10 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, September 8, 2006 Statham tanks in goofy action romp A By Christina Choi Daily Arts Writer FjisREvliw i ad For the price of just one movie ticket, you too can witness the charm of Jason Statham ("Trans- porter 2") butchering a British accent. Lucky you. In "Crank," Statham plays Chev Chelios, a foulmouthed Los Ange- les hitman who awakens Crank one morning to find he's At the Showcase been injected and Quality 16 with the ter- Lions Gate rible "Beijing cocktail;' a poison so deadly that it turns fatal as soon as the victim's heart rate drops too low. Basically, it's like he swallowed the bomb on the bus in "Speed." Realizing that he has only one hour left to live, Chev uses his precious time to reaffirm his even more precious manhood, first by viciously bashing in his big-screen TV then going off on a delirious search for life-saving adrenaline - and, of course, bloodthirsty revenge. He invites the audience to expe- rience his pain. What follows is a nauseating blend of shaky first- person hand-held cameras, poorly edited scenes and enough shots of Statham's pasty rear to turn the film's namesake into a require- ment for its enjoyment. Yet while a little speed may shed light on the flimsy hospital gown Chev wears when bizarrely channeling scenes from "Titanic" ("I'm the king of the world!") atop the seat of a speeding motorcycle, the film constantly trips over its abundance of random setups. Inventive shots, such as one from inside a micro- wave, may fight briefly for artistry amid the mess, but their scarcity makes them entirely forgettable. Instead, for the most part "Crank" paints Chev as a crack addict's role model - constantly high, incapable of being arrested, and unconditionally adored by a beautiful girlfriend (Amy Smart, "Just Friends"). She may throw an ill-timed fit over forgetting to take her birth control imme- diately after witnessing Chev coolly murder multiple men. But she's a keeper, willing to get it on right in the middle of Chinatown while a bus filled with Asian schoolgirls appreciatively looks on. Of course. Yet even with her mindless role, Smart fairs far better than the film's other women. Found in the swanky rooftop apartment of Chev's former employers, these scantily clad ladies languish in round glass pods like prizes in a big gumball machine. Granted, "Crank" from the outset doesn't strive to be a cut- ting-edge drama worthy of post- box-office fame, and the lack of pretense is refreshing. The film lands squarely and happily within the action genre, where it's per- fectly OK to trade dialogue for gunfire and character development for greater onscreen nudity. But while the prerequisites of sex, drugs and violence are satis- fied, both the plot and Statham's character lack the hardcore style that saved Arnold Schwarzeneg- ger from being just another lowly cyborg. While Statham quickly navigates through a sea of blood spurts and fricasseed body parts, he's unable to turn Chev into anything more than a pissed-off adrenaline junkie searching for his next fix. Well, at least they went without any pain. NEW ELECTRIC' SLID-E NWDOCUMENTARY RETELLS THE GAS-FREE CAR'S DEMISE 4 By Imran Syed Daily Arts Writer The problem with a title like "Who Killed the Electric Car?" is that it's a question warranting an answer no one can quite stomach. As we hear of Who Killed skyrocketing gas prices the Electric and begin to see the Car? long-touted effects of At the State greenhouse emissions, Theater the electric car is, to Sony Pictures Classics the average person, the perfect solution. No more depending on foreign nations or drilling three miles below the Gulf of Mexico for oil; no more catastrophic mari- time spills, smog alerts or $80-a-barrel to feed an incessant addiction; just plug in the electric car, charge it up and go. You might think the electric car is tech- nology of the future. Inexplicably, it's already become technology of the past. "Who Killed the Electric Car?" follows the fall of the EVI, a revolutionary electric that General Motors introduced on a mys- teriously hesitant basis in 1996. Efficient, stylish and exciting to drive, the car did not require a drop of gasoline. Those lucky few who managed to lease it (Tom Hanks, Ted Danson and sadly Mel Gibson among them) loved it so much that they inquired about making a full purchase when their leases expired. But then they found out their sporty little coupes had been set up. GM didn't really care about weaning the nation off of gas vehicles; it simply introduced the EV1 to comply with the California Air Resource Board's requirements for small percent- ages of zero emission vehicles. By 2003 that requirement was dead, the victim of assassins acting on behalf of auto compa- nies, the oil industry and the Bush Admin- istration. The EVls were rounded up and crushed into litter at GM's private proving grounds in Arizona, the very spot where they had debuted a decade earlier. "Who Killed the Electric Car?" excels in compelling the audience by its clear, unforgiving portrayal of all we have to lose or have already lost. While the EV1 was certainly important in its own right, this isn't simply about the electric car. This is about our government failing to act in our best interests, catering instead to lobbyists. With the murder of the EV1 - and understand that it was murder, pure, con- niving and contrived - the film gets at the politically decrepit state of our soci- ety. We complain continuously about what is wrong (high gas prices) but are all too satisfied to have politicians just pretend to listen. They're no longer held accountable; they flash ethanol or hydrogen fuel cells before us and we pay no attention as they quietly squash the very 'improvements" they flaunt. Never mind that electrics were far more efficient, available and affordable than these other alternatives. It's a clas- sic case of divide and conquer - split up the environmentalist hippies into different camps and let them sing their kumbayas in their respective corners. If ever they were to unite in chorus, people might hear them, but that won't happen. On that note, though the film ultimately indicts the Bush Administration, auto com- panies, the oil industry and CARB, the real culprit has eluded us all once more. When a government does not act in the best inter- ests of its people, when car companies tell us what to buy rather than build efficient vehicles and when big oil doesn't simply lobby the government, but becomes a part of it, who is to blame? 4 340 112S.StateSt. MTh 11-9:00pm AnnArbor, M48104 Fat11- 0in3p 734.9943iii San 12-i:t0pm 25% OFF Any Purchase 30/ OFF Birthday Discount, M nt valid with ethe aft eeires t23M _ , I I Study hard. Play hard. Connect fast. 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