Joseph Gordon-Levitt IS in a PREMIUM RUSH (August 24, 2012)

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDpbgIR300g[/youtube]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt crashed his bike into the back window of a taxi in
New York on Aug. 3 (31 stitches!)

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2010/08/05/2010-08-05_inception_actor_joseph_gordonlevitt_receives_31_stitches_after_crashing_bike_int.html

http://hitrecordjoe.tumblr.com/post/886108201/my-first-real-wreck-today-busted-through-the

Ok, ok, don't have a heart attack, or something--

Well, finally--
It's been a long time coming!!

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn6ie1zCkZU[/youtube]
Uploaded by SonyPictures on Sep 15, 2011


http://www.premiumrush.com/

Also posted in the Chez Tremblay thread, JGL JGL JGL (a thread for Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,45560.msg630740/topicseen.html#msg630740

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/premium-rush-movie-review-joseph-gordon-levitt-364961






Premium Rush
Film Review
Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a bike messenger targeted by
a crooked cop in director David Koepp's asphalt-action tale.

The Bottom Line:
Real stunts are the rule in
chase-heavy bike-messenger film.

by John DeFore
6:00 AM PDT 8/23/2012





An asphalt-action tale as unadorned as the fixed-gear cycle its hero rides, David Koepp's Premium Rush  supplies just enough dramatic rationale to set a series of Manhattan bike chases in motion and then follows without pretending it cares much about anything beyond the adrenaline. A quick pace and always-enjoyable lead Joseph Gordon-Levitt will please moviegoers, even if the pic's ticking-clock approach isn't as invigoratingly pulpy here as in the Koepp-penned Snake Eyes  and Panic Room.

Gordon-Levitt plays Wilee, a law student-turned-bike messenger who blew off the bar in favor of battling traffic for peanuts. His bike, lacking fancy gear-shifts or even a brake, is dumb steel compared to the slick cycles his co-workers ride, but Wilee and the film embrace its stubborn brand of constantly forward motion as an existential imperative.
 
Sent uptown to his alma mater, Columbia University, to fetch an envelope destined for Chinatown, Wilee becomes the target of a bad cop (Michael Shannon) bent on stealing the package, which contains a marker for $50,000, intended as payment for smuggling a refugee from China to the U.S. Koepp's script, co-written by John Kamps, zips back in time occasionally to explain itself -- showing, for instance, how the package's sender, a Chinese Columbia student (Jamie Chung) who happens to be the roommate of Wilee's girlfriend (Dania Ramirez), wound up fretfully entrusting this valuable slip of paper to a daredevil on two wheels.

But the main attraction of these narrative detours is the time they afford us with Shannon, who chews scenery while accumulating massive debt in Chinatown gambling dens, then desperately setting out to repay it by intercepting Wilee's package. Shannon and Aasif Mandvi (as Wilee's dispatcher) are high points in a supporting cast that otherwise fails to add much to one-note roles.
 
Gordon-Levitt sets aside much of his boyish charm to play a character who relies less on wit than nerve. As he hurtles down New York streets, the actor's alert eyes are as vital in conveying the kinetic geography as is Mitchell Amundsen's camera, and Koepp's occasional time-outs -- stopping action to visualize possible routes through vehicle-and-pedestrian chaos before settling on the least hazardous one -- are effective in getting us on Wilee's hyper-perceptive wavelength.

Whether Wilee is being chased by Shannon's unmarked cop car, trying to catch up to competitive co-worker Manny (Wole Parks, who with a bit more charisma could have made a mark here) or dodging the odd out-of-nowhere cab door, the cycling action is consistently invigorating, clearly relying on actual stunt work instead of CG (and recalling a time when that would have gone without saying).
 
Although he cheats his geography from time to time (weaseling Harlem's elevated train tracks into scenes set farther downtown, say), Koepp clearly enjoys setting his action on actual NYC streets. For all the gains planners and activists have made in carving bike lanes into the city's grid, it's strangely comforting to see that some riders will always find exciting ways to make them unsafe.


 
Production: Pariah
 
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Dania Ramirez, Wole Parks, Jamie Chung, Aasif Mandvi
 
Director: David Koepp
 
Screenwriter: David Koepp, John Kamps
 
Producer: Gavin Polone
 
Executive producer: Mari-Jo Winkler
 
Director of photography: Mitchell Amundsen
 
Production designer: Therese DePrez
 
Music: David Sardy
 
Costume designer: Luca Mosca
 
Editors: Derek Ambrosi, Jill Savitt
 
Rated PG-13, 90 minutes

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/joseph-gordon-levitt-premium-rush-don-jons-addiction-365011





Joseph Gordon-Levitt Talks
Biking, Robin and Directing
as NYC Messengers Go Wild
The busy star held court on the red carpet at the
"Premium Rush" premiere, which was filled with
real-life road jockeys.

by Jordan Zakarin
7:02 AM PDT 8/23/2012





It may have been Joseph Gordon-Levitt and David Koepp's premiere, but they shared Wednesday night in [NYC's] Union Square with a rowdy crowd of bike messengers. Call it a little extra dash of on-location authenticity for the pair's new movie, Premium Rush.

The first handful of rows in the theater were taken up by the spandex-and-shorts-clad road warriors; they cheered loudly and threw popcorn into the crowd whenever one of their own made one of many cameos in the film, in which Gordon-Levitt plays an adrenaline-seeking former law student who races around town on a fixed speed, no-breaks bike in a life-or-death delivery struggle with corrupt cop Michael Shannon.
 
As impressive as he was on two wheels -- even with four professional stuntmen to help him with the more insane feats of road bravery -- the 31-year old actor admitted he wasn't yet up to the level of the pros in his midst.

"I would have to practice a little more," he laughed when asked if he could deliver parcels in Manhattan for a living. "I got pretty good riding a bike, shooting Premium Rush,  I was riding every day for a number of months, but I would not claim to be as skilled or as in shape as the real guys. They're really special."
 
The task of biking 12 hour days in New York City summer heat was a physical challenge for Gordon-Levitt, but as he told THR,  his most recent project was even harder, in a whole different way: directing his first film, Don Jon's Addiction,  which just wrapped filming in New Jersey.
 
"It's sort of a current-day Don Juan story," he offered. "Scarlett Johansson is in it, Julianne Moore is in it, Tony Danza over there plays my dad," he continued, nodding over to a glad-handing Danza, who was clad in an NYPD t-shirt underneath a blazer as he took questions from a very familiar media corps.
 
"I wrote it, directed it, acted in it, and we're editing it now," Gordon-Levitt explained. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, and probably the most fun."

One other seemingly difficult task? Even as fans and the blogosphere speculated about it for nearly a year, keeping it a secret that his John Blake character in The Dark Knight Rises  *SPOILER ALERT* is actually Robin.
 
"Well, I like going into movies not knowing what's going to happen, so I didn't want to spoil it, so it wasn't that difficult," he said. As for whether people he was badgered by questions about the mystery super identity, he laughed, "People do keep asking me over and over."
 
Still, even with a potential Bat-spinoff on the horizon ("It sounds like fun" he said with a grin to a TV reporter), and upcoming single-word, L-titled films such as Looper  and Lincoln  on the coming marquees, Gordon-Levitt was firmly focused on the night's main attraction; as a Columbia alumnus (both in real life and in the film), it was like a homecoming.
 
It was much the same for his co-star in the film, Dania Ramirez, who spent time growing up and working in New York City, and said the experience of making the film changed her perception of the messengers.
 
"I thought of them as these sort of badass people, individuals riding around New York City, not really paying attention so much," she admitted. "And then I realize that by playing a bike messenger and having to ride a bike myself around the city, that it's really pedestrians not paying attention, and it's the bike messenger's job is really having to be alert. Because they have to watch the traffic, the cops, the people walking, there's so much that goes into it, and you're not in a car so you're not really being protected."
 
She also gave a nod to the excited front-row crowd.
 
At first, she told THR,  "I saw [bike messengers] as individuals, and now I see them as a community, and that's something I didn't know. It was nice to find out that, within themselves, they're really tight, really united.
 
"There's a whole subculture, and there's a whole community, not only bike messengers but cyclists in general," she explained. "We ended up having to hang out with the bike messengers and do our research and watch documentaries, just to make sure we captured them in a very realistic way."

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/movies/premium-rush-starring-joseph-gordon-levitt.html?_r=0



Movie Review
NYT Critics' Pick
No Breaks for a Rider in a Hurry
‘Premium Rush,’ Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt

by MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: August 23, 2012


Joseph Gordon-Levitt in "Premium Rush."




Dania Ramirez in "Premium Rush."




Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon in "Premium Rush."



Pushing pedal to the mettle and its breezily thin, goofy story to the breaking point, “Premium Rush” provides just about all the late summer air-conditioned relief you could hope for. It’s buoyant dumb-fun, a ticking-clock thriller about a New York bicycle messenger who has to get from here to there without being taken out. Stuffed with zingers and zippy stunts, it comes with pretty young things of all hues and hair types — few prettier than its lead, Joseph Gordon-Levitt — and start-to-finish clever special effects, none more clever or special than Michael Shannon. If you want to see a political undertow in its urban band of multicultural renegades, there’s that for the taking too.

Mr. Shannon, having grabbed the Crazy Man baton from Christopher Walken, enters, teeth gnashing, eyes bulging, to play Bobby Monday, a bad, bad New York detective. Monday has a gambling problem and, as he freely confesses, issues with impulse control. He’s also a big-time loser who’s deep in dangerous debt. His deliverance may come in a mysterious chit that will lead to a payout that, in turn, involves a money-lending outfit; a visiting student, Nima (Jamie Chung); some cuteness back in mainland China; and other easily forgotten particulars. None of these story bits matter much because it’s the telling and not the tale — along with Mr. Gordon-Levitt’s innate appeal, Mr. Shannon’s volatile menace and a certain je ne say what — that makes the movie pop.

The chit ends up with Wilee (Mr. Gordon-Levitt), who has to race it from uptown to down while biking a gantlet of darting cars, buses, trucks and pedestrians, and dodging Bobby Monday and other obstacles, including the obligatory girl trouble, Vanessa (Dania Ramirez). Wilee, who zigs, zags and rarely stops — the camera flying parallel with him or perched on his handlebars or next to his feet — is also known as Coyote, as in Wile E. Coyote, a moniker that makes sense even if he’s closer to Road Runner without the beep, beep. But then Wilee, no surprise, is too cool for beeps or, for that matter, gears. He rides a fixie, a bike with only a single gear secured to the rear wheel.

Like some fixie devotees, Wilee also rides without brakes, a choice that’s branded by other characters in the movie as reckless and maybe evidence of a death wish. But it also registers on screen — as when Wilee, like a groovier or at least thinner Fred Flintstone, skids to a stop using only his skill and sneakered feet — as the ultimate in authenticity. To a degree, the director, David Koepp, has tried to mirror the DIY ethos of fixed-gear devotees by using real rather than digital stunts and effects. There are digital cars and occasional passers-by scattered amid the remarkably clean streets of New York — as well as a lot of interstitial Google-map-style sections that zoom out for an aerial view and in for the street view — but most of the imagery is analogue. The movie tries hard to look real.

An embrace of the real has become a recurrent element in contemporary action cinema, with digitally created and enhanced spectacle being deployed alongside actual bodies moving through, bouncing off and slamming into the physical world. These practical stunts function somewhat like collecting vinyl records, taking up sewing, baking your own bread, handwriting thank you notes and stripping down your Schwinn in that they’re reassuring totems of a reality that at times seems to be disappearing in the slipstream of digital ones and zeros. When Wilee pumps up a steep Central Park hill, Mr. Gordon-Levitt’s straining muscles, pouring sweat and heavy breathing function as visible evidence of both the actor’s hard physical labor and his actual (not avatar) being.

Those screaming muscles, of course, also show that Wilee has the guts and lasting power to take the movie to its inevitable end. (Why he doesn’t just hitch a ride on the subway, though, is a mystery.) Mr. Koepp, with help from the bike-nation cavalry, gets him there easily. A writer on a number of heavyweight hits ("Jurassic Park,” etc.), Mr. Koepp has also directed a handful of dark, twisty thrillers. He showed a lighter directorial touch with his last effort, “Ghost Town,” a screwballish comedy with ghosts, and has continued to let in air and light with “Premium Rush.” Working from a loose, casually funny script he wrote with John Kamps, Mr. Koepp has found the right balance here between genre seriousness and un-self-seriousness to turn the disposable into the enjoyable.


“Premium Rush” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Vehicular and gun violence.

Premium Rush

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by David Koepp; written by Mr. Koepp and John Kamps; director of photography, Mitchell Amundsen; edited by Jill Savitt and Derek Ambrosi; music by David Sardy; production design by Thérèse DePrez; costumes by Luca Mosca; produced by Gavin Polone; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes.

WITH: Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Wilee), Michael Shannon (Bobby Monday), Dania Ramirez (Vanessa), Jamie Chung (Nima), Wolé Parks (Manny), Aasif Mandvi (Raj), Henry O (Mr. Leung) and Christopher Place (Bike Cop).

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.vulture.com/2012/08/movie-review-premium-rush.html


Edelstein on Premium Rush :
When a Chase Picture
Is Thankfully Just a Chase Picture

By David Edelstein
Today at 3:00 PM

Premium Rush  is that rare bird: a chase picture that’s just a chase picture — and a dandy one. 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. (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. “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. Inevitably there are characters other than the chaser and the one being chased, but there hardly need to be. Manhattan has enough pedestrians, drivers, and other bicyclists to fill the screen for a fast 90 minutes.
 
Gordon-Levitt’s Wilee does have a life philosophy, but it’s nothing terribly complex. “Can’t work in an office,” he says in voice-over while evading numerous, potentially deadly obstacles. “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!”)

Director 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. There’s a wizardly CGI gimmick that tops the one in those lousy Robert Downey Jr. 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. In addition to evoking the cyberlike workings of the modern young brain, the device gives new meaning to the phrase, “The road not taken.”

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. 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 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. Good as Gordon-Levitt is (there’s no fat on him — or his acting), it’s Shannon who earns most of our sympathy. His Monday is so very lumbering and hapless. 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. 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. Seeing his Astrov and his Monday back to back, I can’t help putting them together and imagining something really, really big — the best Macbeth of his generation?

[Mandy21]

I finally saw this on DVD, and I really enjoyed it.  I went in expecting a fluff film, but it actually had some pretty good substance to it.  I was rooting for JGL and all the messengers, of course, and the sweet Asian girl with the dilemma.  As I've never been to New York, it was like being on a whirlwind tour too, which was a bonus.  I especially enjoyed the "making of" featurettes on the disk, with Joseph doing a lot of talking about his role and the fun he had making it.  I'd give it 5/10, worth a look.