Premium Rush – Review

4/5 – Quite a rush!

I finally caught Premium Rush on Blu-ray this week. I missed it when it was in the theaters. Now that I’ve seen it, I wish I had seen it earlier. I remember not being that excited for it in the theater thanks to the trailer, which it turns out did not do this movie justice.

Premium Rush is an excellent thriller. I wouldn’t have expected a movie that takes place mostly on bicycles to be that entertaining, but Premium Rush really is great. The movie is told mostly in real time, between 5:30 PM and 7:30 PM on a weekday evening. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Wilee, a bike messenger with what appears to be a death wish. Granted, anyone who is a bike messenger in New York City is taking their life in their hands every day on the job, but Wilee lives at the edge. He doesn’t have brakes on his bike. He speeds through busy intersections and rides between buses.

Wilee picks up a package that gets him in a mess of trouble. It turns out there’s a McGuffin in this envelope that a bad man would like to get his hands on. It’s the bad guy in the movie, Bobby Monday (played by Michael Shannon), that was the only low point in the movie for me. At times, it just seemed like Shannon was overacting his part. But after watching the bonus features, it seems Michael Shannon might be like that in real life too, just full of crazed energy. So maybe I have to rescind this complaint.

Wole Parks does an awesome job as the other main antagonist in the movie, Wilee’s nemesis Manny. Manny is Wilee’s opposite in many ways. He wears a helmet, has brakes on his variable speed bike and trains daily, while Wilee thinks brakes will get you killed and rides a fixed gear, steel frame bike.

They’re chasing the ice cream man.

There are a few really cool chase sequences in the movie each involving a bicycle vs. something else. Bike vs. bike, bike vs. car, bike vs. pedestrian, they’re all done great. Director David Koepp does a really good job in the bonus features explaining how he wanted the bike chase sequences to each be very different from each other, and that’s what led them to having the bike face off against different modes of transportation.

My favorite of the chase sequences was the first one, with Wilee on his bike being pursued by Monday in his car. During this chase, a bicycle cop goes after Wilee as well. The bikes can go in places that cars can’t, which Koepp takes full advantage of.

It was also very cool to see Wilee’s point of view as he approaches a busy intersection. His decisions on different routes are mapped out on screen, showing which ways are perilous and which one will will work. The decision takes place in a split-second, but it was very cool seeing it mapped out like that.

It looked like at least 95% of this movie was shot on location. They are all over Manhattan, usually on the streets. It was very cool seeing actual New York City all over this movie. I felt like some of the geography didn’t match up during a couple of the chases, but for the most part, they were accurate.

Premium Rush is one of those rare movies where I recommend watching the special features after the movie. They are both very well done and definitely add to the experience of watching the movie.

Five people played Wilee in total throughout Premium Rush!

I wonder if Premium Rush is helping or hurting bike sales in New York City. After watching the movie, I plan on sticking to the subway.

Yeah…I think I’ll walk.

If I were to rank Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s movies from 2012, I’d rank them Looper, then The Dark Knight Rises, then Premium Rush, then Lincoln. How would you rank them? All-in-all, I scored those four movies 17/20 combined. That might make JGL the actor of the year for Tuesday Night Movies.

Oscars Rage!!

What!? Are you kidding me?!

Pardon the rage. The Oscar nominations came out today. I don’t always agree with the nominations, but this year seems particularly egregious.

I have four major problems with this year’s Oscar nominations:

Ben Affleck gets snubbed for Directoring. I was shocked to find out Ben Affleck wasn’t nominated for Directoring. Did you see Argo? If you did, I’m guessing it’s easily in the top five movies you saw this year. It is the best of the movies I’ve seen that was nominated for Best Picture, and the second best movie I’ve seen this year. After seeing the Best Picture nominees, Argo seemed like a shoe-in for the Best Picture winner. But the last time a movie won Best Picture without the director being nominated for Directoring was Driving Miss Daisy in 1989.

I would definitely nominate Ben Affleck for Argo over Steven Spielberg for Lincoln. And I’d give Ben the award too.

Lincoln gets 12 nominations. Lincoln was a good movie. It was not a great movie. Daniel Day Lewis was awesome in it and deserves to win Actor in a Leading Role. He deserves every bit of praise he gets for playing Lincoln.

But Tommy Lee Jones? No way. I loved Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln, but that’s because I love Tommy Lee Jones, and in Lincoln, Tommy Lee Jones was playing Tommy Lee Jones as a senator. Tommy Lee Jones is the new Jack Nicholson. You can put him in any role you want, but chances are you’re going get Tommy Lee Jones playing Tommy Lee Jones. Like I said, I love Tommy Lee Jones, but I don’t think he should have been nominated.

I saw three movies that Joseph Gordon Levitt was in this year. Out of the three, Lincoln came in third place. I don’t think Lincoln should have been nominated for Best Picture. It was good, not great. Its spot could easily have gone to Looper, the best JGL movie of 2012. But…

Looper was completely snubbed. Best movie of the year. Zero nominations. At the very, very least, it should have been nominated for Best Picture and Writing: Original Screenplay.

Wreck-It Ralph deserved a Best Picture nomination. I thought we were past the days of great animated movies being stuck in the Animated Feature Film ghetto. Wreck-It Ralph was awesome. It lived up to its name and wrecked it. It wasn’t technically a Pixar film, but for all intents and purposes, it was a Pixar movie. And like all Pixar movies that don’t have the word Cars in their title, it rocked. But then again, so did Argo and Looper and the Academy was more than happy to short all three of these movies in favor of gushing over “I’m at least a half hour too long” Lincoln.

I’m watching the 18th Annual Critics Choice Awards while I write this rant. Affleck walked off the stage with the Best Director award. Looper won earlier for best Sci-Fi/Horror Movie. Maybe the Academy should have waited a few days before they released their imperfect list of nominees.

Looper – Review

5/5 – Go see this movie now!

I want to see Looper again; it’s that good. If you haven’t seen Looper yet, do yourself a favor and see it before it leaves the theater. It is my new favorite movie of 2012.

I’m going to spoil major story points in this review, so don’t read any further until after you’ve seen Looper.

Seriously, don’t go any further if you haven’t seen the movie.

Part of what I loved about Looper was the fluidity of who was the hero in the story. Here, I’m considering it necessary to be selfless in order to be considered a hero. If a character acts in his own self-interest, he’s an antihero as best.

Young Joe does a heroic act early in the film when he hides Seth after Seth fails to close his loop. Young Joe is putting his life in danger here. But he quickly sells Seth when his own savings are threatened by his boss as the price for his silence. Seth comes to a gruesome end, largely to Joe’s fault.

When Old Joe returns to the past, he quickly appears to be more heroic than Young Joe. His heroic quest is to come back in time and kill the Rainmaker as a child. The Rainmaker, besides being the criminal kingpin of the future, was behind the killing of Old Joe’s wife and countless others, and sent Old Joe back to the past to be killed by his younger self. Remember the old “If you could go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it?” question? That’s Old Joe’s quest in a nutshell. How could you be opposed to that? He is clearly the hero at this point in the movie.

I sometimes want to do this to my younger self.

But Old Joe falls from the heroic path with relative ease. When they’re sitting in the diner, Old Joe tells Young Joe that he wants to kill the Rainmaker in order to save his wife in the future. But Old Joe refuses to show Young Joe his wife’s photo when Young Joe says that if he see it, he’ll make sure he never talks to her when he sees her for the first time in Young Joe’s future/Old Joe’s past. If they never meet, they’ll never marry and she won’t be murdered. Sure, Young Joe isn’t doing this to be altruistic. Young Joe hates Old Joe. He sees his living as being a block to his future happiness. If he can kill his future self, maybe Young Joe can get back in good with his mob employers. Old Joe won’t let him see his wife’s photo. Old Joe wants it all. He wants to kill the Rainmaker as a child and change the future, but he also wants to hold onto his personal future with his wife. If he was truly selfless and concerned with his wife’s safety over his own, he would show Young Joe his wife’s picture. Old Joe does have a good motivation for this. He views his wife as his savior. With her help, he kicked the junk, mellowed out and found true happiness for the first time in his life. He can’t picture his life without his wife.

The far more damning act to Old Joe’s heroism is when Old Joe kills the first child. Director Rian Johnson used a much more interesting take on the “Would you kill Hitler as a baby?” question when he added in the twist that Old Joe has it narrowed down to three possible children that may grow up to become the Rainmaker. “Would you kill up to two innocent children if it meant also being able to kill Hitler as a child?” is a much harder question to answer. I liked that Old Joe was clearly pained by his killing of the first child. It stopped him from losing all sympathy and just coming across as a complete Terminator-esque monster. But he’s definitely on his way to being a monster.

The second child on Old Joe’s hit list turns out to be the daughter of Suzie, the stripper/prostitute that Young Joe is infatuated with at the beginning of the movie. Young Joe cares for Suzie. He offers Suzie enough money to take care of her and her kid. But Old Joe is perfectly willing to kill Suzie’s child if that prevents the Rainmaker from coming into being. Old Joe does pause at first when he realizes his next target is Suzie’s child, but decides to go through with it. At this point, he knows that Young Joe is guarding Cid, the final child, on the farm. If he still cared for Suzie, he could save Suzie’s child for last. If Cid is the one destined to be the Rainmaker, then Suzie’s child won’t have to die if he changed up the order of who he kills. But doing so could put his mission into jeopardy. Old Joe sees himself as having a much higher chance of success killing Suzie’s child here than he does succeeding at the farm. I think Old Joe realized there was a very good chance he wasn’t returning from the farm, and that infiltrating the city a second time would be difficult, so he decides to kill Suzie’s child now to play it safe. It’s only Kid Blue setting of a trap for Old Joe in Suzie’s apartment that keeps Suzie’s child alive.

When Young Joe arrives at the farm, he hasn’t undergone his heroic transformation yet. He’s there to kill Old Joe when Old Joe shows up. He even tells Sara that he doesn’t care at all about her or Cid. His interactions with the two of them, and his viewing of Sara’s motherly love for her son does awaken something inside Young Joe. When Sara stands between Old Joe and Cid, willing to sacrifice herself for her son’s survival, something is awakened in Young Joe. Previously, Young Joe would help people as long as it didn’t cut into his well being. But Sara’s love for Cid inspires him to make the ultimate sacrifice. He shoots himself point blank through the chest in order to prevent his future self from killing an innocent woman.

In Old Joe’s defense, this kid is seriously creepy.

In that moment when he shoots himself, Young Joe explains that he realized Old Joe would be creating the Rainmaker instead of preventing him from existing. Cid would escape, embittered by the loss of two mothers and use his smarts and powers to become the Rainmaker. By killing himself, he’s both saving Sara’s life, and the hope that she can raise Cid right so that he doesn’t grow up to be the Rainmaker.

But did Young Joe really prevent the Rainmaker from coming into being by killing himself? Remember, in the original timeline, Young Joe grows up to become Old Joe after successfully closing his loop as originally intended. Old Joe is originally never given the chance to orphan Cid, so Joe isn’t integral in Cid becoming the Rainmaker. But, here is why I think Young Joe succeeded. At the end of the movie, when Sara and Cid reunite, he calls her mom. Before this, he’s always called her Sara, never acknowledged her as his mother, and told Young Joe that she’s a liar. But something changed when Sara stood between Old Joe and Cid, and Young Joe sacrificed himself. That change of calling her mom instead of Sara is tiny, but it’s huge. Sure, something could happen down the road that causes Cid to fall to the dark side, but at this moment, he has the best chance of growing up a hero instead of a villain. His powers and his outbursts make him a scary child, but he tells Young Joe he wants to protect people. I think Cid is now on the path to becoming more Superman and less Lex Luthor.

You know what would be really messed up? If it was Suzie’s child all along.

At some point before he becomes Old Joe, Young Joe apparently becomes Neo.

In a different (and I also think worse) movie, Young Joe and Old Joe would team up to take of the mob of the future down in Young Joe’s present. Instead, Rian Johnson has given us a much richer experience with his Looper.