Sex Scene Criticism: Crank, Starring Jason Statham and Amy Smart

One of the things that I've never understood is how the average bloated studio production (which pays millions of dollars for its director, millions to each of its stars, and millions more for special effects) ends up with sex scenes that are significantly worse than those you might see on Cinemax on a Friday night. Do the producers demand that the scenes be less sensual than a high school biology textbook? Are the actors and actresses vehemently opposed to showing their bodies in a potentially unflattering situation? Is Hollywood so debauched that the directors can no longer remember how normal people make love?

A friend of mine considers Crank to be the consummate cinematic action film. You have a charismatic lead actor in Jason Statham who really has only played one character throughout his career. Sure, that character changes names, but he's always gruff, understated, and an impressive hand-to-hand fighter. Amy Smart is pretty, yet eminently forgettable. And the action scenes themselves are entertaining and (mostly) illogical. These types of films appeal to a very specific demographic: the so-called "red-blooded American male." We like things that blow up, we like comic relief, and we like a little gratuitous female nudity thrown in to mix things up.

And Crank seems to have everything in place to produce a memorable sex scene. The girl, Amy Smart, has proven quite willing to do nude scenes in the past. She did a steamy scene with Breckin Meyer in Road Trip! Any woman who's willing to simulate making love to that little leprechaun is not going to balk at climbing onto Jason Statham. Then there's the music selection -- the producers actually paid for the rights to Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On"! That song has been inside more panties than an inspector at a Hanes Her Way factory. Wait... that was a terrible analogy. I can do better. That song has gotten into more drawers than a skeleton key. That one doesn't even really make sense. That song has seen more panties half-off than the blue light at K-Mart. I think these are actually getting worse. Let's just move on.

As for the scene itself, I'll give it points for being the most creative I've ever seen. Jason Statham's character has a poison running through his system that will kill him unless he keeps his adrenaline pumping above a certain level. Sort of like Speed, but biological in nature. He's just broken up with Amy Smart in the middle of Chinatown when he realizes that his heart rate is slowing down. In order to save his life, he decides that he should mount his unwilling ex-girlfriend on the sidewalk. Smart vehemently resists at first -- at one point she knocks him flat on his back with a single left-handed slap, which is amazing considering that this same man single-handedly kills nearly a dozen hardcore gangsters and survives a fall from a helicopter onto a car. In fact, she's fighting him off so effectively that the first 30 seconds of the scene would undoubtedly be considered sexual assault.

Eventually she decides that she wants to hook up after all, and we're subjected to the second-greatest sin that anyone filming a sex scene can commit: mixing a series of obscure camera angles of the couple with other, unrelated shots. While I don't personally envy the idea of making love on a sidewalk (it seems uncomfortable and somehow unsanitary), I appreciate the fact that many people fantasize about sex in public. However, as a rule, my fantasies never involve reaction shots from random Asians who happen to be standing near the action. And nudity? Well, there's a shot of Amy Smart's dress getting partially ripped open, and I think there's a nipple involved. But it was literally a few frames of this possible breast, and then camera was suddenly behind the two of them again. I'm not smart enough to figure out slow-motion on my DVD remote, so I'm still unsure whether she was actually topless. You do get a compelling shot of Statham turning to the camera as he pulls down his sweatpants, though. And so the directors also committed the greatest sin -- more male nudity than female nudity.

By this time, Smart is completely turned on by the attention of onlookers, and she actually becomes angry at Statham's inability to perform. Statham finally rises to the occasion, props her up against a mailbox, and gives the crowd a show they'll never forget. By this point, the directors had won me back -- I was actually laughing out loud at the reaction of the people on the bus. But just when I thought the scene was going to totally redeem itself, Statham gets a phone call; the film's villain had been found, and the plot had to move forward. Faster than you can say "coitus interruptus," the scene had ended.

So overall, I'll give this scene a B-. It's memorable, it's funny... but I can't look you in the eye and tell you it was sexy. Here's hoping for better things in Crank 2.