Steven Berkoff, who is currently everywhere, is quoted as saying that critics are like worn-out old tarts. If only they were, the theatre would be in a better state. In fact critics are much more like dizzy girls out for the evening, just longing to be f*cked, and happy to be taken in by any plausible rogue who'll flatter their silly heads while knowing roughly the whereabouts of their private parts. A cheap thrill is all they want. Worn-out tarts have at least got past that stage.
     Alan Bennett, Diary, 20th August 1989
     - reproduced in Writing Home (1994), p257.

The film story is by William Faulkner, the direction by Tay Garnett, the course seems set for distinction, but it remains a hot-weather picture: human relationships converge with the slowness and inevitability of pawns, though a film should consist of knight's moves only: the oblique jump, the unexpected encounter.
     Graham Greene, review of Slave Ship  (1937) in Night and Day (19th August 1937)
     - reproduced in The Pleasure Dome (1972), p162.

Synopsis here. Extract: "a man involved with a crime syndicate... has an artificial heart that requires regular doses of electricity to keep working." As pioneering West Coast punks 'Crime' put it back in 1976, "Hot Wire My Heart" (B-side: "Baby, You're So Repulsive.") But, this being the 21st century and all that, we - or rather Neveldine/Taylor - have now moved far beyond plot into something resembling "pure cinema" where narrative considerations are tertiary at best.
   The move is partly technology-driven: High Voltage was mainly shot using tiny little Canon cameras, some types of which you get pick up on your High Street, and several sequences deployed a dozen or so at once - a variation on what Lars Von Trier tried with Dancer in the Dark. Check out the DVD extras for the two-part 'Making Of', in which Mr Neveldine can be seen executing many of the shots while whizzing along on roller-skates.
   And all for roughly $12m. Though squarely aimed at attention-deficit, popcorn-munching multiplex and home-video crowds, High Voltage is arguably more avant-garde than mainstream. And while N/T's other 2009 release Gamer is (to use the late Manny Farber's classic distinctions) a lumbering "white elephant" studio-style enterprise weighed down by star Gerard Butler's doughy anti-charisma, the 90-odd minute toxic shock that is High Voltage is the disreputable, foul-mouthed, disgraceful "termite" of the family, with an amusingly straight-faced Jason Statham reprising his role as very-hard-to-kill Cockney tough-nut Chev Chelios [sic] from 2006's much-despised Crank.
   Violent, repellent, incoherent, decadent, depraved [sick] and flat-out hilarious, the sequel is a Gozu-gonzo Domino that hyperactively scours the sun-flattened landscapes of godforsaken Los Angeles districts (escaping to Catalina Island for the sci-fi-inflected climax), achieving an apocalyptic, Southland-Tales atmosphere in which the fact that the world doesn't end is part of the despair.
   Thom Andersen (Los Angeles Plays Itself) would surely approve this breakneck (Cellular-on-speed) tour of this relentlessly horizontal city, in which we're continually invited to clock anti-landmark landmarks such as The Foc'sle bar in Wilmington and Slauson Donuts in Inglewood, while coping with a blizzard of unlikely "star" cameos (Ron Jeremy. David Carradine. Chester Bennington. John DeLancie. Bai Ling! Corey Haim?!) and puzzling over the very first feature-film soundtrack to be composed by the insanely eclectic Mike Patton (ex Faith No More.)
   No, it doesn't all come off - there's a small handful of scenes which are more embarrassing than inspired - but the hit-rate is phenomenally high, the first Crank is outflanked and outranked in pretty much every regard, and this is (check out the DVD extras) one of those great-time-was-had-by-all affairs where the infectious enthusiasm on-set is irresistibly transmitted to anyone in the audience game enough to sign up for the rollercoaster. Crank 3 in 3-D Sensurround Smellovision can't come a second too soon.

Neil Young
8th January 2010

[seen on DVD, Sunderland, 7.Jan.10]