{"id":2650,"date":"2024-08-22T02:30:20","date_gmt":"2024-08-22T02:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2650"},"modified":"2024-10-13T19:20:30","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:20:30","slug":"speed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/22\/speed\/","title":{"rendered":"Speed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Speed <\/strong>(1994)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th<\/sup> Century Fox\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 116 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jan de Bont\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Graham Yost\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Mark Mancina\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Andrzej Bartkowiak\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 10, 1994 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Daniels, Joe Morton, Alan Ruck, Glenn Plummer, Richard Lineback, Beth Grant, Hawthorne James, Carlos Carrasco, David Kriegel, Natsuko Ohama, Daniel Villarreal.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $121.3M (US)\/$350.5M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s absolutely no reason in the world that Speed<\/strong> should have been any good. It\u2019s Die Hard on a bus, for Pete\u2019s sake! But it is good. In fact, it\u2019s great! It\u2019s exciting, suspenseful and a thrill-a-minute. What a wonderful surprise.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I didn\u2019t really know what to expect when I attended the prerelease screening the Tuesday before it opened. It\u2019s fair to say I had more confidence in Speed<\/strong> than City Slickers II which screened the same night at another theater. My biggest concern was whether leading man Keanu Reeves would cut it as an action star. He did well in Point Break three years earlier, but he had the strong support of co-star Patrick Swayze. Besides, I (like many others) still associated him with the dimwitted character he played in the Bill & Ted movies. As it turns out, Keanu does a decent job as the hero in Speed<\/strong>. It\u2019s true he\u2019s a wooden actor, but he has a high likability factor which goes a long, long way. It doesn\u2019t hurt that he has the support of a great cast and a tight screenplay. This is one of those movies in which everything comes together exactly right.<\/p>\n

\u00a0SWAT Officer Jack Traven (Reeves), recently recognized as a hero for saving a group of elevator passengers from mad bomber Howard Payne (Hopper, Blue Velvet), finds himself in a dire situation involving a city bus. Angry at Jack for foiling his earlier plans, Payne has rigged a bus full of passengers to explode if its speed drops below 50 MPH. Upon learning this, Jack boards the bus while it\u2019s still in motion and informs everybody of the situation. After the driver is put out of commission, passenger Annie (Bullock, Demolition Man) takes the wheel. Considering that she lost her driver\u2019s license for excessive speeding, she\u2019s the perfect choice to keep the vehicle above 50.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Meanwhile, Jack\u2019s fellow officers, led by partner Harry Temple (Daniels, Dumb and Dumber), clear the streets and freeways (during morning rush hour no less) while trying to zero in on the mad bomber who won\u2019t allow any unloading of passengers under threat of detonating the bomb. He threatens to blow the bus any everybody on it to kingdom come unless he\u2019s paid a large ransom.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Speed<\/strong> contains what I consider the biggest \u201cYeah, right!\u201d scene of the past 20 years. Upon learning that they\u2019re approaching an unfinished section of freeway, Jack has Annie accelerate the bus and jump over the gap like Fonzie on a motorcycle. Yeah, it\u2019s a cool scene. At the same time, you\u2019re sitting there saying \u201cYeah, right!\u201d because you know this would never work in real life. That\u2019s where suspension of disbelief comes into play. You need that in order to fully enjoy one of these action flicks.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Speed<\/strong> is a good one. It combines elements of Die Hard and Airport to make a truly exciting popcorn movie. We get some interesting passengers like the good-natured tourist (Ruck, Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off), the hulking Hispanic construction worker (Carrasco, Parker) and the frightened, panicky woman (Grant, The Mindy Project). Personally, that\u2019s always been my favorite part of disaster flicks, the collection of possible victims.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hopper is awesome as the crazed villain, but he was born to play parts like that. Bullock makes a real name for herself in Speed<\/strong>. It\u2019s the movie that catapulted her to stardom. Plucky and spirited, she makes an excellent right-hand woman. The action scenes are very well done. The pacing is dead-perfect. It\u2019s a solid directorial debut for cinematographer Jan de Bont (Basic Instinct). It may be derivative, but the storyline is really quite good. I wish more action movies were this much fun. That\u2019s what it boils down to in the end. Speed<\/strong> is a fun movie. It\u2019s perfect entertainment for any time of year, especially summer.\"\"<\/p>\n

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Speed (1994)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century Fox\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 116 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jan de Bont\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Graham Yost\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Mark Mancina\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Andrzej Bartkowiak\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 10, 1994 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Daniels, Joe Morton, Alan Ruck, Glenn Plummer, Richard Lineback, Beth Grant, Hawthorne James, Carlos Carrasco, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kick-ass-actioners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Speed-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2650"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3549,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2650\/revisions\/3549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}