Crank 2: High Voltage Gets Cast Members, Starts Shooting In One Week

Posted by Kevin Kelly (kevinkelly@filmschoolrejects.com) on April 21, 2008

The hyperdrive-activated, adrenaline fueled, crack-powered, seizure-inducing Crank has finally started casting for the sequel Crank 2: High Voltage, and we’re ready for it to hit theaters already. The interminable wait between casting, shooting, post, and all that jazz might be too much strain for our own hearts to bear. They start shooting on April 28th here in Los Angeles, so I might have to go invade the set or something.

Clifton Collins Jr., better known as either Francisco Flores from Traffic, or Perry Smith from Capote, will play the nemesis to Jason Statham’s chrome-domed killer. He’ll be joining Bai Ling, who will most likely be playing a scary-looking Chinese lady (oh, wait… that’s just her real life persona), and returning cast members Amy Smart as Statham’s girlfriend, Doctor Dwight Yoakum and Efren “Pedro” Ramirez from the original.

If you haven’t seen Crank, then you need to get out there and rent it. If you’re feeling sleepy, it’ll definitely wake you up. Alternatively, if you’re pretty wired, it’ll kick your ass into overload. I went into this movie not knowing anything about it, and frankly being fairly tired of Statham from The Transporter and its sequel, and thought this looked like another movie where Statham uses his Cockney accent and kicks ass. Boy, was I ever wrong.

In this sequel, a mobster (maybe Collins) steals Statham’s “nearly indestructible heart” and replaces it with a battery-powered pumper that needs constant jolts of electricity to keep going. Statham with a Frankenstein heart? Sign me up. At the end of the original, you’ll find yourself wondering how the hell directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor could make a sequel, and now I can’t want to find out what they came up with.

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