Crank 2 Cranky Review
From the title you might think that this is not going to be a very good review. Well far from it I really enjoyed the first Crank movie with its non-stop adrenalin pumping pace and sense of humour. Well Crank 2 is more of the same only with the dial set to eleven. The movie starts where the previous movie ends with our hero (?) dropping to the ground from a helicopter and surviving only to have his heart stolen and replaced by an artificial version which he must keep charged and that’s all I’m going to reveal about the plot.
As far as picture quality at times it’s outstanding and always looks good. At low of the action takes place outside or in well lit interiors which contribute to the quality. However once you realise while viewing the extras that the whole film was made on hand held consumer 1080p cameras you’ll understand a good job they have gone with the picture and some of the effects. The 7.1 channel DTS HD Master Audio mix is also very good bullets and the effects constantly fly around the sound stage.
The extras are also reasonably good with some insight into why and how the movie was made but as with the movie don’t expect anything too deep and meaningful. However marks are taken off as the US version comes with a digital copy which is missing from the UK release.
Now the Cranky bit. There is a major issue with this disk in the UK. It’s quite obvious that the disk was not thoroughly tested before it was sent to be mastered and there are a lot of posts on the internet from people having issues getting this title to run and I experienced it myself. After inserting the disk and waiting quite a while you get a small square in the middle of the screen and you only get video here and no menus. I experienced this on both a PS3 (I never download updates the first time I load a movie) and also on a Sony BDP-S350, both very popular players. On the PS3 I was able to stop the disk and start it again and said yes when it prompted me to down load an update, after this all was good. For the S350 it was a little more complex as the machine is not within easy reach of an internet connection and I had to add a USB memory stick to allow it to update, again once the update was complete all was good. But a word of warning if you have a profile 1.0 player or your player it not connected to the internet, it’s not your player it’s the disk.
Overall a good fun movie but Lionsgate really need to sort their testing out for future releases.
