At least "Premium Rush" gets the "rush" part right.

If you’ve ever wondered if there was a way to make a bicycle chase exciting onscreen (and Lord knows I have…), then your wondering should be put to an end after seeing Premium Rush, as this movie finds a way to make at least three of them pretty darn effective.  While browsing the iTunes store last night on the Apple TV looking for something/anything that I might have missed in the theater earlier this year, I stumbled across this little action-thriller from writer/director David Koepp, the screenwriter of such flicks as Carlito’s Way, Mission: Impossible and the first Spider-Man movie, among others.

It stars Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, who has been one of my favorite actors of the last several years, starting when I saw him in the little-seen Brick several years ago (sorry for being behind the curve, folks, but I never watched “Third Rock from the Sun”), and his more recent roles in this year’s Looper and The Dark Knight Rises has kept me following his work with great interest.  In this flick, he’s Wiley, a former bicycle trick-rider who, after graduating law school, found the prospect of life stuck at a desk so unattractive that he didn’t bother taking the Bar exam and continued his student job as a bicycle courier.  He tells us early on that his bike doesn’t have brakes or gears because hesitating and stopping is always more dangerous than just going all-out, a philosophy that makes him a good courier, but also makes hanging on to his fellow-courier girlfriend pretty difficult.

Desperate for some extra work late one afternoon, Wiley accepts an envelope from his girlfriend’s roommate and is assigned the task of delivering it halfway across New York to an address in Chinatown within three hours.  Wiley doesn’t know he’s holding the claim-check for several thousand bucks in the hands of Chinese mobsters, but crooked cop Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon) sure does, and has every intention of getting his hands on that moolah.  Almost immediately, he’s accosted by Monday, who demands the envelope, but of course, Wiley isn’t about to compromise a job by failing to deliver to the proper recipient (or get pushed around by some “douchebag”), so the chase begins. 

We jump about via flashbacks to different points of the 8-hour day, seeing how all of the characters come to be at the points we find them in Wiley’s adventure.  Koepp’s mix-and-mash chronology is very interesting and does a fairly-good job of fleshing out the characters and their motivations without dragging the narrative to a stop.  The camera stays low to the ground, in a sort of riders’-eye view, showing us Wiley looking several blocks ahead and mentally mapping out how to avoid the perils of opening cab doors and lane-changing delivery trucks.  It seems that all those honking horns we hear whenever we see a movie or a TV show set in New York are ALL meant for bicycle couriers.  These guys might all have a death wish, weaving in and out of insane traffic, dodging pedestrians or piggybacking on school buses and other municipal vehicles when they need an extra mile-per-hour or two, but that very daredevil quality might just be what makes them sorta useful.  They’re paid for speedy delivery, after all.

Some of the other characters might not be as developed as much as you might like (a poor put-upon bicycle traffic cop factors into the story early on, but is sort of dumped from the plot unceremoniously near the end, and without much fanfare), but Michael Shannon deserves some extra mention in that regard.  His portrayal of Detective Monday is yet another entry on his list of roles that make good use of that natural creepiness that always seems to be right behind his eyes.  Monday is so sociopathic that it’s almost comical, and his simmering/steaming/bubbling-over whenever Wiley escapes his grasp gives the movie the combination of smirk and tension that a good action movie just has to have.

Good action movies should take you for a ride, so to speak, and this one does.  Sure, it’s pretty much a “formula” movie, but it’s a well-made one, and would definitely make a great mid-weeknight Netflix or iTunes rental.

A small, but essential, part of the life of "Lincoln"

If you go to see this movie expecting to see much of the Civil War, you’ll be sorely disappointed.  This movie isn’t about the Civil War.  It’s not even about Abraham Lincoln per se, as I’m fairly certain that Lincoln’s life consisted of more than just the first four months of 1865.  One could even make the case the title “Lincoln” is not entirely appropriate, and it instead might should have been named “Passage of the 13^th Amendment,” as this is primarily a film about the political process surrounding that event.  However, if you go to see it expecting to see one of the greatest film actors of our generation giving a tour-de-force performance, your money will be well-spent.

Daniel Day-Lewis amazes me once again, as he so disappears into Abraham Lincoln that I don’t even see the performer.  I was most impressed by his voice – I don’t recall him ever having that speaking voice in any of his roles before, and it’s very different from many of the gruff-voiced portrayals of Lincoln we’ve seen before.  His soft-spoken demeanor and gentle movements wonderfully communicate the kind soul we’ve all believed to inhabit Lincoln.

Steven Spielberg doesn’t show us Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address, or his being murdered at Ford’s Theater.  We’ve seen all that before.  Spielberg shows us Lincoln speaking to a couple of soldiers waiting to board a train, to his secretaries in the middle of the night, to some telegraph operators waiting for his instructions to them, and to General Grant while seated together in rocking chairs on a front porch.  We see him lying on the floor before a fireplace with his youngest son.  We see him fight with his wife, and with his eldest son.  These are the things that humanize Lincoln to us, perhaps more so than any other president.

As we see the job-offering, the favor-promising and the outright bullying involved in his securing the necessary votes to pass the 13^th Amendment, one wonders just how we of this time in history can say that politics is dirtier than ever.  Looked to me like business as usual.  Well, with the possible exception of the bullying being done in much prettier language than our current president’s cronies and stooges used for cramming Obamacare down the country’s throat.  Whenever I see a well-made period-piece film of the 19^th Century, I leave the theater feeling that I missed out on the language of that time.  People were much more well-spoken in those days (or at least educated people were), so much so that even calling someone else the most vile and despicable names, it sounded so much more pleasant.

As usual, Spielberg and his usual cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, have crafted a beautiful film.  The sets and locations here are fantastic and completely convincing (I honestly don’t know how much computer-generated assistance there was in recreating this time and place, if any at all).  I foresee Oscar nominations for photography, set design and costumes without a doubt.  The rest of the notable cast, from Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field to Joseph Gordon-Leavitt and Jared Harris, are excellent as well.

Some folks I know describe the movie’s pace as slow, and while I can understand that sentiment, it seems to have a bit of a negative tone to it that I’m reluctant to agree with it.  “Deliberate” is a better adjective, as the process of politics is a deliberate one (hence parliamentary debate being called “deliberation”).  The movie’s pace was very absorbing, and I was certainly never bored.  Just pay attention, people – if you want a faster pace, rent a Bruce Willis movie.  While this movie may not be the definitive depiction of Abraham Lincoln’s life, it should certainly become the definitive depiction of this event in our nation’s history.