I've written before about how I like to learn things from movies. Again, I don't look to fiction film as a fount of knowledge, but most carry a kernel of truth and one can easily pick up tidbits of trivia from them. For example, movies can teach us things which we didn't know about obscure professions. Screenwriters love to pick jobs which aren't exactly mainstream and place them into a movie. The film Premium Rush focuses on the lives of bicycle messengers in New York City. As I don't live downtown (nor do I want to), I knew little of this profession other than the obvious. I now know more about them, most importantly the fact that it is apparently difficult to make a good movie about them.

Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is bike messenger in Manhattan who is considered a maverick amongst his peers, as his bike doesn't have brakes or gears. He loves the thrill of the job, despite the fact that it doesn't pay well. Therefore, he asks for as many runs as possible. Late one afternoon, Wilee is instructed to pick up a package from a law school. Nima (Jamie Chung) needs a simple white envelope taken to Chinatown. Wilee takes it and heads on his way. But, he's immediately accosted by Detective Monday of the NYPD (Michael Shannon) who asks for the envelope. Wilee explains that he can't surrender a package and when Monday insists, Wilee rides away. Thus begins a chase across town which will eventually involve more police and Wilee's peers. It seems that Monday is a crooked cop who is in a lot of trouble and he's learned that the contents of the envelope could help him. But, little does he know that Wilee's fearless nature will make him an elusive target.

The first notable problem with Premium Rush is that it doesn't live up to its title. At the outset, it looks as if this may be a "real time" movie where we follow Wilee across town. This would have certainly contributed to the "rush" of the title. However, it's not that long before Koepp and Kamps decide to pull a Tarantino on us and go back and show how Monday got into hot water and what Nima placed in the envelope. This destroys the narrative flow of the movie. There's nothing objectionable about injecting story into an action film, but it takes a skilled hand to tell the story without slowing down the action. Premium Rush moves in fits and starts, as the cycling scenes give way to drab dialogue scenes.

In 1986, Kevin Bacon starred in Quicksilver, where he played a former hotshot stock broker who has become a bicycle messenger. In Premium Rush, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a law student who decided to put off taking the bar exam in order to be a bicycle messenger. Is it me or do those sound similar? Speaking of Gordon-Levitt, it's obvious that he did a lot of training for this movie, so it's sad to see him surrounded by such a bad script. On the heels of The Dark Knight Rises, Gordon-Levitt is pretty hot right now, so the fact that audiences stayed away from this one shows that they sometimes have good instincts. As for Michael Shannon, he's got to be tired of playing psychos by now and the maniacal laugh he gives this character is...well...interesting. The shots of the bikes moving through New York City traffic are very well-done, but otherwise, the rest of this movie needs training wheels.

Premium Rush showed that I'm not the only one who keeps movie ticket stubs on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 28 Mbps. The image is sharp and clear, showing no overt grain and no defects from the source material. The colors look good and the image is never overly dark or bright. Given the amount of speeding bike shots, the image could have easily been blurred or smeared, but it remains very stable. The depth is very good, as the actors are nicely separated from the backgrounds, and the level of detail is good. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 2.3 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. With this film, it's very important that we get sense of speed, so the audio effects do a fine job. We get the "whooshing" of cars speeding by, and the engines and honking fill the rear speakers. The mix does a great job of moving the audio from right to left and from front to back, maintaining that sense of movement. The subwoofer effects punctuate these scenes.

The Premium Rush Blu-ray Disc contains only two extras. "The Starting Line" (10 minutes) is a making-of featurette which contains comments from Director David Koepp, co-writer John Kamps, Gordo-Levitt, and Shannon. Koepp talks about the story and getting help from real bike messengers. We then hear about the actors' bike-riding training. This includes on-set footage of the actors practicing their riding and a look at the stunts. "Behind the Wheels" (13 minutes) examines the four different bike chases in the movie. This takes us to the set to see the planning involved and how the scenes were shot.