SPEED

(June 1994, U.S.)

In a strange way, SPEED is a challenging film to write about. There's nothing thought-provoking or culturally-significant about it, it doesn't feature any major stars and its director was someone we'd never heard of before (at the time). It was simply one of those effortless summer blockbusters that one could kill just over two hours with (in as summer that didn't offer too much more except FORREST GUMP and TRUE LIES). For myself, it was one of those days I'd set aside to do a little multiplex movie hopping (I think I saw THE CROW and BEVERLY HILLS COP III on that same day). Keanu Reeves was still a mystery to me, despite having seen him recently in POINT BREAK (1991) and DRACULA (1992) and I think the name Sandra Bullock meant nothing to me. I suppose my real, if only, incentive to see SPEED was the thought of Dennis Hopper playing a crazed bomber and extortionist. If you'd seen him in David Lynch's BLUE VELVET (1986), then you knew just how evil the man could be on screen.

As LAPD SWAT officer Jack Traven, Keanu Reeves is just about as attractive and hunky as any firefighter calendar page, if that's your thing. He and his partner Harry Temple (played by Jeff Daniels) defeat an attempt by the mad bomber (Hopper) of holding an elevator full of helpless people for a ransom. After an explosion, we supposed to think (even for a short time) that our bad guy is dead and gone. Hardly. A short time later, Jack watches a bus explode on the street. Only minutes after that, he learns that our bomber has planted a similar device aboard another Los Angeles bus and it's set to arm itself once the bus reaches fifty miles per hour. After that, the bomb will explode if the bus' speed drops below fifty miles per hour. The bomber is watching. If anyone tries to get off the bus, he'll detonate it. If he doesn't get his $3.7 million dollar ransom in three hours, he'll detonate it (sounds like those aboard the bus are fucked!). Boarding the bus himself, Jack takes on the immediate role of hero to try and keep things calm. When the bus driver is accidentally shot, passenger Annie (Bullock) takes over the wheel, and quite frankly, does her absolute best at trying to be as "cute" as possible while operating a large vehicle she has absolutely no experience with. Still, what does it matter? Cute, little Annie manages to keep things under control, including a hard right turn that would normally turn a bus over and an accelerated leap across a huge gap in the highway that would've made Evel Knievel stand up and take notice.

Meanwhile, Harry identifies the bomber as Howard Payne, a retired Atlanta bomb squad officer with a local address and a very large chip on his shoulder. When he and the SWAT team ascend on his house, we soon learn (if not predict) that the house is rigged with explosives and the blast kills Harry and most of the SWAT team. Back on the bus, Jack soon realizes that the bus has a planted camera inside and Howard has been watching them the entire time. Through a little bit of media camera magic, a looped tape is created giving the passengers the time they need to escape the bus. The empty bus slows down below 50 mph and explodes. Actually, to be completely and enthusiastically fair, the explosion is one of the best and most cataclysmic I've ever seen on film. We've known (or at least suspected) that the bus would finally explode in the end, and it's no disappointment. Earlier, we hear Jack tell Harry that there's enough C-4 explosives aboard to "put a hole in the world". He was right, and we can't help but love it!

As we may expect in any high octane action movie, the excitement doesn't end until our bad guy is caught or dead. This happens on board a speeding, runaway subway car with Jack and Annie trapped inside. But don't worry - they'll survive and they'll decide that they love each other (or at least want to have sex with each other!) by the time it's all over. You see - even when lives and property are at stake, Hollywood knows just how to happily end things on the streets of Hollywood Boulevard in front of Mann's Chinese Theatre showing a revival of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (wish I'd seen it on that screen!).

Action films are very often a genre, and nothing more. If they're done right, with some degree of wit, intelligence and credible performances, they can become something more. While I'm not saying that SPEED perfectly achieves this in every way or comes close to action material that surpassed a decade or so later, like THE DARK KNIGHT, it certainly outdoes itself above much of the Stallone and Scwarzenegger crap we had to contend with in the 1980s. Reeves and Bullock have a good chemistry that managed to make them famous and Hopper, while being no Frank Booth, doesn't disappoint as the crazed, diabolical and even colorful madman. It all comes together to offer the dazzling and exhilarating escapism that SPEED is meant to be, and not much more. Or perhaps, if we take the time to think about it in a post 9/11 world, we may think twice before boarding that bus again...maybe (I just hope Sandra Bullock isn't driving it!).

Favorite line or dialogue:

Howard Payne: "See, I'm in charge here! I drop this stick, and they pick your friend here up with a sponge! Are you ready to die, friend?"
Harry Temple: "Fuck you!"
Howard: "Oh, in two hundred years we've gone from, "I regret but I have one life to give for my country" to "Fuck you!"