There are movies that politely ask you to suspend disbelief, and then there’s Crank, which kicks disbelief square in the fucking balls, steals its wallet, snorts whatever it finds inside, and tears ass down the freeway at 120 mph.
Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s 2006 action grenade remains one of the most gloriously irresponsible pieces of cinematic lunacy ever smuggled into multiplexes. The premise is beautifully stupid: hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) wakes up poisoned with something that will kill him if his adrenaline drops, meaning he has to keep his heart pounding while hunting down the bastard responsible. That’s it. That's the movie. No tortured mythology. No three-hour franchise-building bullshit. Chev has to stay cranked or he fucking dies. GO. And for 87 minutes, the movie barely stops long enough to wipe the blood off its shoes.
This is Statham before Hollywood completely figured out what the hell to do with Statham, and that uncertainty makes him dangerous. Chev isn't the polished super-assassin of later action franchises. He’s pissed off, sweaty, drugged, desperate, frequently hilarious, and operating with the decision-making skills of a rabid pit bull trapped inside a pinball machine. He runs. He fights. He steals motorcycles. He shocks himself. He swallows whatever pharmaceutical garbage might keep the ticker hammering. He turns Los Angeles into his personal demolition derby while Neveldine/Taylor chase him with cameras that seem equally hopped up on speed. The editing twitches. The camera dives through windows, bounces off pavement, crawls inside electronics, and generally behaves like the cinematographer just discovered Red Bull and cocaine simultaneously. Subtle? Fuck subtle. Crank wouldn't recognize subtlety if subtlety walked up and slapped it across the face.
And then there’s the sheer goddamn audacity of the thing. Crank is vulgar, juvenile, offensive, hyperviolent, aggressively tasteless, and completely uninterested in apologizing for any of it. That's precisely why the movie still feels alive twenty years later. Modern action movies can be so damn terrified of upsetting anybody that every rough edge gets focus-grouped into mush. Crank is basically nothing but rough edges. The infamous Chinatown sequence with Amy Smart's Eve remains an astonishing piece of public indecency played as escalating slapstick, while Dwight Yoakam's wonderfully weird Doc Miles keeps feeding Chev increasingly insane medical advice like he's troubleshooting a malfunctioning lawn mower. Every time you think the movie has reached maximum stupidity, Neveldine and Taylor grin, crack their knuckles, and somehow locate another gear marked FUCK IT. The result shouldn't work. Hell, by virtually every conventional storytelling metric, it probably doesn't work. But conventional storytelling can go sit quietly in another theater. We're busy here.
What really makes Crank endure, though, is that underneath all the screaming, gunfire, tits, profanity, smashed cars, pharmaceuticals, and Jason Statham looking permanently five seconds away from punching God, there's actual filmmaking intelligence powering the stupidity. Neveldine and Taylor understand exactly what they're making. This isn't incompetence masquerading as excess; the excess is the aesthetic. The movie is structured like the world's most psychotic video game speedrun, where every encounter exists to propel Chev into the next increasingly deranged set piece. Even Statham gets the joke. His stone-faced machismo becomes the punchline, and watching an actor who would eventually become one of modern action cinema's most reliable badasses willingly make himself look like an absolute fucking lunatic is half the fun. Jose Pablo Cantillo's Verona gives Chev something to chase, Amy Smart somehow provides a beating human heart amid the insanity, and the whole damn enterprise barrels toward a finale so wonderfully ridiculous that gravity itself eventually throws up its hands and says, "Fine. Whatever."
With Crank back in circulation through Lionsgate Limited, there's really only one question left: where the fuck is Crank: High Voltage? Neveldine and Taylor's even more deranged sequel has somehow never made the jump to 4K, and if Lionsgate is digging through the vault for titles deserving the Limited treatment, Chev Chelios' electrically charged second rampage ought to be sitting near the top of the damn pile. Give us Dolby Vision, give us Atmos, commission a matching SteelBook, and let's finish this beautifully fucked-up set.
Watching Crank again in 4K only reinforces how beautifully unhinged the damn thing remains. Lionsgate's 4K presentation brings Dolby Vision to Neveldine/Taylor's intentionally abrasive visual assault, while the Dolby Atmos track gives all that gunfire, screaming, roaring traffic, pounding music, and general urban destruction plenty of room to raise hell. This isn't some stately catalog restoration begging you to admire the grain structure while sipping brandy. It's Crank. It should look radioactive and sound like somebody drove a stolen Cadillac through your living room. Lionsgate Limited wrapping the existing 4K presentation in Doaly's appropriately kinetic SteelBook artwork feels like the right excuse to shove Chev Chelios back into the player and rediscover just how fucking nuts mainstream action cinema briefly allowed itself to become.
Crank is trash. Magnificent, caffeinated, middle-finger-raised, balls-out trash. And I mean that as the highest possible compliment. Twenty years later, the bastard still has a pulse—and it's beating like a motherfucker.
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code Steelbook Edition
Home Video Distributor: Lionsgate Limited
Available on Blu-ray - May 23, 2023
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: English, Spanish, English SDH
Video: Dolby Vision
Audio: Dolby Atmos
Discs: 4K Ultra HD; Blu-ray Disc; Two-disc set
Region Encoding: 4K region-free; blu-ray locked to Region A
Jason Statham has exactly one problem: if his heart slows down, he dies. Naturally, the solution involves drugs, violence, stolen cars, public sex, electrocution, pissed-off gangsters, and enough adrenaline to make a hummingbird's heart explode. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's Crank remains a gloriously tasteless middle finger to sensible action filmmaking, with Statham's Chev Chelios tearing through Los Angeles like a human hand grenade with the pin already pulled. Lionsgate Limited brings the insanity home in an appropriately kick-ass SteelBook featuring artwork by Doaly, pairing the film's balls-to-the-wall 4K Dolby Vision presentation with a room-punishing Dolby Atmos soundtrack. Loud, vulgar, ridiculous, and completely fucking irresistible—Crank doesn't ask you to turn off your brain. It grabs the damn thing, throws it through a windshield, and floors the accelerator.
VIDEO
Crank comes screaming onto 4K in its original 2.35:1 widescreen presentation with Dolby Vision, and anyone expecting a pristine, traditionally "cinematic" image might wonder what the hell happened. That's the point. This movie was born ugly—beautifully, intentionally ugly. Neveldine/Taylor shot the thing with an aggressive digital aesthetic loaded with blown-out highlights, sickly colors, crushed shadows, smeared movement, harsh contrast, and cameras seemingly strapped to anything that moved.
The 4K presentation doesn't magically turn Crank into Lawrence of Arabia; instead, Dolby Vision gives its deliberately abused photography more punch and stability. Colors are radioactive, blacks generally dig deep, facial textures can be surprisingly revealing when the photography permits it, and the increased resolution exposes plenty of grime across Los Angeles. It's not reference-grade eye candy in the conventional sense. It's reference-grade Crank—sweaty, nasty, oversaturated, twitchy, and looking exactly like the cinematic heart attack it was designed to be. Video: 4/5. Lionsgate confirms a 100GB UHD disc with a 2.35:1 Dolby Vision presentation.
AUDIO
Now this motherfucker is where you crank the volume. Lionsgate's English Dolby Atmos track takes the movie's already obnoxious sonic personality and lets it loose across the room. Engines roar, guns crack, bodies slam into shit, helicopters tear overhead, phones ring, crowds swarm, and the soundtrack pounds away with the subtlety of a jackhammer against your skull.
The Atmos mix makes terrific use of the soundstage without losing the dialogue beneath the madness; Statham's growling threats remain planted up front while the surrounds constantly spit environmental noise around the listening position. Bass has real muscle when the action demands it, and the entire presentation maintains the frantic forward momentum of the movie.
Crank should never sound polite. Thankfully, it doesn't. Audio: 4.5/5. The UHD carries English Dolby Atmos; Lionsgate also lists English and Spanish subtitles plus English SDH. The included Blu-ray uses English 5.1 Dolby Digital EX.
Supplements:
Commentary:
- None
Special Features:
This is where expectations need to be kept in check. Lionsgate Limited hasn't cooked up a giant new retrospective celebrating Chev Chelios's magnificent disregard for cardiovascular health. Instead, the two-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital SteelBook carries over the established making-of material, with two features specifically identified as 4K-only.
- Shooting Crank – A behind-the-scenes examination of the movie's appropriately bonkers production and visual approach.
- The Stunts of Crank – A look at the physical mayhem and stunt work responsible for making Chev's very bad day hurt so damn good.
- Pushing Crank – More behind-the-scenes material digging into the filmmakers' anything-goes approach to the production.
- Crank @ Comic-Con – 4K Only – Neveldine/Taylor and company take the madness to Comic-Con.
- More Stories from Crank – 4K Only – Additional production stories and recollections exclusive to the UHD disc in this set.
The extras aren't going to bury you under hours of newly produced material, but what's here fits the movie, and the real collectible draw is that Doaly SteelBook, which looks appropriately wired out of its fucking mind. The package contains two discs—4K UHD and Region-A Blu-ray—plus a U.S. digital copy; the UHD itself is region-free. As a physical-media package, it's a hell of a lot more fun than another boring black plastic case.
Just don't mistake it for a brand-new restoration or newly loaded 2026 special edition: Lionsgate Limited currently categorizes these copies as Warehouse Finds, notes that they're final sale, and says they're from the last available stock and will be out of print once sold.
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