Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

In all honestly aside from John Wick, all I know Keanu Reeves from is The Matrix trilogy (and I think I saw Constantine a few years back?). It’s been in the back of my mind to go back and watch a few of his old movies with John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum coming soon, and so I settled on Speed as it sounded familiar and it had the most accolades next to The Matrix.

The SWAT team are called into an LA office when a mad man (Dennis Hopper) rigs an elevator filled with innocent people with a bomb, holding them ransom until his monetary demands are met.

When his plans are foiled by Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) and partner Harry (Jeff Daniels) he makes it personal. Forcing Jack to take part in his twisted game, he targets a bus full of people mechanising his bomb to go off if the bus ever slows down.

Innocent lives mean nothing to the bomb maker, whilst Jack will do everything in his power to both keep people from dying and catch the bad guy, no matter what how fast he’s going.

I thought this movie was freaking amazing. Comparatively to other movies of the genre, Speed stepped up to the plate and proved itself with such ease it was difficult not to love this film.

Walking into this movie I – as usual – had no idea what I was pressing play on, and with the title Speed, assumed it was some sort of car chase type movie. Thankfully it was much more than that as events escalated really nicely, and for a movie almost two hours long, it split crisply into three equally exhilarating acts.

Young Keanu Reeves was both incredibly good looking set across that dusty early nineties background, and was that smart and cool-headed protagonist that one needs in a high octane situation with civilian lives at risk.

The cast list also featured a few of my low key faves including Jeff Daniels (The Newsroom, Steve Jobs) and Joe Morton (Scandal). Of course one can’t forget about the lovely Sandra Bullock who excelled in this, one of her earliest roles.

This was an edge of your seat kind of movie, and I’m already pretty excited to watch Speed 2: Cruise Control. Even though it won’t star Reeves and my hopes aren’t necessarily high, I take comfort that in Speed I’ve found a new staple to my Action Movie Binge Fest line up.