Crank: High Voltage

If you thought hit man Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) was safely dead at the end of 2006’s Crank, think again. The sequel opens where the original ended, with Chev falling thousands of feet to Earth, then cuts to him watching, awake and amazed, as surgeons in a seedy Long Beach massage parlor remove his heart and replace it with a battery-operated artificial pump. After that, it gets a little hard to swallow, with our anti-hero racing to retrieve his real heart so his doctor pal (Dwight Yoakam) can put it back before the power runs out on his fake one. Writer-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, still billing themselves as “Neveldine/Taylor,” are just as sloppily caffeinated as before, with an extra layer of scummy race jokes. Amy Smart (who should fire her agent) returns as Statham’s girlfriend.