Shannon rides away with 'Premium Rush'
Let’s just be glad Smell-O-Vision never caught on.
Thankfully, the musky odor of sweaty bike messengers doesn’t emanate from “Premium Rush,” an enjoyable, two-wheeled action film and flashy ode to the subculture of urban couriers.
It’s a silly movie predicated on a simple premise, but “Premium Rush” is satisfying B-movie entertainment — a ride made fun particularly by Michael Shannon’s enthrallingly comic performance as a dirty cop in mad pursuit of a bike messenger’s cargo.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Wilee, a hardened New York City messenger who’s forsaken a promising career in law for the freedom of riding the city’s congested streets. His dispatch (Aasif Mandvi) sends him on a seemingly innocuous delivery, picking up an envelope at Columbia University to be dropped off in Chinatown before 7 p.m.
Like any self-respecting NYC bike messenger, Wilee rides a fixed-gear bike, meaning there’s one speed and no brakes. “Brakes are death” is his mantra. He revels in the art of traffic navigation, pinpointing routes through red lights, sidewalks and crosstown lanes.
Director and co-writer David Koepp is best known as a screenwriter of blockbusters like “Spider-Man” and “Jurassic Park,” but who has sometimes directed. In “Rush,” he charts Wilee’s paths with a “Cash Cab”-like map and represents his split-second decision-making with visualizations of disastrous alternatives.
But Wilee’s pedal artistry is severely tested when a man (Michael Shannon) attempts to intercept his delivery and aggressively pursues him down the West Side. His motivation is initially unclear, but Koepp fills the film with flashbacks to earlier in the day for exposition.
Such time-shifting is often a clunky technique, but Koepp assembles the backstories without hitting too many potholes. The man, Wilee soon learns, is a police officer named Bobby Monday. In flashbacks, we learn that his Pai Gow habit and his temper have gotten him in deep with Chinatown gamblers. He’s caught wind of Wilee’s shipment — an envelope with a ticket good for $50,000 — and hunts it recklessly.
As Wilee — whose name is meant to evoke the coyote, albeit with the Road Runner’s knack for escape — careens through the city, he’s also pursued by a bike cop (stuntman Christopher Place) in a variety of chase scenes.
But is cycling ready for its close-up? “Premium Rush” arrives with some timeliness, a kind of victory lap for the country’s growing cycling culture and New York’s increasingly bike-friendly streets.
Classic movie chase scenes are nearly all of the automotive variety. In one of Shannon’s many fine moments, he curses disgustedly at such flimsy prey: a mere bicycle. But the numerous pursuit sequences are largely riveting. Koepp filmed them without the aid of visual effects and the precarious, unarmored position of a cyclist adds to the thrill: There is skin in the game.
Gordon-Levitt, a wonderful young actor, carries the film easily and does well to capture the gritty underdog mentality of the bike messenger.
But it’s Shannon who doesn’t just steal the film, he towers over it. One of the finest actors around, Shannon’s gifts are best witnessed on the stage or in last year’s excellent “Take Shelter.” He is far more than a great heavy, but he is, nevertheless, a great heavy.
His Detective Monday is a combination of desperation and exasperation, a wide-eyed maniac impatient with rage but not so impatient to make the kind of clever, deranged asides Christopher Walken would appreciate.
In a two-tire film, he’s an 18-wheeler.
