating Animal Planet excerpts of jungle animals that punctuate the running battle Lucy carries on with the heavily-armed Asian drug smugglers.  Korean actor Choi Min-shik, who starred in director Chan-wook Park's first version of the revenge thriller "Oldboy" (2003), makes a memorable villain named Mr. Jang.  You will love to hate Mr. Jang.  Furthermore, Mr. Jang's immaculately tailored henchmen are as homicidal as he is until he meets our feminist heroine after she experiences a massive change in her attitude.  Interestingly enough, before she made "Lucy," Scarlett Johansson appeared in "Under the Skin," a 2013 sci-fi thriller about an alien who masquerades as a human to prey on lonely men in Scotland.  For the record, Besson had cast Angelina Jolie as Lucy, but Jolie had to drop out, so Johansson stepped into the role.

The first time we see Lucy (Scarlett Johansson of "The Avengers"), she is arguing with her scummy boyfriend, Richard (Pilou Asbæk of "The Whistleblower"), clad in a straw cowboy-hat and red sunglasses in front of a fashionable, high-rise motel in Taiwan. Richard is struggling to convince Lucy to deliver a sleek briefcase to a motel guest named Mr. Jang.  Richard insists that he cannot personally hand the briefcase over to Mr. Jang.  He says that he has seen the man too many times.  Lucy refuses to deliver the briefcase.  She asks Richard about the contents of the briefcase.  As it turns out, Richard doesn't have a clue about what is in the briefcase.  Their entire argument sounds like something that Quentin Tarantino's characters argued about in "Pulp Fiction."  Everything in the seminal crime thriller "Pulp Fiction" turned on the mysterious contents of a cryptic briefcase.  Just as Lucy is about to walk away from Richard, this reprobate of a boyfriend handcuffs the brief case to her wrist so she cannot get it off. Eventually, Lucy relents and enters the motel while Richard watches her with great anticipation.  Suffice to say, things go downhill like an avalanche for both Richard and our heroine.  The action sequences in "Lucy" are breathtaking, especially the predictable but exciting car chase through Paris with Lucy at the wheel of a police car.  Besson charts the action according to the percentage of brain power that our heroine is able to harness until fadeout when she concludes her incredible metamorphosis.  During this haywire ride, Parisian detective Pierre Del Rio (Amr Waked of “Syriana”) sees things that he never thought possible.

Initially, "Lucy" unfolds as a standard-issue, dark-themed, revenge thriller in the vein of something notorious horror maestro Eli Roth of "Hostel" fame would perpetrate.  About half-way through its lean, mean 90 minutes, this nimble Universal Pictures release changes our protagonist from a Shanghaied schoolgirl into a pistol-packing mother who doesn't need a guy to save her bacon.  She becomes the equivalent of Liam Neeson in the "Taken" thrillers and then she even surpasses him!  She doesn't even have to rely on guns.  Earlier, the fiendish villains rounded up not only poor Lucy but also three other guys and sewed a kilo pouch of strange blue crystals called CPH4 into their intestines. Basically, CPH4 amounts to the equivalent of stuff that pregnant moms produce to cultivate their fetuses.  Somebody utters ominously enough about the substance: ""For a baby, it packs the power of an atomic bomb."" Our ingenious heroine manages to escape the clutches of the bad guys, and she alerts the authorities about herself as well as the other mules.  Unfortunately, the police are in no way prepared for the commitment that the criminals have for their product.  They will kill anybody who comes between them and their junk.  As the bullets fly, the bodies whether innocent bystanders or gunmen stack up in piles.  These villains are armed with more than just fully automatic weapons. Before the dust settles, however, Besson's crime thriller transforms into a mind-boggling science fiction actioneer reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."  Literally, the heroine becomes the equivalent of the monolith in the Kubrick film.  Indeed, the ending is a mind blower in itself, but you may feel cheated by this ending.  In another sense, the ending of “Lucy” is reminiscent too of the wrap up to “Star Trek: the Motion Picture,” where a female android mated with a human to take mankind farther into the future than humanity had ever gone!  Nevertheless, nothing that you have seen this summer will prepare you for “Lucy” and its supercharged little saga.

A FILM REVIEW OF ''GANGSTER SQUAD" (2013)

Most movies give you a chance to get comfortable with their narratives before they hit you with the hard stuff.  “Zombieland” director Rueben Fleischer’s profane, bullet-riddled, urban crime thriller “Gangster Squad” (*** OUT OF ****) cherishes no such illusions.  Early into the action, the arch villain of Angel City—real-life hoodlum legend Mickey Cohen—threads chains around the rear bumpers of two automobiles with an angry out-of-town mobster entangled in a hammock of chains between the cars.  Native Americans saved this ghastly fate for only the most repugnant whites in old movie westerns, except with horses rather than cars.  After a brief conversation, Cohen orders the cars to careen off in different directions.  An aerial long shot depicts the poor dastard as his body bursts apart in the middle.  Indeed, “Gangster Squad” isn’t for everybody.  This suspenseful, often violent, but thoroughly melodramatic law and order epic recounts how an undercover unit of Los Angeles cops fought fire with fire in their war on crime.  They destroyed Cohen’s dreams of turning California into his own private criminal empire.  Movies like “Gangster Squad” used to be the bread and butter for Warner Brothers.  The landmark Burbank studio produced the earliest and most controversial gangster thrillers in the 1930s with the three most memorable stars: James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart.

Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Parker (a beefy Nick Nolte of “48 HRS”) summons World War II veteran, Sergeant John O’Mara (Josh Brolin of “Jonah Hex”), because he needs somebody fearless enough to tackle a special assignment.  Lately, Jewish crime figure Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn of “Bad Boys”) has been creating chaos in the City of Angels.  Not only does he own a respected judge, but he has also been cheating on his mobster cronies both in Chicago as well as Los Angeles.  The Chicago mob isn’t happy with Mickey’s behavior.  The King of the Sunset Strip refuses to bow and scrape to the Windy City hoodlums.  He has nothing but contempt for local crime boss Jack Dragna (Jon Polito of “The Big Lebowski”) and orders hits on his life.  At one point, a shoeshine kid dies in an attempt on Dragna’s life.  Cohen has established himself as a warlord, and he refuses to share and share alike with the mob.  Incidentally, for the sake of armchair movie historians, “Gangster Squad” takes place after the demise of Benjamin Siegel, a.k.a. “Bugsy” (1991) with Warren Beatty as the notorious gangster who forged Las Vegas into the gambling capital of America.  At one time, Mickey Cohen worked for Siegel as a henchman.  Two bullets to the head scrapped Siegel’s criminal career in 1947.  “Gangster Squad” opens in 1949 during the rising tensions of the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.  

Essentially, Chief Parker asks O’Mara to assemble a unit to harass Cohen.  "Don't make arrests," Parker grumbles. "This is occupied territory. Wage guerrilla warfare." O’Mara forms a rainbow-colored “A-Team” consisting of African-American Officer Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie of “Real Steel”), older white cop, Officer Max Kennard (Robert Patrick of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”), his Hispanic partner, Officer Navidad Ramirez (Michael Peña of “End of Watch”), Officer Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi of “Ted”), and eventually Sergeant Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling of “Drive”).  One of the first things that they do is plant a bug in Cohen’s house so they can monitor him.  Methodically, these guys shoot up Cohen’s bars, casinos, and disrupt his narcotics traffic.  Wooters takes an interest in Cohen’s girlfriend, Grace Faraday (Emma Stone of “Easy A”), who is supposed to be teaching Mickey etiquette.  True events "inspired" “Gangster Squad,” and this means that Hollywood has taken dramatic license with history.  Actually, the movie is based loosely on Paul Lieberman’s book.  As far as I know, our tall, rugged hero didn’t go toe-to-toe with the considerably shorter Cohen in a public place and beat him to a bloody pulp.  Of course, movies have to be both heroic and confrontational, and "Gangster Squad" possesses both of these attributes. 

This obstreperous, 110-minute, R-rated, shoot’em up doesn’t flinch when it comes to episodes of violence.  Despite the recent bloodbaths both in movie theaters and elementary schools, this standard-issue, old school Warner Brothers release embraces wholesale violence with relish.  Fleischer features fashionable thugs armed with machine guns strafing anybody in sight, including poor white shoeshine boys.  Fleischer stages the action with considerable finesse, and he relies on a charismatic cast to deliver a synthesis of “The Untouchables” with Kevin Costner and “L.A. Confidential” with Russell Crowe.  Despite a plethora of action, largely frontal assault firefights on gritty city streets with .45 caliber Thompson submachine guns, “Gangster Squad” suffers from halfheartedly etched characters, a contrived screenplay by former LAPD homicide investigator and novelist Will Beall, and a numbing sense of predictability.  You can guess what is going to happen before it does, but everybody looks good doing it.  Nevertheless, genre fans should appreciate the studious lengths that the filmmakers have taken to recreate Los Angeles in the late 1940s.  Some of the action was lensed on genuine L.A. locations and enhances the authenticity of the action. Flinty-eyed Josh Brolin makes a sturdy hero, while Ryan Gosling channels Humphrey Bogart.  Sadly, Emma Stone lingerfs on the periphery as the love interest who eventually figures in the demise of Sean Penn’s Mickey Cohen. Penn chews the scenery as Cohen.  No doubt he watched both "Scarface" and "The Untouchables." Altogether, “Gangster Squad” qualifies as a good actioneer, with good performances, and good cinematography.

FILM REVIEW OF ''PUBLIC ENEMIES'' (2009)

“Miami Vice” creator Michael Mann recreates the Golden Age of Bank Robbery during the Great Depression in 1933 with his latest thriller “Public Enemies” (**** out of ****) and gangsters riddle the screen with gunfire galore. This depiction of the rise to prominence of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the demise of John Dillinger is based on bestseller author Bryan Burrough’s non-fiction book. “Pirates of the Caribbean” superstar Johnny Depp is cast against type as Dillinger, the sympathetic Robin Hood style desperado who acquired notoriety as ‘Public Enemy Number One.’ “Batman Begins” sensation Christian Bale impersonates the soft-spoken FBI Special Agent Melvin Purvis who brought Dillinger down. Although they drive vintage automobiles, blast away with vintage Thompson .45 caliber submachine guns, and wear vintage apparel, the characters in “Public Enemies” prove to be just as enthralling as any of Mann’s characters in his contemporary movies. Unfortunately, Mann doesn't always hit the bullseye for historical accuracy. Many of the events are reversed. For example, Pretty Boy Floyd died after John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis did not shoot him with a high-powered rifle. Similarly, Baby Face Nelson did not died before John Dillinger, but he perished long afterward. Moviegoers will cherish historical accuracy are in for several more surprises, but then "Public Enemie" is just a movie. Suffice to say, anybody who has read anything about Dillinger will not be surprised at anything that happens in this biographical epic.

“Public Enemies” opens with an interesting shoot-out at the Indiana State Penitentiary with a manacled John Dillinger getting escorted into the grim looking prison. This is the first of several surprises that occur for people who don’t know much about ‘Johnny’ Dillinger. Afterward, Dillinger and his gang arrive in East Chicago where they have bribed the local constabulary to ignore them. They also receive some favors from the local bookmakers that operate a coast-to-coast wire service link-up that relates to gambling on horse races. Mann shows Dillinger robbing banks and playing ‘spin the dial’ with bank presidents. Dillinger has men stationed out in front of the banks as inconspicuous sentinels with weapons concealed under their coats. Dillinger’s closest associate Red (Jason Clarke of “Death Race”) keeps the stopwatch running and knows when to wheel up to the front of the bank. Dillinger doesn’t take money from any of the common folk in the bank. He steals only from the banks and then he takes hostages for a ride with him to ensure that the local authorities don’t open fire on him when his gang cruises out of town.

All of this publicity aggravates FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Bill Crudup of “Watchmen” in an awesome look-alike performance) and he assigns Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale of “Terminator: Salvation”) to manage the Chicago Office with orders to capture Dillinger. Purvis’ shooting of legendary bank robber Charles ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd (Channing Tatum of “Step Up”) in an orchard is what brought him to J. Edgar’s attention. Purvis doesn’t take long to realize that Hoover’s smart young men aren’t adequate for the task, and he requests help from the Dallas FBI Office. Several tough-looking, no-nonsense customers show up in Chicago who look like they were born with badges. Charles Winstead (Stephen Lang of “Tombstone”) and his cohorts stand out from the young, buttoned down types that surround Purvis. The FBI relies on telephone wiretaps and scientific analysis to monitor the Dillinger gang. When they cannot catch the gangsters squawking on the phone, they resort to more brutal methods, such as delaying medical treatment to a wounded bank robber to learn the whereabouts of the gangsters.

Dillinger picks up coat check girl Evelyn ‘Billie’ Frechette (Oscar winning Parisian actress Marion Cotillard of "La Vie en Rose") and cannot get her out of his system even when she walks off and leaves him after their initial encounter. Dillinger pledges himself to her, but she warns him that she doesn’t want to watch him die. Things take a turn for the couple when Dillinger is captured in Tucson, Arizona, as Frechette and he are about to take a bath together and the authorities fly him back to Indiana. Dillinger’s escape from Indiana is a part of criminal history. He wielded a fake wooden gun and bluffed his way out of jail. Later, he hooks up with Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham of “Gangs of New York”) to knock over a ripe bank in Sioux Falls with $800-thousand in its vault. Everything backfires on Dillinger and Nelson. They lug off barely $30-grand and then Purvis and his men surround the inn where the gang has taken refuge and a major firefight erupts with several gangsters dying in a blaze of gunfire.

Johnny Depp bears a closer resemblance to John Dillinger than Christian Bale does to Melvin Purvis. Bale is actually taller than Purvis. Dillinger was idolized by many during the Depression and he strove to stay in the limelight so that the common people would harbor him when he was on the lam. According to Mann’s version of history, Dillinger fell not only because of the persistence of Melvin Purvis and the FBI, but also because Dillinger brought too much heat onto his fellow criminals in the coast-to-coast racing rackets after Congress passed legislation against interstate crime. The cast is first-rate throughout “Public Enemies.” Mind you, “Public Enemies” doesn’t lionize Dillinger to the degree that director Arthur Penn did for Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in “Bonnie & Clyde,” but we get glimpses of Dillinger’s celebrity status when the Feds fly him back to Indiana.

“Public Enemies” ranks as the best gangster picture since Brian de Palma’s “The Untouchables.” The real curiosity is the R-rating that “Public Enemies” drew when it doesn’t contain half as much violence and gore as the most recent “Punisher” actioneer. The shoot-outs are noisy but relatively bloodless, though there is an interrogation scene where a detective roughs up a woman. Incidentally, many of the scenes were lensed on the actual locations where this story transpired.

FILM REVIEW OF ''CRANK'' (2006)

Freshmen writer-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s helter-skelter cartoonish actioneer “Crank” (***1/2 out of ****)qualifies as a brutal, violent, live-action, R-rated equivalent of the Energizer bunny battery commercial with agile “Transporter” star Jason Statham displaying amazing resilience as he rants and raves across L.A. on a mission of vengeance to liquidate the villains that are trying to dispatch him. Neveldine and Taylor have penned and lensed an audaciously original, first-person style, shooter video game melodrama for the attention deficit generation. “Crank” will literally nail you to your seat with its runaway plot that updates the venerable Edmund O’Brien death-by-poisoning thriller “D.O.A.” (1950) with a nod to Jan De Bont’s “Speed” (1994) where a bus wired to blow up will remain intact as long as the driver doesn’t slow down. Nevertheless, despite its homages, “Crank” amounts to a wholly unusual exercise in ramped-up, Dutch-tilt camera angles, enlivened considerably by its maniacal meth-head editing, Atari-video game graphics, Google map search inserts, and a gallery of truly warped minority characters. From the first frame to the last, Neveldine and Taylor ignore gravity and accelerate this epic into gear-grinding, overdrive with gleeful abandon.

A free-lance professional hitman, Chev Chelios, intends to quit the paid assassin gig so he can live a peaceful life with his girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart of TV’s “Smith”) who thinks that he earns his living as a video game programmer. Sadly, Chev realizes to his chagrin that he has picked the wrong day to pursue the straight and narrow. Our agile antihero awakens to discover that a vile Asian mobster has injected him with a lethal dose of synthetic ‘sci-fi’ Chinese poison. Indeed, Chev watches with incredulity on his big-screen television a DVD that nefarious Ricky Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo of “Shackles”) made for him that shows the dastard administering a hypo of the deadly toxin to him in his bedroom the previous evening. Chev brought this all on himself because he iced an Asian mobster Don Kim (Keone Young of “Dude, Where’s My Car”), but the surprise is that Chev didn’t whack Kim. Nevertheless, Ricky boasts that Chev has no more than an hour to live.

Talk about suspense! Talk about cornering the hero in a cul-de-sac! “Crank” puts our protagonist into a death-defying tight spot like no other movie has dared in a long time! After he listens to sadistic Ricky Verona issue his death sentence, Chev destroys his television in a fit of rage and leaves a message for his disreputable doctor, Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam of “Sling Blade”), to call him back for an hour elapses. Chev goes on a rampage for the remainder of the film’s testosterone-laced 88 minutes that provides a surplus of momentum and raunchy merriment for those willing to suspend their disbelief to enjoy the far-fetched frantics in store for them.

No sooner does Chev discover his predicament than he hits the road in search of Ricky. He calls his transvestite friend Kaylo (Efren Ramirez of “Napoleon Dynamite”) to put the word on the street that he is looking for Ricky. Next he storms in to see an African-American gangsta, Orlando (Reno Wilson of “Fallen”), who he believes is associated with the infamous Ricky, only to learn that Orlando is looking for Ricky himself to collect $7, 500 that the Asian owes him. Chev snorts some blow from Orlando and tears off in his car. At the Las Vegas airport, Doc Miles rings Chev up and listens to his description of the poison: “The flow of adrenalin is what’s keeping you alive,” Miles explains. “You’ve got to keep moving, Chevy,” he adds. “If I’m right, they gave you the Beijing cocktail.” Miles continues with his diagnosis. “It works on the adrenal gland, blocks its receptors. The only thing you can do to slow it down at all is to keep the flow of adrenaline constant. Meaning, if you stop, you die.” During this vital expository passage, Neveldine and Taylor don’t slow down the action. Instead, the entire conversation occurs while the L.A.P.D. chases Chevy who crashes into a shopping mall to elude them and smashes through its with reckless abandon until he slams into the escalator and bails out for a cab outside the complex. As cops swarm the mall, Chev rides off in the cab, plotting his next move. He gets the cabbie to stop at a convenience store where he pilfers a supply of energy boosting, over-the-counter medications and chugs a Red Bull.

Chev takes a plunge with another gangster, his boss Carlito (Carlos Sanz of “Backdraft”) who operates a West Coast crime syndicate, in his penthouse swimming pool and plies him with questions about Ricky Verona. “There is no antidote,” Carlito gives Chev the bad news. “Honestly, you should be dead already. It’s a miracle.” Carlito laments Chev’s hit on Don Kim. “The heat from Hong Kong has been more than we anticipated.” An unhappy Chev stomps away, commandeers the cab from the driver and receives another phone call from Doc Miles. Miles explains that the Beijing cocktail “. . . is cutting off your adrenaline. Excitement, fear, and danger, it causes you body to manufacture chemicals called ephedrine. Now, what these guys have done is introduce an inhibitor to his your system. Dude, your only chance is to massively increase the level of ephedrine in your body to force out the inhibitors.”

The funniest scene follows with our anti-hero terrorizing a hospital for anything to keep his heart pumping at ninety to nothing. Initially, a pharmacist won’t give Chev any epinephrine and alerts hospital security. While this is transpiring a bystander informs him to that nasal spray, which contains epinephrine will "tweak” him. Security pursues Chev through the hospital. He changes into a hospital gown and at gun point forces an EMT to jolt him with a defibrillator. Eventually, Chev kills Ricky’s brother by chopping off the thug’s fist with a meat cleaver and then using the guy’s own gun, still encased in his fist to blow his head to smithereens like a burst watermelon. Now, Chev has to keep his girlfriend Eve out of harm’s way and kill Ricky. He catches up with her about forty minutes into the action and confides to her in a Chinese restaurant that he wants to quit the business so he can be with her. He explains that he was supposed to kill the Triad's number one man, Don Kim, but he let Kim live as long as Kim cleared out of L.A. for 48 hours. At first, Eve refuses to believe him. She walks out on him and he follows her into a public place and booty bangs her in front of a crowd of on-lookers. Half-way into sex with Eve, Chev receives a phone call from Kaylo. Kaylo has found Ricky Verona and Chev pulls out of Eve and heads off to join Kaylo. Predictably, Eve is embarrassed when she realizes the spectacle that she presented to the scores of bystanders.

Chev catches a ride in another cab with yet another ethnic type and tastes some crazy stuff that is supposed to make him like the devil. When he arrives at the rendezvous to take out Verona, Chev gets a queasy feeling. Instead of riding the elevator up to the third floor, he sneaks up to the roof, catches one of Don Carlos Carlito's thugs and throws him off the building. Chev learns that Don Carlos has killed Keylo, strangling and suffocating him simultaneously, and Don Carlos' henchmen advise Chev to find a quiet dark place and die. They will deal with Ricky Verona, but for the time being Chev has become such a media figure with his antics, especially running around in a hospital gown with a steel hard-on that Carlito simply wants him to disappear. About that time, Eve walks into the building and Chev opens up on the Mexicans, blasting away at them while he grabs Eve and they make their escape. After they clear the building, Eve explains that she had to find out if Chev had told the truth about being a hit man.

Doc Miles equips Chev with an insulin pump to feed his body the ephedrine and he goes to visit Don Carlos and finds Ricky Verona with him. Don Carlos prepares to give Chev another injection when out of nowhere appears Don Kim and his goon squad. Another gunfight erupts. Ricky jumps onto Don Carlos' helicopter, but Chev leaps on board, too. Over Los Angeles the slug it out in the chopper. Ricky and Chev topple out of the helicopter and "Crank" concludes with Chev's falling body.

“Crank” amounts to the most jacked-up joyride of all cinematic joyrides. Jason Statham was born to play Chev Chelios and Amy Smart is ideal as his dumb, blond girlfriend. Hust when you think that the plot is set in concrete, something different happens and changes everything. “Crank” features a plethora of bloody violence, profane language (as many as 115 f-words), low-life sexuality, and rampant drug abuse. Virtually the entire cast reprised their roles in the superior sequel.