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Speed
Action Thriller / English / 1994
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
One-half of two movies that together make Mad Max: Fury Road. Been meaning to revisit it.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
It's a solid action movie. Genuinely hard to complain.
Speed is noteworthy for perhaps one reason alone and that is that it is constant action all the time. Keanu Reeves and Dumb & Dumberer are LA Bomb Squad and we get a prologue mission about a bomber holding people hostage in an elevator for money. The plan is foiled, but this sets the stage for our movie: a city bus is rigged to explode with civilians aboard, where driving over 50 mph arms the bomb, driving under 50 mph detonates it. And so you have the improbable pretext for an action flik that literally won't slow down.
It is constant intensity the whole way through from Reeves getting onto the bus while it's moving, to discovering the bomb, navigating unpredictable traffic conditions, attempting to disarm the bomb, and eventually saving the people aboard, finding the guy, and putting an end to his schemes.
It's never quite as clear-cut what the solution is as a large number of answers fail due to the Big Bad's contingency plans. It never feels quite Xanatos Gambit level of forward thinking, but it gets pretty close.
Numerous little touches also help elevate this movie too, from a passenger shooting the driver believing Reeves is trying to get him, Sandra Bullock being on the bus because her license was revoked for speeding, the guts to kill Dumb and Dumberer when he's supposed to be on light duty, and even after the passengers are saved, the bus explodes, and everyone's okay, the twists don't end.
There are some bits that I don't care for:
Snooty Guy has some lines which are supposed to be funny but don't land at all, even when it's supposed to be an awkward moment it just feels like a pointless inclusion.
The line about "shoot the hostage" is foreshadowed, gets an almost immediate payoff and is never brought up again.
The big freeway jump makes no sense because something clearly pops the front of the bus into the air like they went off a ramp or something, but no ramp is shown in the preceding scenes.
We go through all this effort to save a bus full of people only to blow up an airplane, which potentially killed even more people. There are a handful of issues there: The plane is connected to a tug which means the ground crew is right there, planes don't get tugged unless there's a flight crew or maintenance on board at a minimum, so they all died... ALSO we hype up this bus's bomb by saying it can put a hole in the city, but it didn't just explode, but it ran into an AIRPLANE presumably full of fuel!
It was still a big explosion I guess, but again we're supposed to believe that these circumstances and the deaths they would have caused are necessarily better than the deaths of people who were on the bus.
I liked the cast, Sandra Bullock was likable, the "regulars" she interacted with were likable, the Police Chief was likable, the Big Bad was kinda silly, and Reeves was just playing Neo again.
Overall the movie reminds me of Die Hard with a Vengeance, except without Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson. I think I prefer that movie just because of the personalities they bring. There's a bit of wholesome comedy here which I appreciate it and the Overnight Romance between Reeves and Bullock, while still a movie-making sin, was done about as tastefully as could possibly be done.
Easy non-controversial popcorn movie that does more than enough things right. It's a definite example to follow when it comes to action movies, but it also doesn't aspire to be anything more than that.
Final Verdict: [Pretty Good]
Speed
Action Thriller / English / 1994
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
One-half of two movies that together make Mad Max: Fury Road. Been meaning to revisit it.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
It's a solid action movie. Genuinely hard to complain.
Speed is noteworthy for perhaps one reason alone and that is that it is constant action all the time. Keanu Reeves and Dumb & Dumberer are LA Bomb Squad and we get a prologue mission about a bomber holding people hostage in an elevator for money. The plan is foiled, but this sets the stage for our movie: a city bus is rigged to explode with civilians aboard, where driving over 50 mph arms the bomb, driving under 50 mph detonates it. And so you have the improbable pretext for an action flik that literally won't slow down.
It is constant intensity the whole way through from Reeves getting onto the bus while it's moving, to discovering the bomb, navigating unpredictable traffic conditions, attempting to disarm the bomb, and eventually saving the people aboard, finding the guy, and putting an end to his schemes.
It's never quite as clear-cut what the solution is as a large number of answers fail due to the Big Bad's contingency plans. It never feels quite Xanatos Gambit level of forward thinking, but it gets pretty close.
Numerous little touches also help elevate this movie too, from a passenger shooting the driver believing Reeves is trying to get him, Sandra Bullock being on the bus because her license was revoked for speeding, the guts to kill Dumb and Dumberer when he's supposed to be on light duty, and even after the passengers are saved, the bus explodes, and everyone's okay, the twists don't end.
There are some bits that I don't care for:
Snooty Guy has some lines which are supposed to be funny but don't land at all, even when it's supposed to be an awkward moment it just feels like a pointless inclusion.
The line about "shoot the hostage" is foreshadowed, gets an almost immediate payoff and is never brought up again.
The big freeway jump makes no sense because something clearly pops the front of the bus into the air like they went off a ramp or something, but no ramp is shown in the preceding scenes.
We go through all this effort to save a bus full of people only to blow up an airplane, which potentially killed even more people. There are a handful of issues there: The plane is connected to a tug which means the ground crew is right there, planes don't get tugged unless there's a flight crew or maintenance on board at a minimum, so they all died... ALSO we hype up this bus's bomb by saying it can put a hole in the city, but it didn't just explode, but it ran into an AIRPLANE presumably full of fuel!
It was still a big explosion I guess, but again we're supposed to believe that these circumstances and the deaths they would have caused are necessarily better than the deaths of people who were on the bus.
I liked the cast, Sandra Bullock was likable, the "regulars" she interacted with were likable, the Police Chief was likable, the Big Bad was kinda silly, and Reeves was just playing Neo again.
Overall the movie reminds me of Die Hard with a Vengeance, except without Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson. I think I prefer that movie just because of the personalities they bring. There's a bit of wholesome comedy here which I appreciate it and the Overnight Romance between Reeves and Bullock, while still a movie-making sin, was done about as tastefully as could possibly be done.
Easy non-controversial popcorn movie that does more than enough things right. It's a definite example to follow when it comes to action movies, but it also doesn't aspire to be anything more than that.
Final Verdict: [Pretty Good]