8/17/2023 0 Comments Maximum rushtheaters, 4.1 weeks average run per theater $35,000,000 (worldwide box office is 0.9 times production budget)Ģ,255 opening theaters/2,255 max. This time, someone is actually trying to kill him.ģ.36 (domestic box office/biggest weekend) When Wilee picks up his last envelope of the day on a premium rush run, he discovers this package is different. But a guy who's used to putting his life on the line is about to get more than even he is used to when a routine delivery turns into a life or death chase through the streets of Manhattan. It takes a special breed to ride the fixie - super lightweight, single-gear bikes with no brakes and riders who are equal part skilled cyclists and suicidal nutcases who risk becoming a smear on the pavement every time they head into traffic. Shannon is a great stage actor (his plaintive Astrov in the Soho Rep Uncle Vanya is the finest I’ve ever seen), and his performance here is stylized to the point of being cartoonlike - but without a trace of camp.Dodging speeding cars, crazed cabbies, open doors, and eight million cranky pedestrians is all in a day's work for Wilee, the best of New York's agile and aggressive bicycle messengers. His face is ravaged, his eyes bug out, and when he thinks he has the upper hand he emits a girlish “Hee-hee!” that inevitably transforms into a howl of pain. His Monday is so very lumbering and hapless. Good as Gordon-Levitt is (there’s no fat on him - or his acting), it’s Shannon who earns most of our sympathy. To make certain we have our larger narrative bearings, Koepp uses an onscreen digital clock when flashing back to earlier in the very bad day of Bobby Monday. To make certain we have our larger geographical bearings, Koepp regularly cuts to a grid of Manhattan on which a fat white line displays Wilee’s trajectory. To deliver his package, Wilee needs to get from 116th Street to Doyers, the adorable curvy lane in Chinatown that is here home to both restaurants and Chinese gambling dens. In addition to evoking the cyberlike workings of the modern young brain, the device gives new meaning to the phrase, “The road not taken.” Sherlock Holmes pictures: Our hero, forced to make split-second decisions at busy crosswalks, calculates the outcome of various routes, most of which are lethal and end in the hellish mangling of either Wilee or a random bystander. There’s a wizardly CGI gimmick that tops the one in those lousy Robert Downey Jr. “Can’t stop … Don’t want to either … When I see a guy in a gray business suit … my balls shrivel up.” Zooming through red lights and teeming crosswalks, he is exactly the kind of biker to whom we yell, “We have a walk sign, asshole!” But being as we’re seeing the world through his eyes, we think, “Out of the way, assholes!” I must say that this cuts to the heart of New Yorkers’ moral relativism: On bikes, they think, “Asshole pedestrians!” and “Asshole drivers!” In cars, they think, “Asshole pedestrians!” and “Asshole bikers!” On foot, they think, “Asshole bikers!” and “Asshole drivers!” (Wherever they are, of course, they think, “Asshole critics!”)ĭirector and co-screenwriter David Koepp understands that chase thrillers and farces are sibling-close, and he deftly orchestrates roundelay in and around a precinct house featuring Wilee, Bobby Monday (Shannon), and a pissed-off bicycle cop. “Can’t work in an office,” he says in voice-over while evading numerous, potentially deadly obstacles. Gordon-Levitt’s Wilee does have a life philosophy, but it’s nothing terribly complex. Manhattan has enough pedestrians, drivers, and other bicyclists to fill the screen for a fast 90 minutes. Inevitably there are characters other than the chaser and the one being chased, but there hardly need to be. “It’s premium rush!”) and the bad guy trying to take it from him, a cop (Michael Shannon) with a frightful gambling problem, represents no faction or entity larger than himself. (There is no kidnapped damsel.) The package needing delivery by the bicycle messenger protagonist (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a generic MacGuffin (“Don’t screw up,” calls the dispatcher. There’s little in the way of fancy subtexts or allegorical overtones, and no shocking final twist in which, say, the kidnapped damsel turns out to be a homicidal maniac. Premium Rush is that rare bird: a chase picture that’s just a chase picture - and a dandy one.
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