When your correspondent first saw trailers for Crank back in 2006, he grew very excited for what he hoped was a revolution in action movie simplicity. Most action flicks, even the ones held together by cardboard and Elmer’s glue, try to graft some sort of deeper theme onto the narrative. So Jet Li isn’t just kicking a hundred guys in the head – he’s kicking a hundred guys in the head for honor. Tony Jaa doesn’t just travel to Thailand and break people’s arms – he travels to Thailand and breaks people’s arms to preserve the traditions of his village. But Crank seemed to promise a beautiful austerity – a premise that could be understood in the first six words of the trailer. “If you slow down, you die!” Brilliant! End of story! Now get to Jason Statham shooting people.

However, upon watching Crank again – in anticipation of the surprising release of Crank 2: High Voltage this Friday – one discovers new themes. This deceptively simple tale, of a British hitman fleeing the mob while under the effects of an adrenal inhibitor, has so much more beneath the surface. And there is a lot of surface – it’s a very superficial tale.

But what does Crank have to say about the human condition?

One of the videos that made it into our Super Bowl ad roundup was the Conan O’Brien ad for Bud Light, in which his agent/manager/ambiguous guy in a suit convinces him to make an embarrassing Bud Light Ad  by assuring him that it will “only be seen in Sweden”.

The message of this spot seems to be “Drink Bud Light because it is a beer for awesome-non-Eurotrash-American Dudes!” In the world of the commercial, the only way that the effete Swedes could be convinced to drink Bud Light is with fire, mesh tops, and cheesy techno.  But does anyone really still hold this view of Europeans?

[Beginning today, we will be saving our most thoughtfully overthought articles for Sunday publication. Though we haven't the audacity to hope that we will replace your ritual of lugging the phone-book sized Sunday Times down to your favorite obscure Park Slope coffee house to pore ostentatiously over while sipping the organic, shade grown, fairly traded red eye your favorite heavily tattooed and multi-pierced barista pulls with tender loving care, we hope this weekly day of rest affords you time to devote some extra overthinking to this new weekly feature, Overthinking It Magazine. —Ed.]

Even as McDonalds continues to evoke freedom fries francophobia in new advertisements, there are signs that the popular culture has moved on, and that we are on the brink of a new era in French-American relations. The ambassador of this détente? None other than a 25 year old female electro-hip-hopper named Yelle. Video and analysis after the jump.