Premium Rush trailer starring Joseph Gordon Levitt
Over the last 10 years there has been an extraordinary public embrace of the bicycle as a practical, enjoyable and healthy means of transportation. As with any other trend or fad, public interest/demand meets with marketing and production and together they seem to snowball down the mountain of capitalism until we have something like the preview for Premium Rush. I’d particularly like to focus on three sentences that the main character narrates over the quick cuts. “Fixed gear, no brakes. Can’t stop - don’t want to, either.” Hollywood corners the market on hipster-biker-moviegoers! This is the first preview of this film. The first thing we hear in from the main character of a movie that is “about” someone who gets caught in a maze of corruption and crime. The preview doesn’t establish that New York City is a hotbed of criminal activity and one unfortunate putz accidentally sinks in way over his head. The introduction of the romantic connection with the hardcore tattooed female bike messenger after a few high action screen cuts gives the preview more of a James Bond-ish feel: the main character is a bad a** dude and in the end, he gets the ladies.
I feel like this could be the penultimate (someone will always take it further) representation of capitalization on the “urban cycling trend.” Something as simple as riding your bike around a populated area, whether for a living or leisure, has become a multi-million dollar commodity for the producers of cycling related products and now the MPAA. You can buy bikes with custom matched colorful wheels/handlebars on the Urban Outfitters website. They sell fixed gear bicycle at WalMart. Levi’s just came out with a pair of $100 “urban commuter” skinny jeans that come complete with a lock holster built into the waist band, reflective patches, a spandex/denim blend for comfort and re-enforced seat.
This reading seems to have turned into a rant, so I’ll wrap it up by noting that the main character of Premium Rush appears to get hit by a car THREE TIMES in the trailer. Riding a “fixed gear [that] can’t stop, [not that he’d want to]” doesn’t seem to be the best idea for Mr. Gordon-Levitt but hopefully it’ll put meat in the seats, as they say.
FROM THE AUTHOR: this post should come with a BIG asterisk.
ReplyDeleteMy frame of reference on this subject leaves me more than a little biased, having worked as a courier in Minneapolis and New York- delivering everything from a live parrot to coolers full of urine samples. Glamorous, I know. I first found out what bike messengers were in 2001 as a freshman in high school. A friend showed me Internet videos of urban bike races and so – pubescent and curious - I promptly ordered my Timbuk2 “messenger bag” (read “man-purse’) and the rest was history.
All this being said, riding around the city on a bike really fast is fun as shit! I've done about a million alleycat (urban) races and they, too, are fun as hell. You know what else. So are fixed gear bikes. I've been riding them for years and (for the most part) with out incident. That being said, when I REALLY want to win a race I bring gears and well tuned brakes. I highly encourage riding in the city. Grab a helmet (you can put your Twins cap back on when you get there) and lights and you're good to go.
I think the movie looks really interesting and filled with action, but it isn't what you would expect from a bike courier. I do think it has a lot to do with going green and having it become a new fad so naturally Hollywood had to make something big out of it. I don't have a bias, but it sounds like what Chris is saying makes it seem even more interesting and real because you can confirm that this actually happens. It makes me want to be a bike courier just for the thrill of it.
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