Ah Joesph Gordon-Levitt, sit down. Make yourself at home. Now, you’re fresh off a top role from the second biggest blockbuster summer hit in The Dark Knight Rises – How do you follow up on that? That Looper sure looks good! When do we get to see that then? Oh, we get a cycling movie before we get that… about couriers in NYC… great… let’s look at Premium Rush then…
Wilee (Gordon-Levitt, and yes like the Coyote) is a bike messenger in New York City. He lives for the thrill of the no breaks-no gears, high speed, dangerous, pure octane lifestyle instead of pursuing his law degree. On a seemingly normal day he takes a job to take an envelope from Chinese student Nima (Jamie Chung, The Hangover Part II), containing a $50,000 ticket for her son to enter America illegally, across NY in an hour and a half, except he’s being chased by bent cop Monday (Michael Shannon, Boardwalk Empire). On top of all this Wilee has to contend with bike police, his ex-girlfriend Vanessa (Dania Ramirez, American Reunion), and a fancier bike rival, in a game of keep-ball with the envelope.
Gordon-Levitt is enjoyable as Wilee, there’s no doubt about it; he makes a potentially cocky and unlikeable character affable, and is convincing as a peak-athletic person, and one of the best of these bike couriers. Shannon was a tad disappointing however; for someone who looks as unique as he does, he should have thrown a lot more into his role as Monday but instead delivers a rather standard dirty-cop, or cop who needs to pay off the gambling debts, we’ve seen on TV and film before. Ramirez as Wilee’s on-off girlfriend was watchable and gives us a reason to care, but Chung on the other hand was horrible; and there’s an expectation for her to bust out “me ruv ru rong time” with the levels of bad Asian dialogue, and the dire job she does here.
The concept is a little silly. It’s terribly hard to not think of Premium Rush as Die Hard With A Vengeance on bicycles. All the posters and trailers are seriously trying to push it as some new, fantastic, genre-crushing action film, when it’s just on a bike, and nothing of the sort. There’s also an awful clash between the seriousness of Monday getting the ticket to pay off his gambling debts and what happens to him during the course of the film, and the cool, near-whimsical, lifestyle of Wilee and his bike buddies; which is not only a real bad clash, but miss-sells the tone of the film.
The bike culture is really entertaining; it comes across as a little cocky at times, but there are steps made to stop it being unlikeable; they wreck taxi driver mirrors when they get cut-up or smashed into (but this is New York; where everyone in a yellow cab is in a bad mood; so it’s deserved); then again, they do cut along pavements putting normal people at risk who don’t deserve that shabby treatment. Still, it’s hard not be envious of these couriers pounding the dangerous roads of NYC.
The actual bike action and camera work are cool to marvel at. In what must have been a headache to film, with Wilee weaving in and out of traffic, the audience will enjoy the real looking near misses and bumps of cars (especially with the comic relief in the policeman on his police bicycle). Peppered into the scenes are up-to-date satellite navigation clips to update the viewer on where abouts in New York we are, and a 24-esque clock to keep an eye on the timeline, and whilst it’s reminiscent of the technique done better in Crank, and the various Grand Theft Auto videogames, it looks cartoony and fresh enough to make it neat to look at, and reflects on the bike courier life.
Plot and characterisation however is beyond frustrating; it drip feeds you information about the numerous characters and the envelope macguffin over Premium Rush in flashbacks. Fair enough, but it bogs the pace of the film down with uninteresting characters and story when all you really want to see is Wilee and his bike lifestyle. There are some really useless characters presented to us, and when Monday manages to change Nima’s delivery location for the envelope, she’s just sad; she doesn’t think to phone Wilee’s delivery company to change it again and relies on people to help out of her mess; the movie then forces you to feel sorry for her at this point, but why? As well as the very poor attempt to drag sympathy out of the audience with illegally getting her child into the country, Nima then phones people to solve her problems, making her one of the worse characters on the big screen this summer.
It’s hard not to label Premium Rush as anything but an enjoyable flop. Gordon-Levitt is likeable enough to carry most of the film, and the bike chases and culture are admirably shown, but some shocking characters, the hard to swallow concept, and a dull plot really ruin any enjoyment you may have had from the halfway point onwards; making it deserving of only an extremely mild recommendation.
Terry Lewis – @thatterrylewis.
