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Thursday, January 10, 2013

Premium Rush: 2 fast, 2 fixie

You know that moment when a single line from a movie sums up the whole thing perfectly? For Premium Rush, that moment came when Michael Shannon (playing dirty cop, Bobby Monday) drives his sedan recklessly down the street and proclaims, "Haha! I'm chasing a bicycle!"
Fixed the tagline for you
So what more is there to say about this movie? Well, the lovely Joseph Gordon Levitt is NYC bike messenger, Wilee (don't get me started on the name), who is totes hipper than you and rides a fixie with no brakes because "brakes are death!"
Might as well be pulling the trigger on a loaded gun.
This works out for Wilee because he's a savant at figuring out routes through traffic that won't kill him. He also loves telling other people how they should get rid of their brakes and touting his superior bike knowledge, though for some reason he doesn't know how to properly lock up a bike in a way that would prevent anyone from stealing it. But this is movie land and nobody fucks with Wilee's ride.

Due to his mastery at all things bike-realted, Wilee is called to deliver a special envelope. What's inside the envelope you ask? A ticket with a smiley face drawn on it. But it gets better! The ticket is actually worth the cost of smuggling a small Asian child into the U.S.

To clarify, some woman is trying to bring her son to the U.S. illegally because legal channels suck and are slow. So she turns to some seedy, underground Asian banking system that uses recycled paper and Sharpies instead of checks (or any other logical form of currency tracking) to send money to a child smuggler. 
You think I'd trust my money with Wells Fargo? Fuck that
What should be a simple envelope delivery takes a wrong turn when Bobby Monday goes on a mission to steal the ticket. Bobby was gambling in some seedy, underground Asian casino and now he owes them money. To avoid getting his head sliced off with a samurai sword, Bobby tries to steal the ticket to pay off his debt.

Unfortunately for him, Wilee's sweet bike moves and liberal use of the epithet "douchebag" are too much to handle. But eventually Bobby catches a lucky break: Wilee's bike instincts fail him and he gets hit by a car.
See, this is where brakes would have been handy
Bobby somehow convinces the EMTs to let him torture Wilee in the back of the ambulance because he's a cop and cops can do whatever the fuck they want. Bobby uses this time wisely and lectures Wilee on the obnoxiousness of the terms "douchebag" and "suck it", making a plea to spare the kids of America the obscenity.

Along the way to the hospital Bobby asks the EMTs to make a pit stop and let him take the guy that just got hit by a car somewhere other than the emergency room. Naturally they agree. Bobby thinks Wilee is going to give him the ticket, but instead Wilee steals a BMX bike and rides away. Oops!

Wilee finally makes it to the child smuggler and his bike gang helps him out by forming a flash mob in an alley and taunting Bobby for being so terrible at chasing bicycles. And to top it all off and get his sweet revenge, Wilee gets into Bobby's face and says, "Suck it, douchebag." BURN!

After the ticket is delivered the smuggler calls China and the child is allowed to get on a boat to America. Everyone is happy, except Bobby, who promptly gets shot in the head by the Asian casino thugs and dies. The end.
Good job, screenwriters!

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