Can a city bus actually go 50 mph without falling apart?

Rating: 7/10 (10 October 2005)

Okay, the story is exciting, the acting is excellent, and it's definitely one of the better action movies, but ... BUT ... asking the audience to believe that a city bus can sustain a speed of 50 mph nonstop for one and half hours in the middle of a city without breaking down stretches the bounds of credulity. Maybe a Mazda, maybe a Porsche, maybe even a Greyhound or Short Line bus, or maybe even your standard commuter bus could have functioned intact, but an inner city bus? NO WAY!! It's enough that these buses work at all, much less that they could go 50 mph without breaking down within five minutes (okay let's make it ten minutes). It would have been more realistic if the bus was required to maintain a constant speed of, let's say, 20 mph. Now that would been far more believable and realistic. But when that bus does its flying act, like the General Lee flying through the air in the "Dukes of Hazard" or Burt Reynolds and Sally Fields doing the same in "Smokey and the Bandit," that's when I knew that this movie had moved into the realm of science fiction. It would have been more believable to have had the bus launched into orbit around the earth, or to the moon.