My husband and I just watched the Jason Statham & Amy Smart movie Crank. We stumbled upon The Transporter at the video store last week and enjoyed it thoroughly. Not having remembered Jason Statham, we decided to check out some of the other movies he’s been in. This led us to re-rent The Italian Job (2003) where he plays “Handsome Rob” the car guy. We made a small list of other movies in which he starred where it looked like he was either top-billed or near the top. Crank was on that list.

The back cover seemed interesting enough, a hit-man is poisoned by a rival and he has an hour to live where he must do things that get the adrenaline going because if he doesn’t, if he stops moving, he dies. Sounds like a good action-movie tagline, at least to us.

Recently, I learned that people over 30 are considered “old”. This movie certainly emphasizes that point. During the last half of the film, all my husband could repeat was, “This must be a ‘Gen Y’ thing.” I haven’t seen a movie that ventured in the obscure in quite a while, so in a strange way it was refreshing. Weird camera angles, a somewhat convoluted plot (this is a stretch), and lots of action highlight the film. Other than that, for us, it seemed very weak and frankly bad. I was amazed to see the votes on IMBD gave it a 7.10/10 stars. Reading the reviews, the top 5 that give it 9+ stars, show clearly that the reviewers are from the next generation.

This makes me wonder how much of a divide there is between Generation X and Y and the generations that follow. If there is that much of a divide in taste in a few short years, what will movies look like in 3, 5, or 7 years? Does this compare to the differences between Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classicism, and the Romantic periods of the late 18th and early 19th centuries? What kind of affect do these chasms in interest have on how we communicate with each other and how does that yield to solving our world problems? Seeing these changes makes me understand fuller why adults were always muttering when I was a child, “Kids these days,” because I find myself muttering that now to in utter disbelief or misunderstanding.

Crank 2: High Voltage is in the works. Even though I thought the first was bad, I may have to endure the second. It does look pretty silly.