Crank was an action movie that embedded a MacGuffin to give it a permission structure to be as absurd as possible in how it dealt with putting its main character in as many implausible frenzied situations as possible. The result was an uneven shoot em up that delivered on intense action and schadenfreude and not much else. It unapologetically took every opportunity to remind you that it could not be taken seriously but it should be enjoyed.
Jolt is cut from the same adrenaline soaked cloth. The movie’s impressive cast attempts to ground the flurry of violence within a framework that shrugs at the improbable and winks at the gratuitous all the while applauding its own shallow appeal to emotional resonance. Unlike Crank, Jolt‘s plot is motivated by love, or at least affection, as its narrative propulsion and as a result the suspension that must be maintained in the throes of disbelief create too much tension to be effective. Both films go toe to toe in their similar tonal approach but Jolt asks the audience to accept that the smitten cop assigned to the case is behaving rationally and it is at this point that it devolves into wacky territory.
Lindy is a troubled young woman with anger management issues. She suffers from intermittent explosive disorder, which could also be applied to Bruce Banner and operates essentially within the same parameters. Once Lindy gets angry her body enters a cyclical chemical reaction wherein it creates an abundance of cortisol making her stronger and faster than she has any right to be while simultaneously expressing itself in violence against her trigger target. The mutation she carries is ensconced in her DNA and there is no cure, though a treatment exists. To maintain equilibrium and control she must introduce electric shocks into her neuro-circuitry to quell the powerful urges that would otherwise overtake her.
Underneath her stylish designer clothes Lindy is always harnessed in a net of electrodes tethered to a power button she keeps in her palm at the ready. Her hair trigger has turned her into a beautiful recluse who craves human contact but drowns in the ocean of minor nuisances that most people ignore. The offenses need not be aimed at her for it to ignite her condition and resolve the offending transgression through martial means. So when Lindy has a successful date with a man she barely knows, and remains surprisingly uncurious about her electrode mesh, she quickly becomes attached. When she finds out that this man has presumably been killed, it sets off the sleuthing and vengeance fueled mayhem that drives the story.
A pair of detectives, one male one female, contact Lindy as a normal part of their investigative protocols but Lindy’s insistence on pursuing her own investigation immediately has her committing felonies that would irrevocably taint the case. She lures the detectives away from their desks by feigning fright and teasing that she may have some pertinent information that she’ll share once they get to her apartment. As they leave she enters from the other side of the department and begins rifling through their file on her supposedly deceased non-boyfriend. She removes an electronic door pass and enters the evidence locker, locates bagged and tagged items pertinent to the case, then removes them.
The cops realize fairly quickly that they’ve been taken for a ride and track her down and when they attempt to arrest her she assaults one of them and escapes. This abuse and humiliation of law enforcement occurs throughout the film culminating in a baby tossing scene in a hospital nursery that is too bizarre to categorize, but while the female cop, Detective Nevins, takes on the role of punching bag the male cop, Detective Vickers, lets it all flow as water under the bridge and even assists in her vigilantism. The ridiculousness of the scenario is mildly off putting. Vickers exposes this verifiably dangerous woman to his child while his partner is wearing bruises caused by this would be felon and he appears so taken with her that he ignores the harm done to his partner and the potential harm that could come to him or his offspring.
Crank included a scene where in an effort to keep his adrenaline up and forestall the poison that was coursing through his veins he doggystyled his girlfriend in public to the raucous chants of a voyeuristic crowd until they all climaxed and even that doesn’t hold a candle to the sheer audacity on display in Jolt. Vickers’ blind eye to any and all of Lindy’s lawbreaking is only surpassed by Lindy’s own sense that none of it is that big a deal. After attempting to buy into the idea that she would go through all of this trouble to find the killer of a man that she barely knew, the audience then has to douse their brain cells in oblivious juice to manufacture a rationale for anyone’s motivations, with perhaps the exception of Nevins.
She at least is trying to arrest someone who for all intents and purposes should be the primary suspect for the would be murder of a man who had no familial ties or apparent peer group to speak of. The privilege exerted on Lindy’s behalf is staggering beyond reason. As the film closes and the body count multiplies Vickers has enrolled as an out and out accomplice. Blue line be damned, he is the founding member of Team Lindy and has risked it all for the chance to see her solve the case that was his responsibility to solve and beat up his partner along the way. It is difficult to imagine how Vickers explains this to a review board or how his partner doesn’t press charges of her own, but the combination of over the top action sequences and unearned emotional attachments to strangers completely outdoes the bombast of an older movie intended solely to generate shock and awe.
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