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| Source: rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup | | Rating: 4
| "This is the wrong bus."
- unnamed passenger on bus.
Can you really take "too far" too far? The producers of SPEED don't think so.
Audacious action doesn't get any better than SPEED, a non-stop nail-biter about a SWAT-team specialist (Reeves), a brilliant bomber (Hopper), and a bus rigged to blow when it slows below 50. Cross DIE HARD with AIRPORT and you're got the idea.
SPEED stars Keanu Reeves, trying to look tough after his recent upgrade from Most Excellent to Most Enlightened. The dude can't do drama, no duh, but he's nimble enough for the job. (From BUDDHA to Bruce and he even does his own stunts!) Bullock is a better bet as the poor passenger with driving duties. She showed her strength in DEMOLITION MAN and, here, she's the best bargain on board.
Dennis Hopper plays Dennis Hopper, chewing on scenery while spitting out sentences like "Do not attempt to grow a brain." (Good advice if there ever *was* any.) Bill Pullman-lookalike Jeff Daniels has a modestly meaty role as The Partner, while TERMINATOR 2 alumni Joe Morton plays the commanding officer.
The script, by Graham Yost, has enough humor to keep you smiling while you're sweating. Even better: the story never turns Reeves into a wisecracking hero. Thank you for small favors.
Of course, the best bursts of SPEED are those without words.
First-time director Jan DeBont--a former cinematographer who handled such heavies as LETHAL WEAPON 3--gets everything right, from the credits to the close. And those details! Watch for the reflection of a burning bus on a pay phone. Or a banner beside Reeves that reads "To avoid personal injury, do not stand in stepwell."
As the stunts get bigger, the film only gets better. Collisions, explosions, and big-things-sent-flying. Even the throwaway stunts are spectacular. Blink and someone's stepping from a speeding vehicle. Blink and someone's dangling from an elevator car.
Implausible-as-hell, but it works.
Credit a pace that keeps you from thinking; credit some stunts that just can't be faked. Let ILM just *try* to duplicate the simplicity of Reeves really jumping from car onto a moving bus.
(If nothing else, SPEED is a *great* exercise in wish fulfillment. Who *hasn't* wished that they could barrel a bus around slow drivers and through busy intersections?)
SPEED could be reduced. Earlier scenes run a bit too long and the ending is clearly too much. But, that's the joke. The producers know that *everything* in the film is too much and so they damn the torpedos and take over-the-top right over-the-top.
Nitpickers can enjoy the plot-holes, while the more, ahem, "retentive" viewers will have a field day finding the continuity errors that occur in nearly every scene.
Except for the ending, all technical credits are tops. Obvious minatures and mangy mattes undercut the film's next-to-last scene. But, by that point, who cares? SPEED is a full-scale tinkertoy set that makes the beginning of THE FUGITIVE look like a little Lionel train.
Twenty years ago, SPEED would've starred Charleton Heston, and Karen Black, and George Kennedy. No guns would've been needed--but a plane would crash, and a nun would sing, and the girl would get kissed at the end.
But this is the Nineties and, with DIE HARD dollars still fresh on the brain, set-piece *is* plot. Add some fireworks, and blow a few bombs, and it's Jennings Lang all over again.
BOTTOM LINE: The best ride of the summer, so far, is SPEED. Fast,
funny, and furiously far-fetched, this ballsey no-brainer
is the best reason, to date, to avoid public
transportation. Bring extra deodorant.
By : Michael J. Legeros
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| | Source: rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup | | Rating: 4
| Place your foot on the accelerator. Press down. Watch the needle on the speedometer creep above fifty. Now you're trapped. Whatever happens, you can't drop below that level--if you do, you're dead, and everyone on the bus with you. It might not be tough to maintain that speed on the freeway in the middle of the night, but this is rush hour. So what do you do when the traffic comes to a screeching halt up ahead, without an off-ramp in sight?
It's an ingenious premise that first-time director Jan De Bont has turned into a tremendously well-executed motion picture. A mad bomber (Dennis Hopper) is out to get $3.7 million, and he'll stop at nothing to get it--and to obtain a small measure of revenge on Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves), a cop who foiled one of his plots. So he rigs up a bomb on a bus that becomes armed when the vehicle goes over fifty, and is primed to explode when it drops below that speed. And it's Jack's job to save all the people on board--including himself.
Good action movies are rare. Great action movies come along once every few years. SPEED deserves a place in the latter category, being the most intelligent and breath-stoppingly thrilling motion picture to open since the original DIE HARD. Normally, I like to write reviews immediately after seeing a movie. On this occasion, I had to wait until the next morning--SPEED wore me out.
This is a film that cries out for audience participation, whether it be the silent majority's digging of fingers into armrests or the vocal minority's cheers and catcalls. SPEED is by no means an intellectual challenge, but it's probably the most fun you can have in any theater at this time.
With a single exception (that of the bus "flying" through the air), the stunts and special effects are flawlessly incorporated. And there are a lot of them. A whole lot. You could almost call this film PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES, although for entirely different reasons than those behind the naming of the Steve Martin/John Candy flick.
SPEED is clearly divided into three acts, each no less draining than the others. The first and last (which involve an elevator and a train, respectively) bookend the longer and better sequence on the bus. The film may clock in at nearly two hours, but the time, like the various vehicles, races. There is, quite literally, never a dull moment.
Of course, there are plot contrivances. How could there not be? But these are subtle and convincingly woven into the fabric of the story. While watching SPEED, you may notice one or two (for an example, consider how a bus traveling at fifty-two can slam into a car and have its speed not drop below the red line), but you won't care much.
The low-level but persistent humor is used to blot the tension. Most of the one-liners aren't as good as those in DIE HARD, but a few are worth a chuckle, and they serve their purpose. This is not, after all, supposed to be a comedy.
I never thought I'd be saying this, but Keanu Reeves does an excellent job. The actor has the perfect demeanor for Jack Traven, the cocky cop who tries hard not to get emotionally involved--and inevitably fails. Reeves' attitude and physical appearance are ideal, and even those who visibly winced during his scenes in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING are likely to accept him here.
Sandra Bullock (probably best known from DEMOLITION MAN), as the passenger who takes the wheel from the incapacitated driver, possesses enough charisma and spunk not to get outshone by her co-stars. Dennis Hopper turns in one of his patented performances as a psychotic killer.
There are reasons why the preview audiences have been raving about SPEED, and a purpose to moving the opening date from August to June. This movie is a winner, and the closest you can get to an amusement park ride in a theater. Perhaps the same warning that's used for roller coasters should be applied here. You know, the one about high blood pressure and heart problems.
Oh, and one more thing. Don't make SPEED the first film in a double bill. No matter what the second movie is, it will suffer by comparison. If you still have the stamina left to see it, that is.
By : James Berardinelli
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