Jan De Bont had already proved his worth as a competent cinematographer on the likes of DIE HARD (1988) and Ridley Scott’s BLACK RAIN (1989), when he was handed the director’s chair on SPEED, a film that confirmed Keanu Reeves as a solid leading man, as well as surprising the industry.
A ruthless bomber (Dennis Hopper) plants a bomb on an elevator in a corporate building. Officers Jack Traven (Reeves) and his bomb expert partner Harry (Jeff Daniels) are part of a squad who enter the building and manage to save the stranded passengers, before confronting the bomber, who takes Harry hostage. Traven wounds Harry in the leg to get him off the bomber and the bomber perishes in an explosion.
However, the bomber is not dead and detonates a bomb on a bus the following day, killing the passengers and driver on board. He poses Traven a dilemma – for $3m, a bomb on a bus, goes above fifty, it’s armed, goes below, it blows!!!
Traven is given the number of the bus and goes in hot pursuit. Getting on the bus, he meets Annie (Sandra Bullock) who has to drive the bus when the duty driver is injured in a confusing misunderstanding by a passenger thinking Traven has come for him. All on board now face a race against time….
A deceptively simple idea fleshed out with intelligence and logistics, SPEED puts the pedal to the metal and keeps the attention. In an age when CGI sometimes helps things along, the in-camera exploits of Reeves and co are even more admirable a quarter of a century on from its’ original release.