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:
Action Girl: Eve has a moment of this in the sequel.
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.
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.
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 gives a middle finger to the audience during the ending.
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?'
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.
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!"
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. Both Chelios and Verona fall out of a helicopter. Subverted for Verona, since Chelios snaps his neck in mid-fall. Subverted with Chelios, since he gets better in the second film.
Disposable Sex Worker: Played with in High Voltage: Chev (unintentionally) saves Ria from becoming one.
Played a bit more straight in the final battle: an army of prostitutes called by Ria and Venus gun down the various mooks, including a few hapless naked women and some of the prostitutes themselves.
A few strippers also die in the second action scene.
Statham: "I take it you're the faggot who's been hunting me all day?... (reads line) I'm sorry, the Ferret..."
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.
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 until we find out it doesn't actually hold Chelios' heart and instead has something so disturbing that Chev looks at Johnny and says sincerely, "I am shocked to my core. You've got some deep problems, motherfucker."
In the second movie, it is explicitly stated that his nigh-indestructability is the reason why various people are interested in his organs. More specifically, one very special one...
And the Chinese prostitute, who gets hit by a car and survives.
Man on Fire: Chev, at the end of the second movie.
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 (Verona) falling from the sky randomly being "bullshit". His words.
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.
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.
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."
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 Chelios opens his eyes after seemingly have died for the eleventieth time, and in the second movie, where he does it again.
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 Unreveal: "What kind of sick freak carries something like that around in a box?"
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, when he sets the Asian hooker on fire by hugging her while hallucinating... um, and on fire.
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