Dir: David Koepp
Year: 2012
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon
Genre: Action/Thriller
Cert: 12
Premium Rush is about a Messenger biker named Wilee who blazes his way through Manhattan delivering shit for people. He works in a fucking hispter's heaven of a courier place with his girlfriend, Vanessa, who he is having a but of "Couple Trouble" with. His nemesis, Manny is a big massive Terry Crews lookin' bastard who is trying to get with Vanessa, as well as wreck Wilee's head. Shy Chinese college girl, Nima, personally requests that Wilee take the job delivering a very important envelope to Chinatown for her, it must be done by 7pm that night, or something shit will happen. Wilee is unaware that the envelope pretty much contains $50,000, but absolute fucking nutjob, Bobby Monday (Played by tv legend, Michael Shannon, one of the best actors alive now) knows all about that money and is doing his best to hunt Wilee down though the streets of New York to get it back, all in the name of settling his gambling debt. The real kicker is he's actually a cop, which makes it harder for Wilee to get away as he has the whole NYPD against him.
Right, so as you can probably gather from my star rating above, this film is pretty damn good, though it's not amazing. Some of the characters in it are insanely unlikable, characters you're meant to actually like, for instance, the owner of the Courier place in which Wilee works, is a fucking knob end, obviously thrown in as comic relief but fails to do that. In fact yeah, gonna start off with shite I didn't like about the film and then just end this on a good note of the stuff I did. Firstly, he rides a fixie bike, cause he's so "cool". Fucking stupidest inventions ever and look like they're as durable as a biscuit tin. It's supposed to be his niche, he's fearless, has a death wish and doesn't need breaks or gears like the other total lame-o-dick-wad-loserz who use breaks... gnarly... The fact that every courier in the film is a textbook idea of what "cool" and "down to earth" should look like. Basically it's a load of hippies, hipsters and aging Jamaican musicians from what I could tell. Drenched in ridiculous "Trendy" tattoos, pretty sickening I must say... And a particular scene where all the Courier companies, all lead by the way, by fucking chancellors of the hipster alliance, gather all their couriers to create a flash mob, something that before it happened I thought might have been necessary, but ended up being the worst bit of the movie, along with Wilee's very forced giggle.
All that having been said, this was a solid thriller, Shannon completely stole the show as a fucking MANIAC, which is nothing new from him really, but nobody can really pull it off as well as him. He shows his true intimidation when he happily complies to get a beating from the Chinese gangsters who he owes money to, but when his tooth breaks, he decides "Right I don't mind a few slaps, but no broken teeth" And decides to kick the bollocks off the two lads with ease, shows how bad ass he can be, one that as he says "You don't fuck with". Jamie Chung who played Nima I think did a bit of a forced job, you can tell she had a full blown American accent but she tries to Jazz it up a bit with a fake Chinese accent over it, just sounded wrong. Dania Ramirez, who played Vanessa was good in it, though went for the stereotypical, tough Latino girl, a role which James Cameron casts to fucking death. She also had some dialogue which bothered me, was way to informal to her own boyfriend who would know all of this shit anyway, spoon feeding the audience there... JGL ws very good in it, not really pushing the boundaries of his acting ability in this though, pretty straight forward but he does it well (Excluding that fucking giggle). Had a great soundtrack through out it too, Opens and closes with a classic from The Who. Camera work was very good in it, a lot of mounts on the bikes throughout, fairly dynamic and was just an all round fast paced film. A constant GPS style map appears a lot during it, to give an idea of where he needs to go and how far etc. He also seems to have the super power of slowing down time as he recreates instant reaction moments from games like Shenmue (might be a bit of an old reference but any gaming nerd would recognize it and probably spooge in their pants from nostalgia) When he comes to a crossing where there is several routes, he can slow down time and see which is the safest, showing what will happen each time if he chooses those paths, him being smashed by cars, crushing prams etc. He seems to always know the best one. A daft moment but adds to the intensity I suppose.
Over all I thought it was a decent thriller, some fairly edge of your seat moments (bicycle seat that is) and again, a great performance from Michael Shannon, who I can see playing a good few villains after this. on the big screen I mean. The film makes you want to cycle something fierce so if you're into cycling, this film will have your trousers melting and you'll be trying to be just like Wilee... surviving every single spine shattering fall with nothing but a sore elbow... Anyway yeah, I'd recommend this, decent thriller, good action scenes and good performances. 3 bikes out of 5.
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