QuicksilverThe worst part of riding your bike to work is getting your necktie caught in the spokes.Luckily, the bipedal commuter in this thriller no longer has to wear the potential hazard around his throat.When hotshot stock-trader Jack (Kevin Bacon) loses millions in a bad deal that he setup, he quits and retreats from the market in disgrace.To make ends meet, he becomes a bike messenger, delivering vital documents at breakneck speeds through the same traffic congestion he once idled in.Along the way, her falls for a fellow biker (Jami Gertz) and gets into hot water with an unsavory character (Laurence Fishburne) thanks to his scheming co-worker (Paul Rodriguez).While it has a rocking soundtrack to accompanying its surprisingly striking bike riding sequences, the bulk of Quicksilver's story has square wheels that go nowhere.Incidentally, the second most popular career choice of failed stock-traders is suicide victim. (Yellow Light)vidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

I usually don't let little things like geographic errors bug me, but the switching back and forth between New York and San Francisco gets to be too much. Some chase and race scenes have notable SF landmarks, like Coit Tower and a brief glimpse of the TransAmerica Pyramid, in the background. I guess they really wanted those hills. There was also the convenient "dead end" off the Embarcadero Freeway, used to get rid of Gypsy. (That freeway is no more. It was declared unsafe after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.) Jack gets a name sticker with "PSE" on it. PSE is the abbreviation for Pacific Stock Exchange (also now defunct) which was in San Francisco. The messengers hang out in Civic Center.Then there's the NYC aspects. One of the deliveries is to West 88th Street. The rough accents are all Brooklyn/Bronx. The tight traffic scenes are all Manhattan. The city buses are from NYC. SF just doesn't have that many yellow cabs on the streets.Does it really matter? Perhaps for people who aren't familiar with either city it's all background. But when the movie has very little going for it in the first place, the location flip flops are a huge distraction.

'Quicksilver' is not a bad start at what could've been a much better movie, if only they hadn't substituted an awkward love story for good suspense. This is the story of a highly acclaimed stock broker (Kevin Bacon as "Jack Casey") who loses everything in the crash. Absconding from the scene like an athlete who's no long in his prime, he takes a job as a bicycle messenger. He's left everyone wondering whether Jack Casey is ready for a comeback.However, most of the movie transpires on dramatic fluff until we actually get to the good part of the story. That is, when Jack, in trying to save his friend, Voodoo (Larry Fishburne) from a sleazy drug dealer that he gets mixed up with, Jack eventually becomes the target of the dealer. And from this, you get one or two action sequences, to breakup the mundane dramatic lull of the rest of the movie which includes the awkward romance between Jack and another bike messenger/nomad (who is also running from her past), Terri (Jami Gertz). The story tends to drag at points and, given the shifting genres at point (probably done so to pick up the pace), I'd recommend this for those who don't mind trying out obscure movies, especially ones that serve up extra helpings of an 80s nostalgia trip (and you would probably have to be, since you've found the page for it). There's some good moments, and it's still entertaining for the most part.

"Some Spoilers" Jack Casey, Kevin Bacon, is a successful stock trader at the San Francisco stock exchange. One day thinking that a certain stock will be heavily traded, and to the up side, Jack puts everything that he has on it including his parents life savings. The stock was traded heavily all right, heavily down. In one day Jack lost everything that he made in the last three years as a whiz kid in the stock market: $30,000,000.00 as well as his fathers and mothers life saving.Devastated over what he lost his father Mr. Casey, Gerald O'Loughin, in trying to comfort him, tells Jack to keep his chin up and says "We Casey's can take a punch". Later when Jack go outside to get a cab he sees that he left his wallet back in the house and when he quietly goes in to get it he sees his father sitting by the kitchen table with his head in his arms sobbing,that was the first time that Jack ever saw his father cry. Getting a job as a bike messenger at "Quicksilver Messenger Service" Jack starts from the bottom to work himself up. Working there Jack really starts to enjoy the job and the people that he's working with better then the stuff shirts that he used to work with at the stock exchange and develops a number of close friendships there: Hector, Paul Rodriguez, Voodoo, Laurence Fishburne, and Terri, Jami Gertz.Though the money that Jack makes as a messenger is minuscule to what he made in the stock market he really likes and is very happy with his job and his new found friends there at the messenger service. Like the saying goes :"Money can't buy you happiness". Jack's fellow bike messenger Hector wants to get a bank lone so he can open up a food stand business but the banks won't give him one because he doesn't any collateral to cover it. Knowing that Jack was a "Market Mavin" Hector entrusts him with what little money that he has to invest and make a profit with it. Jack hesitant at first, because of what happened to him in the market, then goes along with Hector's idea because Hector tells him that if he loses his money he wont hold it against him. It's that Jack's expertise is the only way that Hector can get the cash that he needs outside of going to the local Mexican loan-sharks who would break his head if he couldn't pay them back the money with interest that they loaned him. Jack's old touch in picking winners in the stock market comes back. Jack puts Hectors money in the stocks that he thinks that will click and they do and Jack rolls up more that what Hector would need in profits to open up the business that he was always dreaming about. Voodoo always seems to have far more money then any of the messengers make at the job because Voodoo works for Gypsy ,Rudy Ramos, delivering drugs for him while he doing his job at the messenger service. One day Voodoo tells Gypsy that he's had it with delivering his "goods" and wants out of the drug business and is going to stop working for him. A few days later when Jack and Voodoo engage in a bike race Gypsy, who was waiting to ambush him, saw his chance to keep Voodoo quiet about his drug dealing for good. It's then that Gypsy runs down Voodoo with his car and kills him on the deserted San Francisco waterfront to not only keep Voodoo from quiting but from letting out the story that Gypsy is using messengers to deal drugs.Terri is a very sweet but naive girl who Gypsy got to work delivering drugs for him after he paid her bill at a diner when she didn't have the money for her meal. Terri, like Voodoo, after realizing what she was doing and how dangerous it was, wanted out of Gypsy's drug dealing racket. Gypsy couldn't let Terri go because like Voodoo she was dangerous to him when he couldn't have any control of her and felt threatened by her quiting him. With Gyspy going all out to try to kidnapped or even kill to keep Terri quiet she runs to Jack's place to get away and hide from Gypsy. Jack having Terri safe in his apartment gets on his bike and goes outside to finish the race that he had with Voodoo that Gypsy so rudely interrupted earlier in the movie; but this time the ending to that race will be far more different.Nice little movie about someone going from riches to rags and back to riches again. The story may be a bit uneven but it's easy to overlook and enjoy the film. The "Quicksilver" musical score alone is well worth the price of admission or in this case the price of rental.