With that structure, of course “Premium Rush” ends up being exciting—but though it’s only 91 minutes long, it sometimes feels listless because the plot is so sparse. (And don’t try asking logical questions like how the bike messengers afford NYC rent on only $80 a day—those wonderments won’t be answered.) Ultimately, “Premium Rush” is invigorating without being investing, so you feel tired for Joseph Gordon-Levitt as he races around all of Manhattan, pumping those legs so furiously, but that exhaustion won’t stick with you afterward. “Premium Rush” comes and goes, picking you up and then dropping you off without a glance backward.
Bike messenger Wilee (Gordon-Levitt, of “The Dark Knight Rises,” “50/50,” “Inception,” “Hesher,” and “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”) is pretty philosophical about his profession: “I don’t like wearing suits. I like to ride. … Can’t stop. Don’t want to, either.” Riding a fixed gear, steel frame bike with no brakes, Wilee (pronounce it like the Coyote) is an adrenaline junkie with no need to take the bar exam, even though he attended Columbia University Law; instead, he makes a few dozen dollars a day delivering packages, weaving through traffic, battling pedestrians, and evading cops.
Wilee is amazing—he swerves, he jumps, he calculates possible riding scenarios and accidents in his head like The Terminator assessing a situation—but his personal life, not so much. There’s no mention of any family, and he’s competitive to a fault, locked in a rivalry with nemesis rider Manny (Wolé Parks) that keeps him from attending girlfriend Vanessa’s (Dania Ramirez, of “American Reunion”) graduation. So things are already rocky when he accepts a package from Vanessa’s roommate, Nima (Jamie Chung, of “The Hangover Part II,” “Sucker Punch,” and “Grown Ups”), and immediately starts being tailed by homicidal, rage-filled detective Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon, of “Machine Gun Preacher,” “Jonah Hex,” and “The Runaways”).
Monday has a problem with impulse control, which means when he trails Wilee in his unmarked police car, chances are he’s aiming to kill the guy. And since he’s a corrupt cop, he has no problem covering up his crimes or blackmailing others into forgiving his gambling addiction. It’s just that Monday’s in deep now, with $17,000 owed to an underground Chinese gambling ring, and the package Wilee’s carrying just may clean Monday’s slate. So wiping Wilee off the face of the earth? No problem.
Thus begins a cat-and-mouse chase that sees Wilee riding against the flow of traffic, cutting off countless cars, going through restaurants and alleys, and tangling with another NYPD officer (Christopher Place, who also did stunts for the film, as well as for “The Dark Knight Rises,” “The Lucky One,” “21 Jump Street,” “Man on a Ledge,” and “Captain America: The First Avenger”). Oh right, and he’s also sparring with Manny, who is trying to make the moves on Vanessa, and with Vanessa herself, who can’t understand why Wilee lives life so recklessly.
That’s a bunch of plot threads for such a short film, and that’s why the characters are so thinly sketched—you don’t have any backstories, really. The only way to deal with so many subplots is for director David Koepp, who co-wrote the film with John Kamps, to jump backward in time to explain the story. That device causes narratives to overlap and eventually link together, so character motivations make sense—as you would hope from Koepp, who has been writing for more than 20 years and is responsible for dozens of films, including “Jurassic Park,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Spider-Man,” and “War of the Worlds.” It’s only through his expertise that the film’s machinations aren’t totally laughable.
But the script’s straightforwardness, Gordon-Levitt’s charm (as always, he’s wonderfully likeable, with the best dimples around), and Shannon’s insanely intense performance (he cackles, he screams, and he has no problem threatening defenseless women) don’t add up to “Premium Rush” being flawless. Every few scenes, Wilee’s routes are shown in a Google Maps-like way, with points A and B and a yellow line in between; only New York City viewers would recognize or care about those detailed paths, though—for the rest of us, the gimmick is repetitive and unnecessary. And the ticking clock, while it allows Koepp to explore the film’s events from varying points of view, keeps the film in a sustained sense of faux suspense. Every chase is important! Every race means something! When everything is presented as super-important, the really forward-moving moments don’t matter as much.
And “Premium Rush” suffers most at its conclusion, with an ending that forces us to accept the unity of the bike messenger community. Such camaraderie isn’t really presented beforehand, though, and the finale feels wholly ripped off from the similarly underground-as-mainstream 1995 film “Hackers.” “Premium Rush” is slicker and more thrilling than that flick starring a young Angelina Jolie and her first husband Jonny Lee Miller, but this Gordon-Levitt vehicle is like a melting summer ice cream cone—good while it lasts, and then it’s gone.
