Reviewing Movies

Bike messengers tooling around New York City at 25-30 mph on bikes with no brakes and hard geared with no coast mechanism. A messenger bag over the shoulder and a bike lock chain around the waist. A helmet and possibly knee and elbow pads their only protection. The hazards carelessly opened car doors, unsignalled lane changes and abrupt turns and kamikaze pedestrians. All this for $80/day or about $20,000/year if you stay healthy. If it's got to get there a bike messenger can do the job faster than any other service.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has no less than four stand-ins. A real-life bike messenger adept at negotiating city traffic at speed, a bike racer, a stunt bike rider and a pro-stunt man for the dangerous accident scenes. All have physiques to match his lean compact frame. The DVD Supplements that demonstrate how the action was captured are a must-see. There are no high-octane chase scenes à la Fast and Furious but the kinetic energy of an unprotected human body captured close-up on a bike travelling up to 40 mph in traffic is quite dramatic.

The movie is special effects laden. The storyline is all about getting there as fast as possible. As portrayed these riders have a lifestyle but no life and therein lies the film's weakness.