It's an interesting coincidence that the bike messenger action film Premium Rush is opening the same week as Hit & Run, a movie that might work better for you if you turned your brain off. And while Premium Rush might seem like the type of film where a brain in the off position might improve the experience of watching it, the truth is leaving it on might result in a heightened movie-going experience that came as a complete and welcome shock to me. And the primary reason for the greatness of Premium Rush is one Mr. Michael Shannon, as a dirty detective who uses the alias Forrest J. Ackerman quite frequently throughout the film.
Shannon is full-bore nuts in this movie, and he turns what could have been a cliche-driven character into something wonderfully twisted and funny. Shannon's character is trying to get a ticket that is worth quite a bit of money for reasons that aren't worth going into, because frankly, they don't matter. When Nima (Jamie Chung) calls her roommate's New York City bike messenger boyfriend Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), to pick up the ticket and deliver it to Chinatown as payment, he is immediately chased by Shannon relentlessly.
Wilee's portrait is painted very quickly. He almost went to law school, but the idea of being cooped up in an office wearing a suit day after day stopped him from going, and he became a messenger. His retrofitted bike has no hand brakes and only one gear, and he has the split-second ability to see multiple routes through any tricky traffic situation and select the one that will be the least dangerous to him. His girlfriend, a fellow messenger named Vanessa (Dania Ramirez), is mad at him for missing her graduation because he was racing, so we know Wilee is impulsive to a fault. And I know it seems remarkable that Gordon-Levitt is even in this b-movie material, but when you see the film, it makes sense. This is a movie about smart guy doing a dumb job (in terms of his safety) versus a dumb guy doing a job that requires a brain.
Director and co-writer (along with John Kamps) David Koepp aren't even content to make their deceptively simple little movie a linear story. The timeline jumps back and forth to reveal interesting details about this little piece of paper and what it represents. But see, the story of the ticket isn't really that important. What's significant is just how badass these messengers are, winding their way through New York traffic (both standing and moving, vehicles and pedestrians).
There are plenty of death-defying stunts, but the real threat to these messengers in the couple-hour window in which this film takes place is Shannon's character, a desperately messed-up guy who needs that ticket so people he owes money to don't kill him. You kind of feel for the guy because he's so damn entertaining to watch, but he's also a large-caliber prick. However you slice him, he's by far the most entertaining thing in this movie.
Usually this late in August, studios are simply dumping unwanted films into the ether to ready their award-season contenders, but Premium Rush is no dump job. It's 90 minutes of unstoppable action, humor and actors clearly having a ball. This has been a summer where many of the films I most anticipated let me down; so it's nice to know the year still has a surprise or two waiting in the wings. Premium Rush is a metric shit-ton of fun that makes no apologies for anything it may or may not contain. Enjoy the hell out of this one, folks.
