That package is a movie ticket with a smiley face on it. If it sounds like nothing to you or me, it means a lot to the Chinese underworld. Nima (Jamie Chung) has given $50,000 to a member of the underworld banking system used by Chinese immigrants, and that ticket – which is basically a check – is bound for a snakehead (human trafficker) who promises to smuggle Nima’s son into the US. Unfortunately, a lot of bad people know about the ticket, including Detective Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon), a man with poor impulse control and a lot of gambling debts owed to a lot of bad people. When it comes to the visual style of Premium Rush, then, the emphasis is on the rush. The movie takes place in semi-real time and never really seems to slow down (even when it has slowed down). To that end, Premium Rush reminds me a lot of a realistic Crank. At no point does the movie seem to reach that outlandish level of cartoon action, but it simply refuses to stop. There are brief lulls, but it’s a change in level of action rather than an abandonment of the movie’s heart-stopping pace. The credit goes in large part to director David Koepp, who does not have a traditional action director background. His best-known works are the terrific Ghost Town and Secret Window, neither of which are pulse-pounding thrillers. Still, he really ups his game with Premium Rush, if only in the sense that he successfully throws the audience into the action. There are some very clever camera movements, and the scenes in which the camera follow Wilee through the crowded streets of New York are very well done. The film has to use a host of stunt cyclists, stunt drivers, stunt pedestrians, and CGI trickery, but it’s all done seamlessly. According to the IMDB, real bicycle messengers served as riders and assorted crew, and I can believe it. The script, from Koepp and John Kamps, is pretty light in terms of plot, but it’s a great skeleton to hang dramatic action on. That’s Koepp’s specialty as a writer, given his background with Jurassic Park, War Of The Worlds, Spider-Man, Mission: Impossible, and other effects-heavy flicks featuring a lot of running and chasing. The interpersonal conflicts between Wilee and rival Manny (Wole Parks) remain secondary to the action sequences, and it is to the movie’s credit that they are able to turn a mostly-friendly rivalry into a thrilling race scene through Central Park. The movie accomplishes all this with a minimum of violence or language. Premium Rush is PG-13, but you’d never know it based on the amount of sheer thrills the movie packs in its 91 minutes of runtime. At the screening of Premium Rush I attended, in front of me in the theater were four retirement-aged people, two women and two men. As we were leaving the theater, I overheard them talking, and one simply said “it was just a good action-packed movie.” And that’s a great description for Premium Rush: a good action-packed movie. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.