I can’t quite pinpoint why I am not too hot about this generally positively reviewed movie. Maybe I just don’t like to see Chinese getting beaten by a White guy throughout the movie. Or the stereotype of Chinese again being the ones running illegal gambling joints and involved in all sorts of mafia related activities. Maybe I just don’t feel right to see glorified mad cyclists risking their lives and the lives of others for something they enjoy doing. I then ask myself: There are mad motorists in the movies too so why not mad cyclists? I don’t know. I have nothing against cyclists as I was one back in UK. Here in Singapore, I have seen mad cyclists going against the direction of traffic (just like this movie), cutting through lanes in town during rush hours (just like this movie), and even diving into a slip road leading to a highway. When the bad cop in the movie said to Joseph Gordon-Levitt the mad cyclist, “This whole city hates you”. I wanted to leap up and cheer. Momentarily, that zero is my hero.
Cynthia picked Premium Rush because she wanted to see Robin in action. TK couldn’t remember who Joseph Gordon-Levitt was. The Dark Knight Rises? Inception? (500) Days of Summer? I like Joseph Gordon-Levitt in (500) Days of Summer. From the acting performance point of view, Joseph did a great job in Premium Rush. The bike stuns he performed are jaw dropping. There is close to no romance in this movie. The entire movie is about a couple of cyclists rushing packages from one end of town to another. Timeline is altered backward and forward very much like How I Met Your Mother. This keeps the plot interesting throughout the movie. The bad cop – the only villain played by Michael Shannon – is pretty hilarious to watch, albeit borderline psychotically scary. Some scenes are totally unnecessary (like the mobs towards the end) and the entire story from beginning to the end, to me, is rather pointless. A bad cop has killed someone and that’s OK, no hard feeling. He needs the money badly to pay off his debt so he has decided to steal from a woman. A woman needs to transfer a vast amount of cash from point A to point B via an underground bank. A few cyclists who are caught in the middle of all these strange activities. Having said that, the story is rather original, told in a rather unusual way. I can understand why some would enjoy watching Premium Rush.