Fractionals

Saw Crank tonight with Aaron, Ben and Becky. I expected to see a fun, pulpy high concept action movie (and it was that, don't get me wrong), and hey, I like Jason Statham. What I saw was a return to the intelligence, verve and style of the great 70s genre films, movies that were smart without ever forgetting they were thrill rides, that wallowed in the cheap exploitation of pulp without forgetting to throw in reams of subtext and that had enough faith in its audience to be slightly baffling with its grace notes.

Recently I've been watching or re-watching films like Death Race 2000, Mad Max or even Robocop, which didn't come out until 87 - even then, genre films at their best dared to be funny, relevant, stark, striking, touching, thought provoking in addition to fulfilling the tropes they needed to. It seems like we've had less of that recently, although that could just be a matter of perspective, but in any case I will be avidly looking out for Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's next film on the hopes that they will turn out to be one tenth as good as George A. Romero or his contemporaries were. This one alone was far less one-note than I expected, and far more fun.

(And as for Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs was great, and I liked Kill Bill a lot, but he's too self-reflexive, too focused on making something "significant" - Crank, like all great pulp film, simply is what it is, and it's what they work in around the edges that makes it great)