Well buckle up, strap in, hold on tight, and get ready for the thrill-ride that is the 1994 action thriller, "Speed."
This is one of the Keanu movies I've been looking forward to rewatching since I started this project. It's not like I haven't seen "Speed" many times over - of course I have, I'm not a complete asshole. But "Speed" is one of these movies that I've probably only watched in its entirety from start to finish a handful of times, including its original theater run in 1994. However, it is on TV with such frequency, or at least it used to be that I've certainly caught it in 30 minute clips dozens of times or more. For as many times as I've seen it in drips and drabs and as big a fan of Keanu Reeves as I am, I'm actually a little surprised that I don't even own this movie in some format or another.
By 1994, Keanu Reeves was arguably a movie star if not a mega-star. He had been involved in a small handful of huge hit movies, but only one action movie to this point as Johnny Utah in "Point Break," and I would argue that his performance as Jack Traven in "Speed" launched him in to that category of superstardom.
"Speed" did huge box office numbers and became a part of the American lexicon, at least for a short while, including two clips from two of my favorite shows from the 90s that referenced the movie:
If you are an adult over the age of 20, there can't really be a way that you don't know "Speed," a movie with a relatively simple premise that is executed in a spectacular fashion - a mad bomber (Dennis Hopper) rigs a bus to explode if it slows to under 50 miles an hour and only one man can save the day - our hero Keanu Reeves as Jack Traven.
While I don't generally like to use these posts to share random trivia and facts for these movies, I did read two interesting tidbits that I wanted to share:
First, Keanu Reeves was far from the first choice to play Jack. The top choice? Inexplicably, it was Stephen Baldwin. For the life of me, I cannot understand how this was any sort of logical choice. Apparently, the argument was that Keanu Reeves was not a big enough star....and Stephen Baldwin was? I mean, I guess who could forget him as Jimmy Teeters in the 1993 movie, "Posse," or his epic performance as Travis Graham in "Bitter Harvest," or as Stuart in "Threesome?" I'm of course joking because nobody remembers any of these movies.
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| Nope. |
Second, in the original script, the bus was rigged to explode if its speed dropped below....20 miles an hour. I can't imagine how that could have been thrilling in any sort of way. They could have stayed in a parking lot the entire time. Thrilling.
Not only did "Speed" launch Keanu Reeves to superstardom, but the same can also be said for Sandra Bullock, who was the one of the only actors who went on to star in the oft-panned sequel, "Speed 2: Cruise Control," a movie I'm thankful that I don't need to watch for this project.
I think part of what makes "Speed" such a classic movie is because the stakes are high and director Jan de Bont truly keeps his foot on the gas (pun intended) for the entire duration of the film. On my rewatch for this project it really dawned on me that there is a good 50-60 minutes where the audience is forced to hold their collective breath while the bus speeds through the highways of Los Angeles, avoiding several close calls including the epically famous "bus jump" sequence.
Of course, it's a movie and so we ultimately know that the bus isn't going to explode, at least not with our heroes (and most of the extras) still on board. Which is why it's always been a dream of mine to remake a movie like this but have the bus explode and kill everyone on board in say, minute 20. Then the rest of the movie would be about Keanu Reeves' family dealing with his untimely death. It would be the ultimate fake-out. We'd cut the trailer to look like a thrilling action/adventure, but the movie would really just end up being a serious melodrama about one family's grieving process.
Audiences would hate it.
It's the same reason I want to make a shot for shot remake of one of my favorite movies, "The Karate Kid" except when Daniel gets to the tournament he gets knocked out immediately after "You're the Best" kicks in. The record scratches, the music gets cut-off, Daniel loses and Johnny wins the tournament. Allie dumps Daniel and gets back with Jonny and Mr. Miyagi has a heart attack and dies.
I think it would be hilarious.
Because I love "Speed," and because it is probably one of Keanu Reeves' most famous movies I'm not going to bother with much more of a recap of this. If you haven't watched it from start to finish, do yourself a favor and go do that. Rather than a recap, I just want to point out a few holes in logic I noticed in my recent viewing that certainly don't take away from the movie being anything other than awesome.
In the beginning of the movie, Jack and Harry (Jeff Daniels) foil Howard's (Dennis Hopper) elevator ransom plan and Howard ostensibly blows himself up in the parking garage, leaving the cops to assume he's dead. But when someone explodes in a confined space like that, shouldn't there have been some blood and body parts strewn around? Shouldn't the cops have been able to figure out that the bomber wasn't dead?
Dennis Hopper mentions that it took him two years to setup the elevator job that opens the movie and after foiling this plot both Jack and Harry are given medals in a televised show within what I assume can only be a matter of days or weeks. Yet, Dennis Hopper is able to setup the bus job almost immediately. Either he wasted a shitload of time on the elevator plan or he learned a whole lot from that plan in order to devise the next one. Sure, I'll just go with the latter.
Also, where's the traffic? I feel like I am always hearing about how bad traffic in LA is. This is kind of addressed when they get on a newly built and unused highway, but what about all the traffic up until that point? This takes place during morning rush hour on a workday. Maybe that's why the initial script called for 20 miles an hour.
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| 8:00 rush hour |
Speaking of the day and time, we see Dennis Hopper on multiple occasions with an array of televisions, mostly on news stations. However, he has one TV set up on a football game. What football game is he watching at 8:30 in the morning on a Tuesday? I suppose it could be a recording on a VHS tape but....why?
But let's forget about all this because at the end of the day, who cares? "Speed" is awesome, plot holes and logic be damned.
A few quick things to note:
*Apparently the opening elevator sequence was inspired by director Jan de Bont's own experience being trapped on a stuck elevator on the 40th floor while filming "Die Hard." That's pretty terrifying. I also got trapped in an elevator once about 18 months ago, and even though my elevator was only about two feet off the ground floor, it was still a pretty scary experience for 45 minutes. Unfortunately, I was saved by a big, fat guy from Otis elevator and not by Keanu Reeves.
*Keanu Reeves did most of his own stunts for this movie, which he has gone on to do for many of his other actions movies. Just further proves that Keanu Reeves is awesome.
*This marks Keanu's second movie also featuring Dennis Hopper, the first being "River's Edge." Dennis Hopper is noticeably better in "Speed," and makes a pretty fun villain in this.
*I am probably wrong, but I think one of the cast members of the current season of 90 Day Fiance was an extra in this. If you are unfamiliar, Yolanda is a 50 something year old woman who is the 'victim' of a very obvious, and very blatant romance catfish by a Nigerian guy claiming to be a hunky British 30 year old.
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| Oh Yolanda, you sad, sad woman |
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| "In my heart, I know that Williams is not a bus bomber." |
Box Office Mojo Information: $121 million domestic ($270 million inflation adjusted), $161 million international on a $30 million budget. The 7th highest grossing movie of 1994, the 547th highest grossing movie of all time and the 93rd highest grossing R rated movie.
Rotten Tomatoes: 94% Critics, 76% Audience - I'm actually a little surprised that these numbers are not inversed and that critics liked this that much more than the audience, not that either of those scores are low. For the record, "Speed 2" has a 4% critics score, marking a 90% difference which has to be one of the biggest sequel disparities on record.
IMDB: 7.2
My Movie Rating: 9/10. I really don't watch a lot of action movies but when I do, there's a good chance Keanu Reeves is involved. "Speed" is absolutely one of my favorite all time action movies, it still makes me hold my breath even if I know exactly what's going to happen.
Keanu Rating: 8/10. It's sort of funny to read that he wasn't considered a big enough star to pull this off during the original casting conversations.
Up next: the 1995 movie, "Johnny Mnemonic," a cyberpunk movie that probably has some laughably bad visions for the future. I've never seen it and have heard it's pretty terrible so I guess we'll see.
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