He says he was hooked on "Crank" from the moment he read the script. But he also was a little uncertain whether these first-time directors could handle the ambitious script. "I thought, who are these guys?" he recalls, smiling. "You need someone with experience to be able to handle something as silly and wacky as this."

But after meeting Neveldine and Taylor, who laid out their plans for the high-energy film, he was convinced that he was in good hands. "I wanted to try and do justice to their vision," Statham says.

That vision involved making a nonstop action movie with Statham doing as many of his stunts as possible. No wirework. No martial arts. Just Statham running around, battling loads of bad guys, and making it with a beautiful woman. Some of Statham's running scenes were shot with Neveldine operating the camera on inline skates, giving the sequence a smoother look than typical handheld shots.

*****

Statham appears jazzed about his newest action movie. "It's kind of a comedy in a way, and I like the fact that the violence is undiluted," he says with a Cockney accent. "It's an aggressive film and it might be a bit squeamish for some people. I guess you can't please everybody all of the time. But I know that there are some people that will get a kick out of it. That's the good thing about making movies."

So how exactly did he prepare for his action scenes? "Red Bull," he says with a hearty laugh. "Oh my God, I drank so much of it. In the scene where I rob the gas station, stupid old me decided to slurp out of the can and after about four of them I said, 'Have you got any water?' It wasn't a good feeling."