Many things set the city of New York apart from the rest of the country, and one such thing is the bike messenger. Though they do exist in most major cities in the US, the New York City bike messenger seems to be the most iconic. Speaking of iconic, Joe Mauceri a/k/a Kamikaze is New York’s most legendary and probably most daring messenger. Kamikaze earned his nickname because of his near-suicidal tactics of hanging onto the backs of trucks and weaving in and out of traffic. At 50 years of age, he has seen and done it all, during his 25-year stint as a bike messenger, and amazingly he is still going strong.
Content
The story in this film is certainly a unique one; not only would few people think the life of a bike messenger an interesting one, but Kamikaze himself is such a colorful character that he easily lends himself to this type of documentary. However, the downside is that his dialogue is so random that creating a cohesive film had to be a bit challenging.
Perhaps that is one reason why this movie seems to lack structure. In fact, it has no clear structure other than interviews with friends and clients of Kamikaze, as well as the taxi drivers who find him and other bike messengers annoying. The rest of the film is following Kamikaze himself as talks about any and every subject that seems to pop into his head.
It’s possible that the director is trying to mimic Kamikaze’s haphazard nature with the structure of his film, but as that fact comes across clear enough in his manner of speech, it’s not really necessary to try to imitate it. This film really needs a better structure to it, perhaps with a more concrete biography of Kamikaze, a bit of general information about bike messengers for the non-New York audience, and following Kamikaze around on a typical day. As it is now, the story is randomness interspersed with interviews – it really ought to be more sequential.
Visual Look
According to the director, one of the biggest difficulties in making this movie was actually filming Kamikaze in action, since he was quite a fast biker. Coordinating a driver through New York City traffic and keeping a crazy bike messenger in shot had to have been quite the challenge, and I am surprised that the director had such good footage to show for it in the end.
In addition, in an interview with a foreign cab driver, the director added subtitles. I pretty much understood everything the man was saying, but using subtitles was a very good choice, since it’s possible that some members of the audience might get hung up on the thick accent.
