Back in the 70s & 80s, several movies featuring bicycles titillated the small sub-culture of cyclists. Paul Newman rode carried Barbara Hershey around on the handlebars of one of the first “safety” bikes of the 1890s in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In Breaking Away, a very young Dennis Quaid, Jackie Earle Haley and Daniel Stern ably assisted Denis Christopher in his Italy-obsessed quest to win the Little 500. Kevin Bacon, in Quicksilver, added to his palmeres as a bicycle messenger in San Francisco. Rae Dawn Chong sag’d for Kevin Costner through Colorado National Monument in American Flyers, with David Marshal Grant’s life-threatening illness presaging both Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong’s health scares.
Premium Rush may be the bike movie ever. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a fixie riding law school dropout bike messenger who’s carrying an immigrant’s Dream in his bag, keeping it safe from a dirty cop on the run from the Russian mob and a debt to Chinese gangsters. Navigating the gritty streets of NYC haven’t been so much fun since Niko Belic was cruising in Grand Theft Auto IV. The potholes and manic crush reminds one of the madness of a spring cycling classic, like Paris-Roubaix.
For two-wheel junkies, the bicycle chase and race action occupies fully one third of the film. Along the way, we gain insight into how urban cyclists think about and anticipate traffic. A 2002 memoir by former messenger Travis Culley described that feeling of living 30-45 seconds in the future, knowing what each car would be doing before it actually happened, and altering his course based on that future knowledge. Dooring, scattered pedestrians and pigeons, and a race through Central Park all get supporting roles. Bikes featured include Gordon-Levitt’s fixie, arch rival Wole Parks’ wide-rimmed racer, police mountain bikes (the new mounted patrolmen), even Danny MacCaskill, credited as a stunt rider, doing his unique video game inspired antics inside an NYPD impound lot. The actors actually look like they spend all day biking streets of Manhattan.
The plot is a non-stop crime thriller. Bad Guy Michael Shannon has ample reason to risk everything chasing down the messengers. And Jaime Chung, as Gordon-Levitt’s girlfriends’ roommate, provides the ultimate motivation for all the mayhem. Writer-Director David Koepp knows the action genre well; he’s worked on the screenplays for Mission Impossible I, Spider-Man, Panic Room, Snake Eyes, and Jurassic Park. He has clearly learned the fine art of providing a coherent eye during the chaos in any split-second thriller. Premium Rush has a fine cinematic sheen, using both a real time format and Rashomon-style multiple viewpoints to widen the story.
Satisfying to both cycling afficiandos and action film junkies, Premium Rush is out now on DVD and well worth an evening on the couch.