3 stars (out of four)
Premium Rush is a fun
new action movie with a pretty forgettable title. (I foresee many people
searching in vain at their local Redbox for Premium Ride, Rush Delivery or, most likely, That Bike Movie.) But don’t let the seeming staleness
of the movie’s title discourage you from seeking it out. Premium Rush is a lively
series of crosstown chase scenes, nearly all of which are on bicycles, buoyed
by a sense of humor and the dependably likable Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Mr. Gordon-Levitt plays Wilee (pronounced like the Coyote),
a bike messenger in Manhattan. Bike messengers, he explains in voice-over
narration, are still very much needed in New York. When e-mail is inadequate
and regular mail is too slow but you just have to get something from Point A to
Point B, the city turns to them.
In that same voice-over, he describes his relationship to
his fellow messengers as a sort of brotherhood, a comradery due at least in
part to a mutual hatred of cab drivers. Because they draw the ire of most every
other New Yorker, they have to look out for each other. I don’t know if any of
this is true but it seems believable enough and the animosity of every
non-biking citizen in the film adds some nice touches. Cops are constantly
yelling at them, cars beeping at them and pedestrians leaping out of their way.
Wilee rides around the city on a custom-built bike with no
brakes. (“Brakes are death,” he says, though I’m not quite sure why.) He runs
red lights, weaves through traffic at reckless speeds and maneuvers around any
number of obstacles with a host of fancy tricks and jumps. His former
girlfriend, Vanessa (Dania Ramirez), thinks he has a death wish, an opinion
echoed by Wilee’s professional and romantic rival, Manny (Wolé Parks).
All three are tremendously skilled riders. Personally, when
I ride a bike, I all but pray I don’t break my neck. Needless to say, I was in
awe of these characters. I hold an even deeper admiration for the stuntmen and
stuntwomen who worked on this movie. A whopping forty of the film’s ninety-one
minutes features action on bikes.1 Think about that for a moment.
Roughly half of Premium Rush takes place
in motion. The technical logistics of shooting a movie like this staggers me.
The plot of Premium Rush
focuses on the delivery of one envelope, the contents of which are irrelevant
but the value of which is apparently huge. Wilee picks up the envelope from
Nima (Jamie Chung), an acquaintance of his and a current student at Columbia
Law where Wilee recently dropped out. So far, this appears to be a routine job.
Wilee is just leaving the campus, however, when Bobby
(Michael Shannon) flags him down. Bobby claims to be an officer investigating
Nima. There has been a misunderstanding, Bobby says. He needs to see that
envelope. No can do, says Wilee. That would break the ethical code of bike
messaging. The envelope must be delivered as originally requested.
What follows is the first of many good chase scenes, this
one featuring a snarling Michael Shannon behind the wheel of a car in hot
pursuit of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Mr. Shannon, who specializes in playing loose
cannons (see also: his Oscar-nominated work in Revolutionary Road and his star-making turn in last year’s excellent Take Shelter) and he plays a good one here as a
desperate man with a gambling debt. He is, by turns, funny and frightening, the
latter usually immediately following the former.
He even hijacks the movie for a solid fifteen minutes in a
mid-film sequence that fleshes out his character’s backstory. Actually, the
whole midsection of Premium Rush becomes
something of an ensemble with a series of interlocking flashbacks that reveal
the envelope’s significance.
Director David Koepp (who co-wrote the script with John
Kamps) manages to not only organize the story’s various pieces in an
easy-to-follow flow but also maintains visual coherence during the chase
scenes. Characters are rarely in the same place for very long but I never had
any difficulty understanding where they were in relation to everyone else and
where they were heading next. Credit should also be given to editors Derek
Ambrosi and Jill Savitt for making a slick and efficient product out of a
kinetic and sometimes complicated movie.
Premium Rush gets a
little dopey in a few scenes but all in all this is good, clean, unpretentious
fun; a cheerful burst of late summer energy and a nice palate cleanser
following the annual string of over-hyped mega-blockbusters. It is one of the
year’s more pleasant surprises.
1 Time on bikes provided by Alex Krajunus.
- Steve Avigliano, 8/27/12
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