All aboard for extremely dumb action.

Rating: 4/10 (26 July 2019)

Pop quiz: you're a cinematographer given the chance to direct a high-concept action flick. What do you do? What do you do?
Well, if you're Jan De Bont, you make a movie that is so action-packed that most people seem to be extremely forgiving about the film's sheer preposterousness. Your star is wooden and your bad guy is hammy, but there are more than enough explosions and stunts to keep the popcorn munchers happy, and the movie is a massive success.
I was never much of a popcorn fan, and I never really understood why this film wasn't lambasted like its sequel. After an admittedly well-handled opening scene set in an elevator armed with a bomb, the film completely dispenses with logic (and the laws of physics), the silly script taking way too many liberties for my liking. Having had his elevator bomb plot foiled by young police officer Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) and bomb disposal expert Harry (Jeff Daniels), crazy ex-cop Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) tries to hold the city to ransom once again by placing an explosive device on a bus which will detonate should the speed go below fifty miles per hour (despite the bus looking like it's going about thirty in most scenes). Boarding the bus, Jack tries to find a way to save the passengers' lives while pretty commuter Annie (Sandra Bullock) takes the wheel (the driver having been shot).
Payne's plan is poorly thought out: had the driver dipped below fifty before Jack had been able to board the bus, the bomb would have gone off, leaving the extortionist with no chance of collecting his cash. Luckily for him, this doesn't happen, but this isn't the film's only dodgy plot point: there's the ridiculous gravity-defying leap across a fifty foot gap in an unfinished stretch of freeway; getting the driver off the bus is a perilous affair, but Jack casually hops off later without a hitch; bomb expert Harry and his highly trained team enter Payne's home without even considering that it might be booby-trapped; and in a very silly finale, Jack speeds up a subway train when he could have simply slowed it down.
I've yet to see the sequel but surely it can't be any more inane than this one.