![]() He also co-wrote Brian De Palma's 1998 thriller, Snake Eyes, which had a similar kind of real-time, adrenalin-pumped, plot-looping energy as Premium Rush. Wilee also tries to sweet-talk his semi-estranged girlfriend (Ramirez) into reconciliation, and ends up in a dangerous high-speed race through Central Park with his boastful bike-messenger rival (Kennedy).ĭavid Koepp is a hugely successful screenwriter whose CV includes Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible and Spider-Man. Along the way, he gets into a deadly cat-and-mouse chase with Michael Shannon's crooked cop, who needs the money to pay off his heavy gambling debts. The plot revolves around Wilee peddling at great speed from Manhattan's uptown university district to Chinatown to deliver an urgent payment for an illegal human-trafficking operation. This is about the level of logic and realism we quickly come to expect from Premium Rush. Pathological idiocy dressed up as the American dream. Despite being a law graduate, he has rejected a conventional career to remain a free spirit - which, in his case, means carrying packages around Manhattan all day, breathing petrol fumes and risking serious injury for a minimum wage. Gordon-Levitt plays a New York City bicycle messenger named Wilee, a clumsy homage to the restless coyote in the Road Runner cartoons. Premium Rush unfolds inside a 90-minute, real-time frame, although the plot loops back and forward at various points to fill in character motives and back stories. By comparison, his leading-man performance in this fast-paced New York thriller is a lightweight affair, full of zing and energy but, ultimately, a little too cartoonish. Because his feat was once in a lifetime, perhaps the passing of the towers reminds us that nothing lasts "forever.Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Dania Ramirez, Sean Kennedy, Jamie ChungĪfter scoring major roles from The Dark Knight Rises to Looper, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is enjoying a bumper year. The "forever" pass to the top of the towers he receives as a reward from the city is painfully ironic considering 9/11. While the Walk is about this extraordinary man, it is also a romantic eulogy to the towers, which arguably became favorites of New Yorkers after Petit's stunt. Although I don't like heights anyway, I had to look down every time in wonder at the scope of the danger to Petit. Because Zameckis knows his special effects, I was mesmerized by the shots from atop the towers to the street below. Those 15 minutes on the wire are as suspenseful as possible-a mark of the true auteur, who can make us worry for our hero even though we know he will survive (he does narrate after all, and some audience will remember Man on a Wire, the excellent doc from 2008). To co-writers Zameckis and Christopher Browne must go praise for giving the Frenchmen poetic English in small doses, just enough to elevate the proceedings from nuts and bolts to heady ambition. From the first moment we meet Petit talking to us from the top of the Statue of Liberty, and this story is about freedom if nothing else, we know we are in the presence of a man who has followed his dream and achieved it. It's as romantic as Gump and addictive as Future with the added interest of a biopic that is true to its history. What did you expect from the director of Back to the Future and Forrest Gump? Robert Zameckis has another thoroughly enjoyable film, The Walk, about Philippe Petit's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) high-wire walk between the World trade Center's twin towers in 1974. No, my story begins in another one of the world's most beautiful cities, se Paris. In case you couldn't tell, I'm not from here. ![]() And so, we must go back in time, and across the ocean, because my love affair with these beautiful towers did not begin in New York. So, why attempt the impossible? Why follow your dream? But, I cannot answer this question why, not with words. My dream is to hang a high-wire between those twin towers, and *walk* on it! Of course, uh, this is impossible, not to mention, illegal. These towers, they stir something inside of me, and they inspire in me a dream. Or as everyone in the world will calls them, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Philippe Petit: So, picture with me it's 1974, New York city, and I am in love with two buildings - two towers. For me, to walk on the wire, this is life. Yes of okay, I said it once, or maybe three times, just now. Pourquoi? Why? For what? Why do you walk on the wire? Why do you tempt fate? Why do you risk death. ![]() Philippe Petit: "Why?" That is the question people ask me most.
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