Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for violence, intense action and occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang
Summer isn’t quite over, but I
still feel comfortable calling this the season’s nicest surprise.
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| Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) prides himself on being the best of an elite daredevil breed: hell-for-leather New York City bicycle messengers. But even Wilee finds his skills taxed when one particular delivery prompts pursuit by a clearly unhinged fellow ... whose behavior becomes progressively more dangerous. |
Premium Rush is a marvelous
little action flick: cleverly plotted, capably acted and suspensefully edited. I
also admire director/co-scripter David Koepp’s attitude: He shares my belief
that most modern movies are too long, and his peppy thriller clocks in at a
just-right 91 minutes. Koepp and editors Derek Ambrosi and Jill Savitt keep the
action taut and inventive.
This is great edge-of-the-seat
stuff.
Koepp and co-writer John Kamps
also are the first filmmakers to properly exploit a fascinating sub-culture —
New York City bicycle messengers — and they do so with considerable panache.
This storyline also demands a whole new range of stunt work, much of it
eye-popping.
Premium Rush certainly isn’t
the first film to employ bicycle stunt work — 1983’s otherwise laughable BMX
Bandits (with a young Nicole Kidman!) comes to mind — but this film delivers
two-wheeled tricks that’ll drop your jaw to the floor.
Credit stuntman Victor Paguia,
trick cyclists Danny MacAskill and Tom La Marche, and an authentic bike
messenger dubbed Austin Horse. But credit, as well, goes to the film’s three
primary riding stars, each of whom looks every inch the part, from buff bods to
heavy, sweat-oiled exertion. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dania Ramirez and Wolé Parks
must’ve worked their butts off during this shoot, and it shows.
Indeed, according to report, the
fearless Gordon-Levitt finally had to be restrained from attempting some of the
stunts himself. I’m willing to believe it; he sure seems to be doing the lion’s
share of his character’s riding.
Although Koepp built his
reputation with solid screenplays for big-budget blockbusters such as Jurassic
Park, Mission: Impossible and Spider-Man, he’s equally fond of intimate,
claustrophobic, character-driven thrillers; notable examples include Stir of
Echoes, Secret Window and most particularly the superb Jodie Foster
suspenser, Panic Room.
With Premium Rush, Koepp and
Kamps deliver their version of the real-time thriller, which unfolds in a time
frame roughly equal to how long we spend watching. The screenplay “cheats” a
little, with a few flashbacks designed to explain the pell-mell events fueling
the action, but that’s part of the fun; the flashbacks are inventively placed
at just the right moments, building our emotional involvement each time we
return to the story at hand.
The premise is simple: Veteran
bicycle messenger Wilee (Gordon-Levitt) collects an envelope from a client late
one afternoon. It absolutely must-must-must be delivered not one second later
than 7 p.m. No sweat, he cheerfully insists; that’s plenty of time.
Or not.
Wilee, a thrill-seeker who
abandoned law school because he couldn’t see himself in a suit, seated behind a
desk, has developed a daredevil reputation as the best of New York’s agile and
aggressive bicycle messengers. He operates by a personal mantra — “Fixed gear,
steel frame, no brakes!” — that refers to his “fixie,” a lightweight,
single-gear bike that he navigates with shuddery, split-second timing through
traffic, pedestrians and unexpected hazards such as improperly dumped garbage.
Brakes are dangerous, he insists,
relying instead on “skid stops,” as he slides the rear wheel sideways in order
to slow down.
Wilee works for Security Courier,
a messenger service whose fellow riders include on again/off again girlfriend
Vanessa (Ramirez), along with Manny (Parks), a flashy show-boater who uses an
expensive, multi-geared bicycle that’s the antithesis of Wilee’s stripped-down philosophy.
Manny’s also making a play for Vanessa, which doesn’t endear him to our hero.
Things kick into gear when a
young woman named Nima (Jamie Chung) contacts Security Courier with her
insistence on swift delivery, and then hands Wilee the aforementioned envelope.
Moments later, Wilee is accosted by an agitated guy — Michael Shannon, as Bobby
Monday — who demands the envelope. He even bolsters this request by waving the
receipt just handed to Nima, which raises Wilee’s eyebrows ... and his
cautionary radar.
Nothing doing, Wilee insists,
referencing the “security” in his company’s name. He takes off; Monday hops
into a car, and the chase is on. Merely the first chase, as it turns out; Wilee
can’t imagine what this guy’s problem is, and the easily enraged Monday’s
pursuit becomes ever more aggressively frantic.
What the heck is going on?
I don’t want to answer any such
questions, because you deserve the pleasure of finding out in the way Koepp and
Kamps choose to dole out the salient bits of back-story. Initially, unlikely
coincidence seems to stretch credibility to a troublesome degree, but be
patient; all eventually becomes clear, with each piece interlocking quite
neatly.
Similarly, our first exposure to
Monday makes Shannon look guilty of outrageous over-acting; the guy practically
foams at the mouth. But even this overstated behavior makes sense in light of
details eventually revealed.
Our other primary characters are
sketched somewhat superficially, but that’s all right; we learn everything we
need to know. Gordon-Levitt is absolutely convincing as a free spirit who lives
and breathes the joys of his adrenalin-fueled job, and Wilee’s prickly bond with
Vanessa feels just right for a guy trying to win back the woman he loves.
Ramirez makes Vanessa appropriate
spunky; we catch her on a day when her pride has been stung, because Wilee failed
to acknowledge an important event in her life. It’s a thoughtless oversight,
and he cops to it, but we sense a possible string of such lapses, and thus
wonder whether this might be the one that severs the relationship. That adds a
layer of interpersonal angst to the grimmer core narrative.
Parks makes Manny an
appropriately self-centered jerk: high on himself and little else, and always
seeking a means to one-up his Security Courier colleagues (not necessarily
inappropriate behavior, in this competitive environment). Stuntman Christopher
Place rises above his profession’s usual anonymity for a credited — and quite engaging
— role as an NYPD bike cop who grows ever more determined to catch and arrest
Wilee.
Aside from the script’s clever
narrative elements, Koepp also makes excellent use of modern technology. Wilee
and Vanessa rarely converse at rest; they’re invariably chatting using smart
phones and ear buds while zipping through traffic. Wilee calculates his routes
via satellite map displays — and we’re able to see these decisions — although
he also generally knows how best to get from points A to B.
Niftiest of all, though, is
Wilee’s acute “bike vision,” a CGI-enhanced representation of his thought
process, as he observes an upcoming tight spot and considers the options for
finding the best path out of pending trouble. It’s a marvelous means of
entering the character’s head, and sharing his split-second decisions as he
instinctively anticipates a miraculous means of escaping injury, or causing an
accident, or colliding with a pedestrian.
Cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen’s
bicycle- and street-level camerawork is its own bonus: a series of breathtaking
images and razor’s-edge escapes that come so quickly and frequently, that
you’ll often forget to breathe.
Koepp’s film is very well named;
it is a rush. It’s also the sort of exhilarating thrill that’ll send you flying
from the theater, in order to shred the neighborhood on your own bike.
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