I’ve never been one to get excited about action movies. I’m not sure why, but they never did anything for me. (Maybe that’s why I didn’t like Reno 911!: Miami.) So when Speed was released, I was one of the few who wasn’t in a rush to get to the theater. Having now watched Speed, that was clearly my one allotted mistake for 1994.
Speed is pretty darn good. It starts pretty quickly as bomber Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) threatens an elevator full of passengers. Cops Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) and Harry Temple (Jeff Daniels) rescue the passengers, stop the bomber, and make an enemy. Some indeterminate time later, Payne puts a bomb on a city bus as a way to get back at the officers. If the bus goes below 50mph, it’ll explode, taking with it all the passengers including, of course, Sandra Bullock.
There. With the plot recap out of the way, let’s get down to what’s good and what’s not so good about this movie.
The filmmakers did a good job of starting with a tense situation and upping the tension every time a new obstacle made an appearance. The bus driver’s shot, the bus needs to do a ridiculously sharp turn, they have to drive down city streets, and on and on. As I was watching, I was reminded of the TV show 24. It has the same kind of keep-topping-ourselves feel to it. That works well here.
Sandra Bullock has long been one of my favorites, and it’s fun to watch her before she “made it.” She has the same everyman style that many people identify with Jimmy Stewart. There’s something in her style that allows people to identify with her, and that’s an important asset. In Speed, Bullock’s unexperienced character acts as the voice of the passengers, working closely with the cop to find a way out of the mess.
Keanu Reeves, then best known as Ted Logan of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, was a big risk for this action film, but overall it was a good choice. There are issues, like his monotone delivery, and his odd accent, but he is convincing as a cop in a bad situation.
The pulse-pounding pace continues for most of the film, and is generally successful. On the audio commentary that came with the DVD, the writer said that he wished that they had stopped before they got to the subway portion, and I agree. It was almost as if the producers didn’t trust the movie to hold people’s attention for the whole bus section, and they tacked an extra fifteen minutes on just in case. I think it was a mistake, and really dragged the movie out.
One big problem I have with the movie is the baby carriage full of cans. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. That was totally unnecessary, and more importantly, it was manipulative to let the audience believe that there was a baby being killed. I really, really hated that.
And I could have done without the naive tourist. Played well by Alan Ruck, his “gosh darn” attitude is grating. The fact that his lines are overdubbed twice to remove swears surely adds to my disdain of him. It just made his character unbelievable to me.
Maybe my trouble with action flicks is that they tend to be a little less believable than more character-driven movies. For me at least, once the believability breaks down, the rest of the movie falls apart. There were oddities in the script for Speed that you could drive a bus through (har har), but I honestly didn’t notice them until mid-way through the second viewing. (Someone cut a hole through the pavement in downtown LA and nobody noticed?) As far as I’m concerned, that makes the movie makers successful.
Speed is by no means a perfect movie, but it’s a good one. Well paced and well directed, it deserves its spot as one of the blockbusters of 1994, and it holds up to viewing 13 years later.
SIMPSONS SIGHTING!
Season 8, The Springfield Files
“I saw this movie about a bus that had to SPEED around a city, keeping its SPEED over fifty, and if its SPEED dropped, it would explode! I think it was called The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down.”
Season 8, Simpson-cali-fragi-listic-expiala-D’OH-cious
(to Sherry Bobbins) “Pop quiz, hotshot. I’m supposed to be doing my homework, but you find me upstairs reading a Playdude. What do you do? What DO you do?”
Also:
Season 6, The Springfield Connection
Season 8, In Marge We Trust
Season 12, Bye Bye Nerdie
