June 24, 2016

Double Trouble: Crank & Crank: High Voltage

If you haven't seen the Crank movies, you're missing out on the most wonderfully ludicrous action franchise committed to film. In the first Crank, Chev Chelios is poisoned and has to recruit his "doctor" (Dwight Yoakam) to help him stay alive long enough to kill the man responsible for poisoning him. Chev must keep his heart rate up, getting himself into more ramped up and impossible situations at every turn. The second Crank movie picks up where the last one ended (literally) but this time to stay alive, Chev has to keep a consistent charge in a battery pack that's keeping his heart beating, and of course, he gets into even more ludicrous situations while doing so. In addition to being as ridiculous as possible, these movies have pretty strong continuity (seeing as they happen congruently and in pretty real time), so it might surprise you to know that both movies co-star Efren Ramirez, even though his character in the first installment dies.


Crank: Kaylo (Efren Ramirez) is recruited by Chev to find people with information on the men responsible for poisoning him. Kaylo ends up being kidnapped by those men, who later kill him.


Crank: High Voltage: While on the look out for the men responsible for his new situation, Chev runs into Venus, who turns out to be Kaylo's twin brother. Chev explains to Venus that the men he's after were responsible for Kaylo's death, and Venus joins forces with him to avenge his brother.










Efren & Carlos Ramirez: Even though Efren's real life identical twin is an actor, Efren played his own twin in both of these movies. (Though it seems Carlos made uncredited appearances in both.)


We seriously love these movies: If you love over the top action flicks and you haven't seen these movies, put them at the top of your list like yesterday. Even giving away the plot points above, we didn't spoil a thing. In fact, I could tell you the end of Crank and it wouldn't spoil one second of High Voltage.




Bonus character-dies-and-twin-is-revealed-in-the-sequel movies: City Slicers & City Slickers 2. At the end of the first movie Curly (Jack Palance) dies, but Palance comes back in the sequel to play Curly's identical-but-before-unmentioned twin, Duke Washburn.

   

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