Continuing our series in which writers revisit childhood movie passions, we get back on the bus for an audaciously over-the-top thrill ride with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock
There was a heady point during the mid 1990s, when I was in my early teens, when the Speed VHS would be brought out at almost every sleepover, along with an argument over who was allowed to fancy Keanu Reeves the most for the duration of that particular screening. But on reflection, it does not seem strange that what was once a furious obsession eventually dulled to nothing: the prospect of finding escapist entertainment in the story of a
bomb planted on a bus by an angry domestic terrorist has become less alluring as the years have gone on. (Keanu Reeves, by all accounts, has not.)
It has been 20 or so years since I last saw Speed, and it quickly became clear as I rewatched it that I had forgotten most of it. That says more about my teenage flightiness than it does the quality of the film, because it turns out that this is still a masterful and thrilling action movie. It ladles on the tension until it’s brimming over, and then it keeps going, until you’re losing your head. I have not felt so stressed out by a viewing experience since Uncut Gems. And the bomb-on-the-bus part is only the filling in the Speed sandwich. The bus section is bookended by the villain’s even more dastardly plot to blow up a lift full of workers, and a full-on, all-out LA subway chase which is so ridiculous and over-the-top and unnecessary that having the audacity to tack it on to the end of the main chase is almost genius. This is certainly a showy film. You sense that the very idea of understatement was offensive to director Jan de Bont. When the passengers finally get off the bus safely, and you think that part is over, the bus drives itself into a plane and blows that up too. Just because, well, why not?