Pop quiz, hotshot. There’s a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? What do you do?
– Howard tells you everything you need to know
Speed is the quintessential nineties action movie. If you want to look at a movie that typifies what a nineties action film looked like, but does so with an incredible amount of skill (and a reasonable portion of wit), it’s hard to recommend a more obvious choice. It’s a movie that falls apart if you think about it too hard, but director Jan de Bont does an absolutely amazing job making sure that we’re never really looking beyond the next ridiculous plot twist or tension action set piece. More than earning its name, Speed is a movie that runs on enough raw adrenaline that it becomes as easy to overlook the movie’s flaws as it is to it seems to be ride a bus across a fifty-foot gap in a half-constructed bridge. And de Bont manages to make that look really easy.
Can I phone a friend on this "pop quiz"?
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: action films, dennis hopper, Filmmaking, gary oldman, Graham Yost, Howard Payne, jack, Keanu Reeves, metafiction, Movie, non-review review, review, sandra bullock, Speed, Speed (film), United States | 7 Comments »
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