The year of 1994 is one that often comes up when discussing the greatest years for film. So many pictures premiered to critical and financial success, and have endured as classics: Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, The Lion King, it goes on. In discussing this historic film year, now three full decades ago, it’s really important to remember the absolute finest action movie of ’94: Jan de Bont‘s breakneck-paced (thus aptly titled) Speed, which premiered to critical raves (including a rather famous four-star review from Roger Ebert and a “two very enthusiastic thumbs up” from his iconic TV show with Gene Siskel), was an immediate and sustained box-office leviathan despite its R rating, grossing $350 million (nearly 12 times its budget) and ultimately winning two Oscars (for Sound and Sound Effects Editing) among a total of three nods.
Though its shot at franchise glory was hampered (to put it very mildly), at least for a time, by a historically awful sequel (the most impressive bullet The Matrix star Keanu Reeves has ever dodged), time has been very good to the OG, and it really hasn’t aged in the slightest. Critics have re-assessed it—as, still, really, really damn good—in recent years, and a 2021 4K UHD disc was widely acclaimed by home media enthusiasts as one of the best of its era. So what’s the secret sauce, what makes this movie an enduring and spotless landmark of explosive genre movie-making? These are 10 essential factors that make Speed hold up as an action masterwork.
10 A clever plot divided into three distinct acts
Screenplay by Jan de Bont, Graham Yost and Joss Whedon
Blending thriller, crime and above all action, Speed stars with a pulse-pounding action sequence and never really relents for a two-hour runtime. In fact, it’s divided into three distinct acts aboard three moving vehicles. Acts two and three happen within the same day, too. In the opening, mysterious, lethal and creepy terrorist Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) has rigged a downtown Los Angeles office elevator to explode, demanding a ransom (props to the screenwriters for opening the movie with the grisly, screwdriver-to-the-face murder of a security attendant, raising the stakes and menace from the jump). Bromantic cop buddies Jack and Harry (Reeves and Jeff Daniels) thwart Howard’s plan, and the perp is presumed dead.
Flash-forward a bit, and Howard’s back and angrier than ever. He remotely blows up an Santa Monica County bus (and the driver inside) in front of Jack to demonstrate his might, before lettng him know his new, more ambitious plan: there’s a bomb on another bus (fully operational and en route) that will blow if it goes below 50 MPH, or if Howard doesn’t get his money. Once Jack makes a daring leap onto the bus mid-highway, this is where we spend most of the movie, before a final, shorter, much more personal tête-à-tête aboard an LA Metro subway.
9 An all-time great action star in a signature role
Keanu Reeves as Jack Traven
Keanu Reeves was already an acclaimed and established dramatic actor thanks to turns in movies like Dangerous Liasons, River’s Edge and My Own Private Idaho and he’d established his action chops as FBI agent Johnny Utah in Kathryn Bigelow‘s Point Break. As good-guy cop Jack Traven, Reeves would play his best role in the genre until playing Thomas “Neo” Anderson in The Matrix half a decade later, a role that would only be matched or arguably outshone once the phenomenally successful John Wick films revived his popularity.
Reeves is a genuinely interesting and subversive, appealing action star in Speed, especially considering the context and place in time; audiences were just coming out of the ’80s heyday of ‘roided out-looking killing machines who often didn’t really say anything substantial beyond one-liners. Reeves is lithe, gorgeous, clever, personable, cool-headed but liable to pop off at any moment. As is pretty much always the case with this actor, he’s endearing… but dangerous, especially with the ever-escalating stakes.
8 An unforgettable and ruthless villain
Dennis Hopper as Howard Payne
Many have argued that a thriller can only be as good as it’s villain; Payne is an expert bomb maker who knows the ins and outs of law enforcement an infrastructure. Why, exactly? Well, he used to be a cop; now he’s running entirely on resentment and ill will. He feels society never gave him his due; he feels this so strongly he’s rigged and timed the bomb on the bus to the cheesy “cheap, gold watch” the LAPD gave him as a parting gift.
The late Hopper appeared in many classic movies, but his turn here is probably second-only to a in terms of mainstream audience recognition. Like his most famous turn as the psychopathic sexual deviant Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, Howard Payne has a menace and ick factor that’s only matched by the kind of believability only a great actor could bring to the table.
7 Fleshed-out, sympathetic characters at risk
Supporting actors include Alan Ruck, Carlos Carrasco and Beth Grant
None of this would matter if we didn’t care about the people at risk. Though the script and director honestly deserve extra credit for fleshing out the civilians in the elevator of act one, they really took the time and care to make us give a damn about the people on Santa Monica Big Blue Bus 2525. The supporting players here include Alan Ruck as Doug and Carlos Carrasco as Ortiz.
Probably the most upsetting and disturbing moment the overall just plain exciting popcorn film comes when passenger Helen (underrated, often brilliant character actress Beth Grant of Donnie Darko and “Sparkle Motion” fame), who’s previously established as being something of a loose cannon, attempts to break one of Howard’s rules (no getting off the bus). He blows her up with a smaller explosive rigged to the front door. It’s gruesome. It needed to happen from a storytelling standpoint though; it raises the stakes, and it makes us hate Howard even more.
6 Annie the wisecracking bus driver (a star-making performance)
Sandra Bullock as Annie Porter
The most memorable of the passengers on board is, without question, civilian Annie Porter. She’s been relegated to public transport due to… wait for it… speeding. After driver Sam (Hawthorne James) is shot and incapacited after a misunderstanding that leads to an armed scuffle, Annie takes the wheel, essentially co-captaining the entire operation with Jack. The actress, previously best known for Demolition Man, steals much of the movie, her humor and effortless charisma foreshadowing one of the mightiest rom-com stars in motion picture history.
Along with Willem Dafoe, Bullock is one of the few who emerged from the utterly disastrous Speed sequel unscathed. Her star would continue to climb through the ’90s and aughts, culminating in an Oscar win for 2009’s The Blind Side. Frankly, she’s been atop the A list ever since Speed.
5 A comedic and touching romance that works as well as the action
Keanu Reeves as Jack Traven, Sandra Bullock as Annie Porter
There are many great actors who’ve suggested “chemistry” is merely what happens when two good actors do their jobs right. It’s a meaty kind of a thing to think about, but whatever is going on between Reeves and Bullock here seems to negate that. At the center of all violence is a reason to care: the actors are so good that we buy into Jack and Annie’s rom-com immediately. The pair make more than one death-defying escape in what’s overall a very long day for both; these are perhaps the most exciting moments of the film because we’re so invested in the lovable people.
The absolute greatest action movies, the ones that transcend and endure, use action the way other movies use dialogue: choices that define the character of characters are made. In the final moments of Speed, the defeated Howard has no head, and Jack has a choice: he can either jump to safety and leave Annie, handcuffed to the railing within a subway, or stay with her as the train lunges riskily toward unfinished track. He does the right, gentlemanly thing (hey, it’s Keanu) and they both survive, giving us a funny and touching ending as bystanders, equal parts enchanted and puzzled, watch Annie and Jack kiss and embrace within a now-stopped, completely wrecked metro car in the center of Hollywood and Highland. It’s a wildly romantic and subversive ending to a movie that’s best-known within the zeitgeist for blowing things up.
4 A bromance that works just about as well as the romance
Jeff Daniels co-stars as Harry
1994 was around, or just a little while after, the time the buddy cop movie was at its absolute zenith in popularity thanks to a string of successful Lethal Weapon films and more. Though the buddy-cop dynamic is never really at the center of the film, Jeff Daniels delivers an excellent, gruffly and dryly funny performance; we feel the love between the two men.
Harry dies a little over halfway through the film, in what’s easily one of the saddest deaths in an action movie. Howard sets a distraction that turns out to be an explosive death trap for several LAPD officers. The moment is milked for all its worth as the camera zooms in on Harry’s face as he stares down a bomb; he knows he’s toast. It sucks, but thematically and in the name of good screenwriting it had to happen. No one is safe, you see.
3 Speed is very funny when the audience needs a breather
Screenplay by Jan de Bont, Graham Yost and Joss Whedon
In his rather well-known, widely referenced review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Rogert Ebert referred to Speed as a prime example of a “bruised forearm movie,” where the tension is so merciless and unapologetic that you’re bound to grip the arm of your date. Yep, that’s this movie.
So, of course a picture this fast-paced needs comedic relief. Props to the script (co-written by Joss Whedon before he’d become widely known for this kind of thing) for making the humor always feel organic and never tacked-on, like the lesser Marvel movies where we get an action scene followed by a half-hearted joke that’s just out of place. Some of the funniest bits in Speed include Jack’s buddy banter with Harry, the romantic banter with Annie, and even Howard’s morbid gallows humor that’s honestly perhaps the most quotable stuff in the movie.
2 A tone that deftly balances grittiness and outlandishness
Screenplay by Jan de Bont, Graham Yost and Joss Whedon
Can an LA city bus packed with people jump a 50-foot stretch of incomplete highway, then remain over 50 MPH after touching wheels on the other side? Mythbusters actually tested it out, and the answer is: probably not, no. But damned if it isn’t an awesome set piece here, one of the most famous moments in the film. Again, credit to the script and screenwriters for going just far enough into the outlandish without taking us out of it. If only the same could be
Speed is technically wall-to-wall violence, but never sadistic or gross. The tone is impeccably maintained. It’s the kind of movie that seems to be celebrating how well it can excite us; it’s fun. The most graphic death in the movie is the villain’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, rather awesome and honestly kind of hilarious beheading. This is popcorn entertainment, though and through, with the sole intention of entertaining you. Frankly, if ever there were an R-rated action movie you could take grandma to, this is the one.
1 Flawlessly executed action and unrelenting tension
Directed by Jan de Bont
You go into a movie like Speed wanting things to go boom, and boom they go here. In fact, act two ends with one of the biggest explosions in film history. Mere seconds after all remaining passengers are off board thanks to Jack’s plan to outwit the villain, C4-ridden bus 2525 plunges into a passenger-less, taxiing airplane. It’s about as dazzling as this kind of thing can be, worth the price of admission. But the movie around the pyrotechnics is so much better than it needed to be. Director Jan de Bont would go on to find major success two years later with the slightly silly though extremely successful disaster movie Twister, but his career would take major hits (the wrong kind of hit) with the back-to-back critical and commercial failures of Speed 2: Cruise Control and the awful remake of The Haunting. Still, his greatest film (this one, Speed) is a landmark that will always be relevant, referenced and just plain enjoyed.
Speed is something rare, that delivers everything you could possibly want from a big-screen experience shared with an audience, a singular excitement you can’t get any other way. It’s the kind of experience that drove people to movie theaters in the first place.
