3421. Jolt (2021)

Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Jai Courtney, Stanley Tucci

Director: Tanya Wexler

Running Time: 91 mins

Jolt is an American film about a woman with a disorder which causes her to explode into violent fits of rage at random. To prevent this, she equips herself with an electric shock device to calm her down, and despite proving a success at first, events conspire to cause her to set out on a path of violence once again.

I’m not sure whether it’s fair to just call Jolt a female remake of Crank, but that’s certainly how it appears on the surface. While there are some differences, the movies line up pretty well together, and while Jolt certainly doesn’t have the intense mania of the Jason Statham-led thriller, it is still a fantastically mad watch.

That doesn’t exactly make this film a masterpiece, in fact far from it, but I can’t say that I didn’t have fun with Jolt, particularly when it breaks out into its fits of pure, ridiculous violence.

Again, Jolt is never quite as deranged as Crank, and likewise Kate Beckinsale’s performance isn’t quite on the level of Jason Statham’s. However, Beckinsale is absolute dynamite in the lead role here, and her charisma and energy is what really makes Jolt a surprisingly entertaining watch.

In all truth, the story here is very, very thin, and so it’s the action and the action heroine which really have to lead the way. Beckinsale delights with great charisma that puts her alongside the likes of Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde as potential future cult action heroines, even though this film doesn’t quite have the chops to match that.

There is a little bit of emotion in Beckinsale’s plot to avenge a murder, which is what sets off her return to a spree of violence, but the fact of the matter is that it’s fun to watch her beat up baddies simply because it’s fun.

The plot doesn’t really add much to the movie beyond the character’s names, and in all truth this could just be an hour and a half of Beckinsale fighting people and I wouldn’t have ever got bored.

By no means a brilliant action thriller on the level of John Wick, but by no means a horrible mess either, Jolt is a fantastically mad affair which delivers delightfully insane violence brought to life brilliantly by Kate Beckinsale. So, that’s why I’m giving Jolt a 6.8 overall.