The Racked Focus Review: Premium Rush (2012)

On February 1, 2013, a review went up on The Racked Focus that got me a little bit giddy.  It was a review of Premium Rush.  Why would this get me excited?  This review was by Nathan Donarum.  I am going to review this review right now.  You are going to like it.  I will make you like my review of his review.

Premium Rush is a movie about bicycle messengers in New York City.  This might not sound appealing to New Yorkers.  I know how much you detest these people.  They get in the way.  They don’t pay much attention to pedestrians outside of avoiding them so that they don’t crash.  This is even hinted upon in the movie.  I’m not reviewing the movie though.  I’m reviewing the review.  By the way, the director is David Koepp and it stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon.

There is a large difference in feel to the reviews of the two primary writers of The Racked Focus.  Maxwell takes a more thematic, feeling approach to his reviews, whereas Nathan writes his reviews from the stance of an architect.  He looks at the foundation and the building blocks of the movie and sees how they come together.  This is no more apparent than in his review of Premium Rush.

The benefit of going about a review in the way that Nathan does it is that it is easier to see where a movie stumbled or excelled if it did either.  No time is wasted in determining the faults of Premium Rush.  Nathan dove right into what he thought were the good and bad aspects of the movie almost immediately.  Most of the issues were found within the characters and their relationship with realistic situations.  Nathan Donarum described in detail how each of these two major aspects hurt the film.

The issue with the more reserved sort of review implemented by Nathan is that at some points it feels like a beat-by-beat analysis of the film.  This is not to say that he is describing the entire plot of Premium Rush note for note.  Nathan is far better than that.  It simply feels like it is lacking the flow that gives it a more natural feel.  It feels a little bit more forced than some other reviews, though it has more intelligence to it than many of the other reviews out there.  Nathan knows what he wants to say.  The connective tissue of the review just does not flow together in some areas.

Now, I do not mean that to be a knock on Nathan at all.  His writing is intelligent and an interesting read.  He infuses his opinion among a more academic approach to reviewing.  Knowing that he does not typically write reviews frequently, but sticks to essays more often, this is understandable.  With a little bit more practice, and a few more reviews under his belt, Nathan could easily improve the flow of his reviews.  This is not difficult to imagine and the potential is there.  It just needs to be tapped like a maple tree full of syrup.

All of that connective tissue of the review stuff aside, Nathan Donarum’s review of Premium Rush is a good indicator of how Nathan felt about the movie.  It offers insight into both the movie and Nathan’s opinion.  It is well written and a quick and easy read.  It is of the good quality that I expect and love from The Racked Focus.  This is a good job by Nathan Donarum, and I am sure that there are even better things to come.

Nathan Donarum’s review of Premium Rush has earned him 4 sets of horrible handle breaks out of 5.

Review Epilogue: I feel like I was a little hard on Nathan in my review of his review.  I am not trying to be negative in any way.  I am stating how he could improve his already good writing to make it connect flow a little bit better.  Some of the problems I stated in that portion are problems that I, myself, feel that I may also have in regard to writing reviews.  Though, I do think that Nathan writes a much better review than I do.   It might be as much self-reflective as reflective of his review.  Hell, this review of his review has similar issues.  I will admit that.  However, if I can help people improve their work, I am all for it.  Thank you for reading.