Like the bus itself Speed isn't always a smooth ride and is constantly on and off the gas, but it also has plenty of momentum and just keeps on going

Rating: 6/10 (10 July 2019)

LAPD officer Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) along with his partner Harry (Jeff Daniels) manage to foil an attempt by explosives expert Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) to extort a multi-million dollar pay-out when he uses a bunch of innocent hostages trapped in a lift in a high-rise building. After assuming Payne to be dead (after detonating a bomb strapped to him) Jack and Harry celebrate their success. However, it turns out that this was merely a ploy by Payne and his next play involves strapping a bomb to a bus which will detonate if the bus drops below 50mph once it has accelerated to this speed.
As you can imagine with what is basically 'Die Hard on a bus' Speed is not short on entertainment and as a result of this it is never boring, but it does suffer slightly in the same vein that some other action films do...
The problem with Speed is that it is a one-note and one concept idea; aside from the 'filler' at the start it is basically a bus travelling at over 50mph for well over an hour. As I've mentioned it is entertaining to an extent, but there's only so much you do with this type of concept before it runs out of steam (or fuel as is the case here). It doesn't really help that they are on a bus which can smash through roadblocks, cars and so on and they're also all on a bus that defies the laws of physics by cornering better than an F1 car. To be fair, I can roll with these sort of things when done in the name of entertainment, but I still need a reason to care about what I'm seeing and I have to be honest I wasn't fully invested in what was on show here.
Dennis Hopper is the villain of the piece who is hacked off with the police and feels that they owe him a vast sum of money for an injury he sustained whilst working as part of their bomb disposal team. In this film he uses his expertise against his former colleagues which does present an interesting cat and mouse scenario, but with flimsy character development there's only so much that Hopper can do here (I give him full marks as he does an excellent job with what he had to work with). Keanu Reeves is actually pretty good as the heroic LAPD officer; there's a certain warmth to his character that makes him likeable and easy to root for. Sandra Bullock brings her usual affable dizzy charm and does OK even if she doesn't have much of a character to play here.
The ending is over-the-top and silly and in some ways this forms part of the problem; the film is so ridiculous that at times it feels like a cartoon; check out the infamous scene with the 'bus jump' if you want to see what I'm talking about. In fact sometimes the only thing that reminded me that it wasn't a cartoon was that nobody dropped an anvil on Keanu Reeves head and that Porky Pig didn't show up at the end saying 'TTTTTThhhhattt's all folks!!!'
Joking aside, this is a pretty entertaining film and at the very least it is fun unpretentious and never boring, but the cartoonish nature of the film meant that I found it to be distracting fun rather than a pulse-pounding thrill ride which is the main reason that I haven't given Speed a higher score.