​

Film: Premium Rush

Country: USA

Year of Release: 2012

Director: David Koep

Screenwriters: David Koep, John Kamps

Starring: Joseph Gordon Levitt, Dania Ramirez, Michael Shannon, Jamie Chung

♥♥½

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of my favourite actors to emerge in the last decade or so. His wiry frame and kind, sympathetic face are capable of commanding a strong screen presence, and, given the right role, his casting in a film can raise the tone of proceedings. But there’s that caveat –  ‘given the right role’ – something that Hollywood’s not always fond of doing, particularly if the actor or actress in question is even remotely leftfield. So, while Hollywood has done an enthusiastic job of appropriating the young actor’s substantial talents, Gordon-Levitt doesn’t always get the roles he deserves. He is essentially an indie actor, an amalgam of nuance, charisma and low-key conviction and has produced excellent work in films such as Greg Araki’s Mysterious Skin, Rian Johnson’s Brick and even Christopher Nolan’s sprawling Inception. But in big budget potboilers such as The Dark Knight Rises and Premium Rush, Gordon-Levitt’s luminescence is entirely wasted.

Premium Rush is a poorly titled and even more poorly written Hollywood-produced B-Movie. And in this case, it’s hard to say that the actor’s talents are wasted since Gordon-Levitt doesn’t get much time for acting per sé. He’s too busy weaving in and out of traffic in the meanish streets of Manhattan as a cycle-courier named Wilee, a member of a self-acclaimed elite but effectively marginal sector of society, which, if we are to believe the film, constitute one of New York’s most despised subcultures.

The plot, for what it’s worth, involves Wilee delivering a mysterious envelope across town, while being followed by rotten cop Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon) who is intent on intercepting said delivery. We soon learn that the envelope contains a ‘ticket’, a cheque of sorts, whose delivery is linked to a large sum of money. Quite what the money will be used for remains a mystery for a while, but, like all the elements of the film, everything is gradually explained courtesy of a series of flashbacks, executed in a style that might have excited a decade or so ago, but now simply feels like an approving nod to the generic.

With the help of a number of his colleagues, Wilee negotiates the twists and turns of the Manhattan grid, all the time avoiding the malignant clutches of Monday, as well as the more benign attention of another cycle-bound law enforcement officer. The result, which could have been thrilling had the filmmakers concentrated on more than choreography, is reasonably engaging but also thoroughly mediocre. There’s little to make us care about the fate of Wilee and his friends, all the less so considering that this is the kind of film in which we don’t doubt for a second that our humble cycle-messenger will emerge triumphant.

That said, when I left the cinema and negotiated the Musgrave Centre parking lot and the subsequent journey to town for a quick curried lunch, I did indeed feel a sense of vehicular urgency and felt a little as if I could turn on the proverbial dime in my not exactly slimline old Merc. But if I had been playing a racing video game for an hour-and-a-half, I would have felt pretty much the same way.

Premium Rush is all rhyhthm and pace, something that it achieves with a modicum of flair and some impressive cinematography. But in terms of emotional content, which is really the thing that drives all great thrillers – we have to care about the outcome for a movie to function properly – the film comes up empty-handed. Gordon-Levitt delivers as well as he can considering the thinness of both the script and the story line, but he is surrounded by a clutch of anaemic but over-acted performances, all of which would feel more at home in a middling television series. Despite the vaguely life-and-death nature of being a cycle-courier, his fellow actors behave more like they’re auditioning as extras for a remake of Fame.

In fact the real star of the film is Manhattan itself and its rich web of roads, bridges, flyovers and back alleys, against which director David Koep and cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen have a whale of a time executing their two-wheeled choreography. But even this celebration of the densely mobile urban vernacular feels a little short on pizzazz. Technically everything is there action-wise, but the spirit is weak.

That said, if you’re after 90 minutes of visceral thrills, you could do far worse. But, like so much of the well-produced commercial dross that clogs our cinematic arteries, Premium Rush will suffer little from being viewed on DVD rather than the big screen.