Just hang on and watch!

Rating: 8/10 (4 March 2015)

One of the biggest hits of 1994 was the action thriller Speed, a thrill- a-minute film that provides edge-of-your-seat excitement from beginning to end.
Jan De Bont, who also directed Twister proves to have a gift for mounting a contemporary action drama filled with very human and believable characters, not to mention some bold casting choices, one of the boldest was the casting of Keanu Reeves as a police detective who gets in the middle of a bizarre hostage situation when he learns that a psychopath from his past (Dennis Hopper) has planted a bomb on a bus that will explode if the bus slows to below 50 MPH.
De Bont and screenwriter Graham Yost have mounted an intricate story that starts in one direction with our hero helping a group of people trapped in an elevator and all of a sudden heads into a completely different direction with a flawed protagonist whose guilt about his past with our villain puts him in full hero mode.
Reeves, an actor of questionable talent prior to this film, makes more than a viable action hero here and Hopper is properly menacing as our bad guy. Sandra Bullock gives a star-making performance in one of her earliest performances as a bus passenger who, through bizarre circumstances, ends up driving the bus and keeping it at 50 MPH.
This film provides riveting action and suspense from the beginning to the end, barely allowing the viewer to breathe as De Bont somehow tells this story on a pretty large canvas, yet gives us the claustrophobic feeling of being inside that bus at the same time. The film won four Oscars for its technical expertise and was followed by a forgettable sequel.