Speed (1994)

Director: Jan de Bont

Writer: Graham Yost

Composer: Mark Mancina

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, Sandra Bullock, Joe Morton, Jeff Daniels, Alan Ruck, Glenn Plummer, Richard Lineback, Beth Grant, Hawthorne James, Carlos Carrasco

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Get ready for rush hour.

Plot: A young cop must prevent a bomb exploding aboard a city bus by keeping its speed above 50 mph.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Probably not.

Dumbest line: Jack (Reeves): "Harry, there's enough C4 on this thing to put a hole in the world!"

Well it only took me 20 damn years to get around to watching this one for the first time.  Let's see, some other movies from 1994 I haven't seen yet are THE LION KING, THE FLINTSTONES, D2: THE MIGHTY DUCKS, NELL, WALKER TEXAS RANGER 3: DEADLY REUNION, ERNEST GOES TO SCHOOL, DEBBIE DOES DALLAS AGAIN or any number of the 3,000+ movies that came out that year.  So how was it?  I liked it.  It's dumb as shit but it's fully aware of itself.  There are so many leaps of logic that it was pretty obvious after a few minutes that I was supposed to sit back and enjoy this nonsense.  The whole idea is ludicrous but it was fun...except the last twenty minutes.  Dude, the movie's almost two hours long (I'm watching BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY (1991) while I write this).  For most of the film I thought de Bont & pals did a great job with the pacing but that was until the subway sequence at the end.  By that point I was checking out and that bit feels like it goes on forever.  But I'll give 'em this, for a premise that sounded weak as shit, they made a fun, rousing movie (except for the last bit, of course).  I often found myself laughing out loud ad the ridiculousness of it all.  I would love to have seen this in the theater 20 years ago on opening weekend with a rowdy crowd.  That would have been something.