Premium Rush is an action movie. A very simple one at that, but the cycling scenes are very well done. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is very believable as a New York City bike messenger; he looks the part along with his main squeeze Vanessa (Dania Ramirez). He's always up against an impossible route on the road or an impossible time limit to meet, but that's when you know a movie is good, isn't it? When you're willing to go for a ride through the hills and the valleys even when you know the outcome is straight ahead.
Michael Shannon plays the dirty cop complete with a manic frenzied attitude. He provides a decent amount of the comedy in the movie, but the jury is still out as to whether or not he was a good movie villain. A "good" movie villain would of course be a bad person, but one who is so evil that you're rooting for them to lose just as much as you're rooting the hero to win.
He's a dirty cop because he's using all the tricks in the book to get the envelope that our hero is carrying. A friend of his, Nime (Jamie Chung) has a family emergency and needs to get a special piece of paper to the right people in Chinatown. Once this is revealed, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character becomes much more humanized as he doesn't just risk his life for his job, but for his friend.
The direction for the movie is, for the most part, simple which matches the simplistic premise. It can get carried away with the slow-motion crashes, or highlighting the paths on the road which are most dangerous, almost as dangerous and not quite as dangerous. But Premium Rush succeeds in taking us along for the ride with one of the best actors of his generation.
Michael Shannon plays the dirty cop complete with a manic frenzied attitude. He provides a decent amount of the comedy in the movie, but the jury is still out as to whether or not he was a good movie villain. A "good" movie villain would of course be a bad person, but one who is so evil that you're rooting for them to lose just as much as you're rooting the hero to win.
He's a dirty cop because he's using all the tricks in the book to get the envelope that our hero is carrying. A friend of his, Nime (Jamie Chung) has a family emergency and needs to get a special piece of paper to the right people in Chinatown. Once this is revealed, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character becomes much more humanized as he doesn't just risk his life for his job, but for his friend.
The direction for the movie is, for the most part, simple which matches the simplistic premise. It can get carried away with the slow-motion crashes, or highlighting the paths on the road which are most dangerous, almost as dangerous and not quite as dangerous. But Premium Rush succeeds in taking us along for the ride with one of the best actors of his generation.