Cinema
Speed (15, selected cinemas)
Bombed out
Mark Steyn
You remember those disaster movies from the Seventies in which the plucky nun has to get the 'plane with the bomb on safely back to the airport? Speed also winds up at the airport, only this time the bomb's on a 'bus. Plot-wise, it boils down to: the runaway 'bus came over the hill and she blew.
Hmm. A 'bus. Not quite the same, is it? If they're setting disaster movies on 'buses now, it surely won't be long before we get MOPED! starring Charlton Heston as a North London Pizza delivery boy unaware that there's a bomb in the deep-pan pep- peroni. Incidentally, where is Chuck Hes- ton? A disaster movie proper has Charlton Heston as the automatic pilot, Dean Mar- tin as the Benedictine monk struggling to get over his combat experience in 'Nam, Faye Dunaway as the spurned leading lady determined to crash the 'plane in the mid- dle of her heartless composer's opening night . . . Instead, compounding the off- peak cheap-day excursion feel of Speed, all the ordinary people here are played by ordinary people.
There's always Keanu Reeves, playing the best advertisement for the Los Angeles Police Department since the guys who pulled over Rodney King. Determined not to panic the passengers, he roars up along- side and screams through the door, `Wake up, Charles . it's your day.' 'LAM! There's a bomb on your 'bus!' He's been given advance notice of this by the psycho, played by Dennis Hopper (presum- ably to lend authenticity: he's a distant relation of London Transport's popular Camden Hoppa.) But, instead of calling the precinct and having them alert the Transit Authority to page the driver, he roars off after the 'bus at the height of rush-hour. He has to, I suppose, otherwise there'd be no movie — just as later he acci- dentally punctures the gas tank ensuring that the fuel gauge starts sinking towards empty, at which point the bomb '11 detonate.
But the trick with formula movies is never to let the formula show. Compare Speed with Blown Away, released a few weeks ago. Same plot: mad bomber terror- ising a city for fun and personal revenge, picking off the hero's friends and col- leagues and wiring up the love interest along the way. Same set-pieces: after the bomb, a payphone rings and the hero picks it up only to get taunted by the psycho. Same tense bomb-defusing scenes: cut the red lead; no, the green; no, the red. But, by opportunistically dressing itself up in the Irish Question, Blown Away is about some- thing. Tommy Lee Jones is an embittered IRA escapee, banged up by the Brits for 20 years because his accomplice squealed: there's a reason to kill. Dennis Hopper kills because that's his function in the structure of the movie: it isn't enough.
Blown Away isn't really about Ireland, any more than Forrest Gump (coming next week) is a cool dissection of the American psyche, but, by hinting at something greater, they distract you from the formula. Speed's director, Jan de Bont, and screen- writer Graham Yost leave all the mechan- ics in full view.
It's like one of the bomb-defusing scenes where Reeves is talked through it by Jeff Daniels back at HQ: 'Okay, slowly cut the blue wire, then disconnect the timer . . . Okay, slowly establish some sexual chem- istry with the kooky gal on the 'bus — not too fast, dammit — then move towards the hysterical matron and write her out of the script.
Perhaps it's meant to be Brechtian — a film about a 'bus journey that is itself exact- ly like a 'bus journey: the route is pre- dictable, but it seems to take forever to get there. Then, amazingly, just when you think the terminus is in sight, the movie sails straight past and starts all over again. You can't spot the interchange, but suddenly we're on a subway train, also with a bomb on it: Jan de Bont may not know much about movies, but he sure knows how to run an integrated transit system. Inciden- tally, the bomb is activated when the 'bus speedometer hits 50 miles per hour. For British audiences, accustomed to 'buses that rarely get out of second gear, this may require too great a suspension of disbelief. That said, when Keanu Reeves is strapped to the undercarriage of the 'bus, you'll cer- tainly disbelieve its suspension.
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