REVIEW: Premium Rush

Premium Rush (2012): Dir. David Koepp. Written by: David Koepp and John Kamps. Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Aaron Tveit, Dania Ramirez, Jamie Chung and Wolé Parks. Rated PG-13 (Scrapes and bruises). Running time: 95 minutes.

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

REVIEW: The Campaign

The Campaign (2012): Dir. Jay Roach. Written by: Chris Hency and Shawn Harwell. Starring: Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis, Katherine LaNasa, Dylan McDermott, John Lithgow, Dan Aykroyd and Brian Cox. Rated R (Dirty politics and dirtier jokes). Running time: 85 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

The Campaign, directed by Jay Roach and starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, seeks to lampoon the cruel, nasty, dirty game that is contemporary American politics. And what better time to do so than when the country is smack in the middle of a heated election?

The cinematic landscape of 2012 might not at first seem to be the most conducive environment for a savvy political satire. The must-be-as-vulgar-as-possible imperatives of today’s mainstream comedies don’t leave much room for the more nuanced aims of satire. And yet movies like The Campaign prove that these disparate comedic objectives can be merged – and they don’t even need to be accused of flip-flopping. (See also: the films of Sacha Baron Cohen and the Harold & Kumar series which are crude and clever – in that order.)

Satirizing the politics of the present moment is also difficult for another reason. How do you make absurd what is already ridiculous? The Campaign is up to the task, escalating steadily from slight exaggerations of what we see on the news to increasingly outrageous gags. This is also where the film’s second identity as a crude comedy comes in handy. The Campaign is able to enter decidedly R-rated territory the likes of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, say, cannot touch even on late-night TV.

Director Jay Roach is a good fit for the material, having previously directed movies for HBO about two of the more surreal chapters in recent political history – the 2000 recount and the vice presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin. He also helmed two of the bigger hits of the late-90s/early-2000s – Austin Powers and Meet the Parents – so he knows how to put together a comedy. The Campaign skips along at a fast pace, never lingering too long on any one bit.

Having Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis at your disposal certainly helps too. Mr. Ferrell plays Congressman Cam Brady, a Democrat from North Carolina’s 14^th District. Cam Brady doesn’t have much of anything to add to political discourse but has found he can win over just about any crowd by strategically emphasizing the words America, Jesus and Freedom. Also by showing off his wife, Rose (Katherine LaNasa, looking like the spitting image of Ann Romney), who gives a supporting wave from behind the podium, hoping to smile her way into the role of Second Lady.

Cam has grown accustomed to running unopposed and even the worst PR incident – a lewd message meant for his mistress but left on a quaint Southern family’s answering machine is only the most recent – seems unlikely to jeopardize a fifth term for him.

That is, until the Motch brothers (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow) decide to intervene. The billionaire brothers need a man on Capitol Hill who will support their latest collaboration with a Chinese manufacturer (they want to build a sweat shop in North Carolina). They decide to fund a PAC that will support Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), the son of their business partner, Raymond (Brian Cox), in a ploy to buy a candidate who will endorse their scheme. Marty, a pudgy oddball with a squeak of a voice, runs the small town of Hammond’s tourism office. He has never thought of himself as a politician but has always hoped his father might one day ask him to run for office.

We know from last year’s The Ides of March that behind every candidate is a campaign advisor pulling the strings. Tim Wattley (a straight-faced and hilarious Dylan McDermott) is called in to work on the Huggins campaign and retool Marty’s public image. (He swaps Marty’s beloved pugs for Labrador retrievers and packs the Huggins household with hunting gear.) Marty’s sweetheart of a wife, Mitzi (Sarah Baker), feels her husband has changed in the name of political ambition but it’s not long before she gets caught up in the campaign as well, and in an especially embarrassing way. Meanwhile, at Camp Brady, Cam’s advisor, Mitch Wilson (Jason Sudeikis playing straight man to Mr. Ferrell), struggles to keep his candidate from imploding.

The satire in The Campaign is blunt and often obvious but subtlety probably isn’t the best approach when your leads are Mr. Ferrell and Mr. Galifianakis. Whenever the script, written by Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell, loses steam, the two actors pick up the slack with energetic performances. They play off one another well. (For those who are looking for a subtler jab at politics, I highly recommend the 2009 British comedy In the Loop.)

The Campaign has the hastily made feel of a movie that was produced quickly in order to hit on a topical subject matter while it’s still relevant. This is also to say that it has a loose and eager-to-please style that doesn’t worry whether or not every joke sticks. The script could be tighter in places and the ending in particular goes out with a whimper but these shortcomings aren’t too detrimental.

I mentioned The Ides of March earlier and the more I think about it, the more I’m amused at how much the two movies have in common (they follow similar story beats and set their sights on basically the same targets). For my money, The Campaign does a better job exposing the hypocrisies of political campaigns and takes the more appropriate approach to the subject. With things the way they are, maybe a handful of goofy jokes are the only proper response.

- Steve Avigliano, 8/13/12

REVIEW: Total Recall

Total Recall (2012): Dir. Len Wiseman. Written by: Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback. Screen story by: Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, Jon Povill and Kurt Wimmer. Based on the short story, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick. Starring: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, John Cho, Bokeem Woodbine and Bill Nighy. Rated PG-13 (Mostly bloodless action and exactly three breasts). Running time: 121 minutes.

1 ½ stars (out of four)

In the distant future, chemical warfare has left Earth uninhabitable in all but two regions: the United Federation of Britain and Australia (known now as the Colony). The UFB is your run-of-the-mill dystopia: a bustling high-tech metropolis plagued by overpopulation and the terrorist attacks of a rebel anarchist group. An ominous Chancellor named Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston) rules the nation, his giant face projected on TV screens throughout the city as he addresses his citizens.

Fear not, he says. To counter the increase in terrorist bombings he will increase the size of the synthetic police force – an army of sleek, faceless robots carrying automatic weapons. Something tells me the Chancellor doesn’t have the people’s best interests in mind when he announces this.

Meanwhile, the citizens of the Colony live in comparative squalor. The streets of its drab concrete cities are brightened only by neon signs (in a shrewdly prescient touch, Chinese letters always accompany English). The Colony always seems to be overcast and rainy too, a meteorological curiosity I might have liked explained.

It is here that Douglas Quaid (a sleepy Colin Farrell) calls home. He works at a factory in the UFB where he builds those synthetic police officers. He commutes there daily with his buddy (Bokeem Woodbine) via a fascinating innovation in transportation called The Fall. The Fall is a “gravity elevator,” a sort of train that zooms down into the ground, past the Earth’s core and back up to the surface on the opposite side of the globe. Halfway through the trip, gravity reverses and passengers momentarily float in their harnesses. (This comes in handy later during the film’s best action scene.)

In the future there is also Rekall, a company that offers customers the opportunity to plant fabricated memories inside their minds. The memory can be anything you like – a passionate affair, a luxurious vacation, a stint as an international spy – and Quaid thinks he might like to try the spy fantasy.

But before the Rekall attendant – a slick, white-haired and wonderfully goofy looking John Cho – can start the procedure, the cops bust in to arrest Quaid. What do they want with him? Is this all a Rekall memory? Or was his old life an illusion created by a past trip to Rekall?

Next thing Quaid knows, he is on the run from the law and has gotten two beautiful ladies caught up in his newly complicated life. There is Lori (Kate Beckinsale), Quaid’s wife of seven years who may be more than she initially seems, and Melina (Jessica Biel), a member of the rebellion who claims she already knows Quaid. To Melina, however, he is a man named Carl Hauser.

Most of this should be familiar to anyone who has seen the 1990 Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (both this film and that one are based on the Philip K. Dick short story, “We Remember It for You Wholesale”). But it is not familiarity that sinks this movie. (In a year that saw successful revamps of 21 Jump Street and Spider-Man, why not this too?)

The premise is intriguing and the set design impressive but the script by Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback is awful. It rushes through the set-up and then wastes time in the middle. The dialogue is clunky and utilitarian; characters speak in exposition or they don’t speak at all. Total Recall begins as hard sci-fi but devolves into mindless action. It needs to choose; it can’t have it both ways. (On second thought, Christopher Nolan’s Inception did exactly that. Hm.)

The three leads – Mr. Farrell, Ms. Beckinsale and Ms. Biel – all have the dazed look of actors on a greenscreen. What a shame. Colin Farrell can be such an energetic and dynamic presence. Why, if you cast him in this movie, would you have him play such a muted and humorless character? Director Len Wiseman should have let him loose, popped a cigarette in his mouth and allowed him to speak in his foul-mouthed brogue. The movie would have come alive.

There is one actor who gets it right. Bryan Cranston, in a limited role, makes for a great antagonist. Late in the film he delivers a monologue explaining the whole knotty plot. I didn’t understand a word of what he was talking about but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. During that chase scene with the hover cars? I was checking my watch.

- Steve Avigliano, 8/11/12