20 Years of SPEED

... So he was just saying, in the nicest way possible, "I'm not really interested." And then she was like, "Well, fuck you!" And he was like, "No, wait, wait," it was that kind of thing. And then he sent her flowers and all was forgiven. But I felt bad for her because she was in a bad spot; she wanted this film to work and she was getting nothing from him. So yeah, to me, she saves the film. He looks good but she saves it.

--Loyda Ramos, Hitflix 

Image source: http://www.moviestillsdb.com/media/pictures/m/37/37bf9ebe8c01077877b704eafacabbf2.jpg

I love the expression on her face.

How do we fall in love? Is it in the turn of a hip, the long glance, the speeding of our heartbeats? For Annie and Jack it is one punch. They’re stuck at the front of a bus, Annie (Sandra Bullock) driving while Jack, a twenty-nine-year-old Keanu Reeves, directs her on which way to go. Underneath them is a bomb set to go off when the bus slows below 50 miles an hour, or when the bomber gets angry enough, whichever comes first.

Much of SPEED (1994) is like that: waiting for the other shoe to drop. The setup is that a bomber has taken over a skyscraper, and is threatening to blow up an elevator full of hostages if he doesn't get his three million. This plan quickly derails as LAPD officers Jack Traven and Harry Temple play catch-up. "Will Mr. Guest please sign in?" Jack lobs at the elevator containing the bomber.

"What?" Harry replies. What, exactly. If Harry--a late thirties Jeff Daniels--is the older, slightly bumbling mentor, Jack is the protégé with the smart mouth, too clean cut to be a punk but too young and brash to be anything else. His first time up against the bomber--Dennis Hopper, crazy and wholesomely American--this heedlessness works. The second time, Jack watches a bus explode as the bomber tells him that another, numbered 2525, is set to go off a highway somewhere if he doesn’t manage to save it. 

That's where he and Annie meet. Her first words to him are, "Excuse me, are you out of your mind?"

Are we out of our minds? Yes, we are out of our minds. We're swept along just like the rest of them, traveling in a bus to the middle of nowhere (an airport) to watch nothing (fireworks, eventually). SPEED proves that an action thriller can spur the best kind of fools: young, naive, rushing in.

Image source: http://www.celluloidheroreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Keanu-Reeves-Speed-1994.jpg

There is an awkwardness between Reeves and Bullock familiar to anyone who has ever had a high school crush. Strangers at the beginning of the film, they slowly navigate around each other in a simulacrum of courtship. Every moment you're aware that they might not make it to the end of the movie--it might not last--but that's why you root for them.

It's true that she, who is funny and charming and fearless, saves the movie. But what you forget is that he goes down with her. And the moment they approach a fifty-feet gap in the road, with no alternate path and no way to slow down, they leap.

Image source: http://media.timeout.com/images/101217951/image.jpg
Or fall. Whatever.

Twenty years on, what strikes me about SPEED is how wonderful and pertinent it still is. True, their predictions for the future were mostly wrong; we have no “interactive TVs,” as the bomber claims we would, though in one surreal episode proto iPhones—pocket cameras—document the action. (Spoiler: a GIF stars in a plot twist.) 

The plot can be problematically contrived, such as when a bus driver appears on the scene just long enough to establish that he’s a friendly face in Jack’s life before dying. Some jokes don’t make sense. After an epiphany about how to save the hostages, Jack rushes toward the skyscraper’s roof, only for Harry to call after him, “We’re not going to shoot them, right?” Twenty seconds too late, Jack replies almost nonsensically, “No, we just take them out of the equation.”

But those flaws are balanced out by the unrelenting thrills and a smart, culturally savvy script. (The uncredited script doctor who wrote “98.9%” of the dialogue? Joss Whedon.) Merely stating the obvious can be a two-fold punch line, such as when Jack flags down a convertible in an effort to reach the bus. The driver, who is black, argues, “This is my car, I own this car, it is not stolen!” Taking out his gun, Jack replies, “It is now.”

Then there is the active cinematography courtesy of DP-turned-Director Jan de Bont, which leaves you feeling as though you’re both in the worst traffic jam of all time and not quite touching the ground, as in the moment an explosion pushes Jack through the air like a butterfly, weightless. In the process de Bont made a "Bruised Forearm Movie," as Roger Ebert referred to it, where the madness is the art.

Image source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4IqHPXZQQEJkTA_kXNT8YNgtYasuxu5U1CidfoMojn1KgkTIWcsOjHlYKnoBHYAh56-qftHgW9XsDFoQdtt4tCbqv4rZbq-2LxPkpekxZMdgEw4-5NgRN9As71dRpGrb67g3a5wKDNRM/s1600/Speed_145Pyxurz.jpg
I dare you to try to interpret this image.

SPEED's release on June 10th put Reeves and Bullock on the cusp of stardom. Afterward Reeves, having proved he could action, would join The Matrix; Jeff Daniels play divorcee in indie darling The Squid and The Whale; Joss Whedon become Joss Whedon; and this--this was Bullock's big break. But in 1994 they were just starting to live those dreams.

There's a short clip on Youtube of that time, after the movie was finished and the press junket begun. Keanu still has his short hair, and he’s talking about Sandy when she suddenly runs into the room and crushes him in her arms. He laughs, and when she lets him go his first words are, “Nice blouse.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, nice.”

“How are you?”

“I’m pretty well,” he says.

“Okay,” she says. But it’s not a throwaway line. It’s clear that she heard him, in that distinct way you hear the people that matter to you. A moment later she’s gone. Focus back on the camera, Keanu smiles. “Et voila.”

It’s reminiscent of a scene in the movie after the bus has successfully jumped the gap. Rising out of his protective crouch, Jack turns to Annie, asking, “You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

“Okay?” He asks again, breathless.

 “I’m okay, I’m okay,” she replies, touching her forehead. It’s bleeding a little, and Jack leans over her, holding his shirt over the wound. They’ve made it, and no one has ever been as glad to be alive.