Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Dwight Yoakam. When a hit man is injected with a deadly, fast-acting drug by one of his rivals, he fights to keep his adrenaline up high enough to buy time to settle the score. As frenetically paced as an action-packed video game! 2006/color/87 min/R.

Action anti-hero Jason Statham is competing with himself to make the most relentless, non-stop action flick imaginable. In Crank, Statham stars as a hit man named Chev Chelios who's been poisoned by some Chinese toxin; the only way to stave it off is to keep his adrenalin flowing, which requires him to drive at top speeds through crowded traffic, start fights in bars, and run pell-mell down hospital corridors while wearing one of those humiliating smocks that tie in the back. In other words, Crank is high-end pop-trash, filled with many preposterous/ingenious stunts and over-the-top performances (Dwight Yoakam, Sling Blade, is downright droll as a doctor offering Chev assistance), marred by an unpleasant attitude towards women (Amy Smart, Outside Providence, will not look back on this as one of her signature roles). This is a movie for the audience who enjoyed Transporter and Transporter 2 but wanted Statham's perpetual scowl to become a kind of theatrical mask, a perpetual signifier of intensity that begs--nay, demands--that everything around it rise to a mutual level of absurdity. Fans of Luc Besson (Leon/The Professional, District 13) will find Crank to be simpatico. --Bret Fetzer