Premium Rush (12A) 91 mins ***
Post-The Dark Knight Rises, the campaign to
turn the likable Joseph Gordon-Levitt into a bona fide leading man shifts up a
gear. The much-anticipated Looper
arrives in two weeks; first, there’s this pedal-to-the-metal actioner in which
Gordon-Levitt plays a cocky Manhattan bike messenger heading rapidly for a
fall. Wilee (“like the coyote”) is having a bad enough day trying to salvage
his relationship when a nervy client hands him an ordinary-looking envelope.
Not ordinary enough, alas: soon he’s being pursued by a car containing the
ferociously beep-beeping Michael Shannon, a dirty cop whose eyes are set very
firmly on our boy’s package.
Savvy
writer-director David Koepp – he penned Jurassic
Park and Spider-Man – treats it
as a live-action cartoon, scrolling the clock around and cutting to
satnav-vision in a bid to maintain maximum velocity. He’s cast actors you’d
want to keep up with: railing against backpacks and bad language on TV, Take Shelter’s Shannon is just having a blast here. The film’s essentially BMX Bandits with some Red Bull in the
tank – that tame 12A is about right – but it’s still wise to the pleasures of
watching a hero flat-foot his pursuers with a well-timed bunny-hop. If Messrs.
Hoy, Storey and Pendleton hadn’t done enough to make cycling seem sexy, this
might well do the trick.
Premium Rush opens nationwide today.
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