Friday, July 11, 2014


Movie Review

Speed (1994)

June 10, 1994

Review/Film; An Express Bus in a Very Fast Lane

Published: June 10, 1994

At the time of year when Hollywood traditionally bludgeons its audience back into the Stone Age (sobering statistic: the witless "Flintstones" grossed as much in its first weekend as "Four Weddings and a Funeral" has grossed in the United States in three months), you can still pick your poison. The summertime no-brainer needn't be entirely without brains. It can be as savvy as "Speed," the runaway-bus movie that delivers wall-to-wall action, a feat that's never as easy as it seems. This film's dialogue isn't much more literate than a bus schedule, but its plotting is smart and breathless enough to make up for that.

"Speed" presents a falling elevator, a hijacked subway train, the above-mentioned bus and Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves), the Los Angeles Police Department trouble-shooter whose business is solving such problems. This role, for Mr. Reeves, is less an acting challenge than a rite of passage. It's a means of proving that he's ready to play the tough guy in suitably grim, purposeful style.

Better known for comic nonchalance than for killer machismo, the newly bulked-up Mr. Reeves still furrows his brow manfully and winds up doing a terrific job. Blank as he sometimes seems, he has still become an actor of real charisma, even when he's treated as a found object ("Little Buddha") or given a career-torpedoing role ("Even Cowgirls Get the Blues").

As directed with no-frills efficiency by Jan De Bont, the cinematographer on films including "Die Hard," "Basic Instinct" and "Black Rain," "Speed" takes its cue from its title. This film's sole objective is to keep moving, preferably at a pace that keeps the viewer from asking questions. Action is everything, as when Traven makes his first entrance in a police car that seems to leap through the air. Once the car stops, the camera circles excitedly around Traven and his partner, Harry Temple (Jeff Daniels), who have screeched up to a high-rise to settle that elevator situation. Fast, kinetic shots like these are the cinematic equivalent of junk food, which is not to say that their empty calories are unsatisfying.

Dennis Hopper, playing the first mad bomber of the summer, is Howard Payne, who stabs an innocent security guard ("Nothing personal!") in the film's opening moments. Howard has cut the elevator's cables and wired the car to explode on cue, hoping to extort money in exchange for the passengers' safety. He may not have counted on Jack and Harry's ingenuity, but he has definitely seen other movies of this sort, in which the police-baiting terrorist always seems to have the same motives and the same career history. Beyond the bus gimmick, which is quite a good one, not much about "Speed" really pretends to be new.

Once Jack and Harry have emerged victorious from the elevator episode ("Was it good for you?" Jack asks, in what amounts to the film's wittiest line), Payne turns out to have the bus trick up his sleeve. He has loaded a Santa Monica bus with a bomb and wired the device to be activated once the bus's speed rises above 50 miles per hour. After that, if the speedometer falls below 50, the bomb will go off. In view of Southern California's traffic problems, the film's very setting becomes devilish.

So do we care that when Jack first finds the bus he is able to keep up with it on foot? That this means the bomb isn't active yet? Or that Jack doesn't simply end the crisis by using his gun to shoot out the tires? Definitely not. It's a lot more fun to wonder how Jack will get onto and off a speeding vehicle, whether the bus can catapult over a missing section of freeway, whether it can execute a sharp turn at high speed or whether it will mow down Los Angeles pedestrians. Among this film's truly terrifying stunts is the one that finds Mr. Reeves flat on his back beneath the bus, riding on a dolly that may or may not be crushed beneath the wheels. In the film's scariest moments, he appears to come so close to the pavement that his combat gear almost gives off sparks.

Also in "Speed" is Sandra Bullock as a passenger named Annie who is enlisted to drive the bus during all this excitement. Ms. Bullock, who registers all the perkier forms of panic, is to bus drivers what Mr. Reeves is to S.W.A.T. policemen, but verisimilitude is beside the point. It doesn't even matter than when these two begin the obligatory flirting, Mr. Reeves still seems perfunctory and a bit remote. Cleverer action films ("Die Hard II" and "The Fugitive," for instance) deliver more sardonic intelligence, but this one still gets the job done.

Mr. Hopper finds nice new ways to convey crazy menace with each new role. Certainly he's the most colorful figure in a film that wastes no time on character development or personality. Graham Yost's screenplay pays more attention to ingenious trickery than to giving each bus passenger more than, say, one distinguishing characteristic. But that suits a story whose overriding lesson, in the words of the L.A.P.D., is as simple as this: "Don't get dead."

"Speed" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes profanity, violence and (under the circumstances) relatively little gore.

Speed Directed by Jan De Bont; written by Graham Yost; director of photography, Andrzej Bartkowiak; edited by John Wright; music by Mark Mancina; production designer, Jackson De Govia; produced by Mark Gordon; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 120 minutes. This film is rated R. Jack Traven . . . Keanu Reeves Howard Payne . . . Dennis Hopper Annie . . . Sandra Bullock Captain McMahon . . . Joe Morton Harry Temple . . . Jeff Daniels

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