Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) 20th Century Fox/Action RT: 125 minutes Rated PG-13 (frenetic disaster action and violence, language) Director: Jan de Bont Screenplay: Randall McCormick and Jeff Nathanson Music: Mark Mancina Cinematography: Jack N. Green Release date: June 13, 1997 (US) Cast: Sandra Bullock, Jason Patric, Willem Dafoe, Temuera Morrison, Brian McCardie, Christine Finkins, Michael G. Hagerty, Colleen Camp, Lois Chiles, Francis Guinan, Tamia, Jeremy Hotz, Enrique Murciano Jr., Jessica Diaz, Connie Ray, Patrika Darbo, Kimmy Robertson, Charles Parks, Susan Barnes, Royale Watkins, Bo Svenson, Glenn Plummer, Tim Conway. Box Office: $48.6M (US)/$164.5M (World)
Rating: NO STARS!!!
The title Speed 2: Cruise Control is itself a fallacy. Altogether now; 1, 2, 3. CRUISE SHIPS DON’T SPEED! What the fork are the makers trying to pull here? Even worse, the movie doesn’t move any faster than the ocean liner where the “action” takes place. It drags on interminably for more than two hours. All the while, we wish somebody, ANYBODY, would throw Sandra Bullock overboard. Her character is so annoying this time.
Oh, here I go getting ahead of myself again. I should start from the beginning. Speed 2: Cruise Control holds the dishonor of being the second worst sequel I’ve ever seen. It held the number one spot for nearly a decade until Basic Instinct 2 came along and blew it out of the water (in a manner of speaking). It’s still just as awful as it ever was and always will be. It’s a brain dead mix of Die Hard, The Poseidon Adventure and The Love Boat.
If anybody ever questioned Keanu Reeves’ intelligence, his decision not to reprise his role in this water-logged sequel should erase all doubt. He’s replaced by Jason Patric (The Lost Boys), taking himself way too seriously as Alex Shaw, a maverick SWAT officer romantically involved with the heroine of the first movie Annie (Bullock). It appears that Keanu’s character was right about relationships based on extreme circumstances; they never work out. If that’s true, Annie and Alex are royally SCREWED!
The movie opens with a chase scene involving Alex (of course). Annie somehow becomes entangled in it while taking her driving test. Naturally, she fails. It’s also when she finds out Alex is an actual cop, not a beach officer like he told her. To make it up to her, he takes her on a Caribbean cruise. It happens to be the same cruise crazed bad guy Geiger (Dafoe, Wild at Heart) plans to hijack. He has a beef with the cruise company. It seems they fired him after he contracted copper poisoning while designing their on-board computer system. Now he wants payback. He takes over the ship’s system and programs it to crash into an oil tanker. It falls on Alex to stop him with Annie’s help.
It’s unreal how much Speed 2: Cruise Control misses the mark, especially with Jan de Bont in the driver’s seat again. The first one was an unexpected hit. Who would have ever expected that Die Hard on a city bus would work? Its success guaranteed a sequel. Unfortunately, it’s a sequel of the worst kind. It fails on every single level. As an action movie, it’s a bore. It’s neither thrilling nor exciting. It’s a dull slog from one uninteresting sequence to the next. It’s redundant with its scenes of Alex and/or Annie rescuing screaming passengers from various dangers. You can barely see what’s going on half the time because it’s dark and rainy. By the time something semi-interesting does happen at the end, you’ll have already mentally disembarked.
Bullock was great in the first Speed. She’s terrible in Speed 2: Cruise Control. Her performance is mostly limited to flailing her arms in exasperation while exclaiming “Oh, God!” Also, her character is completely obnoxious this time. I can’t remember a time when I so wanted the bad guy to kill the leading lady and put us all out of our misery. Patric is too self-serious an actor to make an effective action hero. The material calls for an actor with a knack for kicking ass and witty one-liners after each kill. He’s clearly the wrong guy for the job. Dafoe may as well have phoned it in. About the only thing that separates him from other crazed villains is the leeches he puts all over his body to suck the copper poison out of his blood. That has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen or heard. What is this, the 18th century? The passengers are a mixed bunch of forgettable characters; the only one that stands out is the deaf teen girl (Firkins) with a crush on Alex who conveniently knows sign language. She’s actually a better action heroine than Bullock. She’s resourceful and doesn’t panic in a crisis.
The special effects in Speed 2: Cruise Control look cheap which is bad considering it carries a $160 million price tag. While the sight of a cruise ship crashing through a coastal town is neat, you call tell it was done with models and miniatures.
Speed 2: Cruise Control has a host of other problems starting with the moronic screenplay by Randall McCormick and Jeff Nathanson. They take the Idiot Plot to a new level. Usually, such a plot depends on the characters being idiots. This one depends on everybody in the audience being an idiot too. Nobody but one would buy a story this colossally stupid. The dialogue is inane enough, but de Bont takes it a step further by informing us in the end credits “No oceans were polluted during the filming of this movie.” What about the theaters showing it? Isn’t a movie as atrocious as Speed 2: Cruise Control a form of pollution?
Finally, I’d like to address one of my personal bugaboos about sequels in general. Most likely bowing to studio pressure, the makers toned down the action and violence in order to earn the more box office-friendly PG-13. Hey, the first one’s R rating didn’t hurt it any. It made more money than this stink bomb. Besides, a lousy movie is a lousy movie no matter what the rating.
Bottom line, Speed 2: Cruise Control is all wet.
