DVD Reviews: Angels & Demons/Crank 2

I have 2 new DVD releases that I’ve seen this week. Let’s start with the lesser...

"Crank 2: High Voltage"

For those who didn’t see the first movie, Jason Statham played a man who’d been poisoned in his sleep. The only way to prolong his life was to keep his adrenaline levels up as he caused havoc on the streets of Los Angeles in pursuit of those responsible.

The thing is... Statham’s character died at the end. Now there’s a sequel ? Well, I guess you can’t keep a good man down and as the advertising says "He was dead... But he got better".
Having dropped out of the sky to certain doom, we pick up the action where the original left off. A group of scientists collect Statham’s body (strangely intact, not pureed as you’d expect after a 100 or storey or so drop straight onto concrete).

His body is going to be farmed for organs - and the first to go is his heart. (Believe me, it’s all downhill from here as far as credibility goes). His heart is replaced with an artificial one, powered by a battery with a very limited amount of life. Exertion on his part caused the battery to run down rapidly. So, he fights his way out of the organ farm, and goes off in pursuit of his heart, while battling a Chinese Triad gang and having to find means of keeping his battery charged.
One of the ways he does this is by attaching jump cables from a car battery to his tongue and chest. Don’t try THAT one at home, kids.

All in all, the film is fast paced, way too far fetched and has been filmed in a way that looks like a cross between an Xbox game and a Loony Tunes cartoon. The violence is over the top and cartoonish at best. The film is an uneasy mix of action, gangster, martial arts, comedy and sci-fi but sadly it doesn’t work. In the eighties, this film would’ve been made cheaper with Jean Claude Van Damme, or it would’ve been made with Steven Segal - who always creeps me out for some reason.

I hope that this doesn’t condemn Jason Statham to perpetual B-movie hell, because I always thought he would’ve made a far better Bond than Daniel Craig.

It’s been Dan Brown week everywhere - with the releases of his newest novel "The Lost Symbol" and the DVD release of ...

"Angels and Demons"

This is the one book of Dan Brown’s that I haven’t yet got around to reading, so I can’t compare the differences between the source material and the finished film.

Director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks are back for the sequel to "The DaVinci Code". Again, the film delves into the depths of the murky behind the scenes politics, rituals and history of the Catholic church. In reading Brown’s books, I’ve found they always seem meticulously researched which leads to an uneasy feeling of nothing being quite what it seems on the surface. This is no exception.

Beginning with the passing of the Pope, the film delves into the ritualistic ceremonies of appointing a replacement by the Cardinals in The Vatican.

The Church is under threat by the Illuminati, a secret society long thought extinct. Centuries ago, where the Church stood for religion and faith, the Illuminati stood for science. So, the plot really is science against faith. A topical element of the plot involves the super collider experiment that caused the creation of anti-matter as scientists try to determine the existence of the God particle, responsible for the creation of life.

Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon is sort of the thinking man’s Indiana Jones, breaking various codes and decyphering clues in heart pounding chase through the Vatican to find four Cardinals kidnapped by the Illuminati, while also trying to find the location of an anti-matter bomb that will blow the Vatican out of existence and bring the Church to its knees.

It’s fast paced, exciting and thought provoking. However, what surprised me was the film’s "12" rating for moderate violence and horror. In truth, the violence on display here with people being branded, others burned alive, is far more graphic than I would expect to see in most "15" rated films.

If you’re considering watching this with your pre-or early teen kids, I’d advise maybe checking the film out before showing it to them.