But even he can’t prop up someone as weak as Ramirez, amateurish in the role of Wilee’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, Vanessa. No such problems for Gordon-Levitt, who proves he’s the best actor on two wheels, pedaling furiously to save a grueling ride from becoming more tiresome. The sleek racing bikes have more pizzazz than Ramirez and Parks, both of whom find it difficult to handle the multitask of acting and riding. The only people more hapless than the fuzz are the two actors, Dania Ramirez and Wole Parks, abetting Gordon-Levitt’s Wilee (as in Coyote) in his quest to overcome crazed cops, crabby cabbies and a lame script by director David Koepp and fellow Wisconsinite, John Kamps, in order to deliver the precious envelop. Cue endless scenes of daredevil cyclists performing death-defying stunts, as Monday and his unwitting brethren literally fall flat on their scratched-up faces trying to stop them. Well, folks, they are what “Premium Rush” unconvincingly portrays as heroes in a race to beat the clock and deliver a cash voucher to human traffickers before Shannon’s desperately in-arrears Detective Bobby Monday can intercept them and claim the hefty dough for himself. You know, the people you secretly wish would end up under the back of a truck as they whoosh by on the sidewalk at 30 mph. But that won’t make it any easier for their fans to digest a dull, pointless exercise about a segment of society that Shannon’s character, a misanthropic NYPD black sheep, rightfully says, “the whole city hates.” Yes, friends, that would be bike messengers: those lovable lugs who’d rather flatten pedestrians than deliver a corporate missive one second late. No one survives the resulting carnage, not even slumming stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon, both of whom abandon their indie-film street cred long enough to cash a large check in service of a big, dumb, lumbering Hollywood stinker. It juts all over the place, but never really goes anywhere, as it wobbles in and out of Manhattan traffic before justly crashing into a heap. But for the cinematically discounted days of late summer, it's a perfectly diverting little ride.The bike messenger opus “Premium Rush” is the action movie equivalent of high-speed cycling on wonky wheels. Throwing "premium" into the title may be overselling such a trifling entertainment. Arguably best of all, the movie completes its delivery in a swift 91 minutes. And there are many, many scenes of people riding bicycles with extreme prejudice. Shannon plays a villain more pitiable than frightening, a compulsive gambler who sneers and whinges his way through the film in a nasal, vaguely Cagneyesque tenor. Gordon-Levitt is his typical likable self. Like that early Chris Evans vehicle, Premium Rush doesn't aim terribly high but manages to hit its marks with reasonable accuracy. Judged against its modest ambitions, the movie is successful in a straightforward, middle-concept, Cellular kind of way. But the primary purposes of the title seem to be to advertise Wilee's adrenal addiction to urban biking, to hope that we will share his zeal, and to invite intellectual-property lawsuits. Thrown into the mix are a bike-messenger ex-girlfriend (Dania Ramirez), a bike-messenger competitor for her affections (Wole Parks), a bike-cop (Christopher Place), a Columbia student with a secret (Jamie Chung), and a couple of Chinese gangsters.Īs cited in the film, the term "premium rush" is shorthand for an especially well-compensated delivery. Wiley is given an envelope to deliver that is More Than It Seems and winds up being chased around Manhattan by a dirty cop (Michael Shannon) who wants its contents. (He argues that they cause more accidents than they prevent I can only hope that the attorneys at Columbia Pictures are well prepared for a future class-action suit.)Ĭo-written and directed by screenplay superstar David Koepp, Premium Rush is slight to the point of evanescence. A graduate of Columbia Law School, Wilee has nonetheless eschewed the bar in favor of the bike-specifically, a stripped down, fixed-gear steel frame with no brakes. Gordon-Levitt stars as Wilee-nicknamed, inevitably, "the coyote"-a twentysomething whose choice of profession, current unemployment figures notwithstanding, is a consequence of enthusiasm, not necessity. Of course, unlike the bike messenger in question, none of these innocent bystanders is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, so he's got that going for him. The 'Greatest Films Ever' Includes Nothing From the Past 40 Years?
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