If you're looking for depth and profundity, this is the wrong movie. At one point, the action involves Wilee and Vanessa actually escaping from an NYPD vehicle pound with the ticket ingeniously hidden.Īnd that's about that. It's almost impossible to chase one with a car. The bikes speed under trailer trucks, through food stores, up ramps, over barriers and so on. Bobby Monday also enlists several cops, one on a bike but outclassed they don't really understand why they're chasing Wilee. All would be gold medal winners if their jobs could be defined as Olympic sports. These are Vanessa ( Dania Ramirez) and Manny (Wolé Parks). In a dizzying unfolding of events, two other messengers also get involved on Wilee's side. The movie's first chase involves Wilee's bike and Monday's unmarked police car. Also in need of the ticket is a rotten cop named Bobby Monday, desperately played by Michael Shannon, whose gambling debts have him in mortal peril. She needs the ticket delivered to a woman who will make a crucial call to China.

Wilee (think WILE-E), played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, lean and intense, is said to be the best bike messenger in Manhattan, which is why Nima ( Jamie Chung) asks for him. (It's to pay passage to the United States for the young son of the Chinese heroine, who worked three jobs to raise the money.) In the story told by 'Premium Rush,' it's less of a job, more of a noble mission, as three messengers outrace the NYPD to deliver a gambling ticket that only one of them knows the story behind. They don't see themselves wearing suits and working in office cubicles. Why do they work so hard and dangerously for relatively little money? They seem to do it for the high.

Premium rush