Speed (1994) | Jan De Bont | Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock

[grim22]

Starting this thread because Speed is one of the first movies I can remember watching in a theater. This was the surprise hit of 1994, launched Reeves and Bullock into stardom, helped get Joss Whedon's career off the ground and is still remembered and quoted regularly even 23 years later.

 

 

 

It was the #8 movie domestic but earned almost as much as True Lies both domestic and WW. It basically matched Peak Cameron and Peak Schwarzenegger in terms of box office while starring almost no one of note at the time.

 

Total Lifetime Grosses

Domestic:	$121,248,145	34.6%
+ Foreign:	$229,200,000	65.4%
= Worldwide:	$350,448,145

[grim22]

There were a lot of retrospectives 2 years ago. This is one of the better ones where they talked to the actors who played the passengers on the bus

 

http://uproxx.com/hitfix/speed-20th-anniversary-meet-the-passengers-of-bus-2525/

[John Marston]

Also had a small budget of 30m which made it massively profitable 

[grim22]

 

[Webslinger]

I've been on an O.J. kick lately with the release of The People v. O.J. Simpson on Netflix and the availability of the Made in America documentary on Hulu, and I couldn't help but make the connection that this movie first took off the same week as the murders occurred and finished second at the box office during the weekend of the infamous Bronco chase. I'm sure the coincidence wasn't lost on people who followed box office at the time.

 

I enjoy the hell out of this movie, but I prefer that same summer's True Lies by a slim margin.

[John Marston]

Yeah that summer also gave us True Lies, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, The Mask, and Clear and Present Danger

 

 

 

it also had the underperforming sequels Beverly Hills Cop 3 and City Slickers 2

 

 

I remembered reading Speed was originally supposed to release outside of summer but Fox moved it up to summer showing they must have gotten confidence in the film 

Edited February 10, 2017 by John Marston

[Jiffy]

Still holds up as an effective adrenaline-fueled action flick 20+ years later. 

 

Great concept! Hard to believe they botched the sequel so badly in that department.

[grim22]

1 hour ago, Jiffy said:

Still holds up as an effective adrenaline-fueled action flick 20+ years later. 

 

Great concept! Hard to believe they botched the sequel so badly in that department.

 

The mistake was setting it on a cruise ship, not too many action setpieces that can be effectively done on a cruise ship. There is a reason most action movies at sea take place on naval vessels or on submarines.

[Mango]

On 2/10/2017 at 5:28 PM, grim22 said:

 

The mistake was setting it on a cruise ship, not too many action setpieces that can be effectively done on a cruise ship. There is a reason most action movies at sea take place on naval vessels or on submarines.

 

Speed is just the kind of movie you shouldn't make a sequel to. The concept really works for one film (which they nailed in terms of execution), but after that you just can't do it again without it coming off as dumb. 

[filmlover]

On ‎2‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 3:09 PM, John Marston said:

Yeah that summer also gave us True Lies, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, The Mask, and Clear and Present Danger

 

 

 

it also had the underperforming sequels Beverly Hills Cop 3 and City Slickers 2

 

 

I remembered reading Speed was originally supposed to release outside of summer but Fox moved it up to summer showing they must have gotten confidence in the film 

Yeah, they placed it in the summer on short notice because it tested through the roof. And for good reason.

[mldardy]

On 2/10/2017 at 2:47 PM, Webslinger said:

I've been on an O.J. kick lately with the release of The People v. O.J. Simpson on Netflix and the availability of the Made in America documentary on Hulu, and I couldn't help but make the connection that this movie first took off the same week as the murders occurred and finished second at the box office during the weekend of the infamous Bronco chase. I'm sure the coincidence wasn't lost on people who followed box office at the time.

 

I enjoy the hell out of this movie, but I prefer that same summer's True Lies by a slim margin.

It sure did. I remember seeing this movie opening day when I was out of school for the summer couldn't wait because of Ebert's 4 star review and then two days the OJ thing happened. Wow what memories.

[John Marston]

also Jeff Daniels plays a character named Harry Temple who dies in an explosion. He seems to have survived though but with massive brain damage and changed his name to Harry Dunne and appeared in Dumb and Dumber. Another massive 1994 hit. 

[grim22]

7 hours ago, John Marston said:

also Jeff Daniels plays a character named Harry Temple who dies in an explosion. He seems to have survived though but with massive brain damage and changed his name to Harry Dunne and appeared in Dumb and Dumber. Another massive 1994 hit. 

 

IIRC, in the original script Daniels character is supposed to be a third act twist. He is in cahoots with Hopper all along. They removed that out when they felt it complicated the whole movie needlessly.

[SteveJaros]

I remember Speed being influential. At the time it was released, "action" films had become kind of brontosauric, they had developed into sludgy, ponderous affairs laden with SFX and high body counts and where the action seemed to stop frequently so the Big Star could pose and strut and speak his carefully crafted one-liners.  Some of those films worked really well, but the more numerous imitators had bogged the genre down. 

 

Speed was an almost Ramones-in-1976 antidote to that, it reminded us that action thrills could be based on, well, stripped down manic velocity. I recall seeing it in the theater summer of 1994 and loving it. 

Edited February 15, 2017 by SteveJaros

[grim22]

 

[Deep Wang]

One of my all time favorite action movies!

 

My mom took me to see this because we had just moved and I was bummed out.  Then we saw it like 3 more times, lol.

[filmlover]

21 hours ago, Rallax said:

One of my all time favorite action movies!

 

My mom took me to see this because we had just moved and I was bummed out.  Then we saw it like 3 more times, lol.

This was actually my first R rated movie in theaters (I was 13 at the time) hehe.

[PPZVGOS]

One of the best and most influential action movies ever made! I think that most film-nerds tend to understate this movie's importance in blockbuster history. Most pundits mistakenly describe 1994's Speed as a very good Die Hard knock-off, but that is not doing it any justice whatsoever. What this movie did in fact was to take the Die Hard formula and take it to the next level. It probably spawned even more copycats than Die Hard itself. As great as Die Hard was (is) if you watched it *after* Speed for the first time (as was the case with myself) then it appears as decidedly underwhelming. The first time I had watched Die Hard, I was frankly bored by it, because in comparison with Speed, it appeared as slow and ponderous. I had to re-watch Die Hard recently in order to fully appreciate it. 

 

After Speed, countless copycats followed, copycats that many film buffs mistakenly consider to be Die Hard copycats. In matter of fact, after Speed, the Die Hard franchise itself had to reinvent itself and take its cues from this Keanu/Sandra classic. Die Hard With A Vengeance had to come out of the claustrophobic confines of a skyscraper or airport and go into the streets, with car chases, fast editing and quick montages. Besides Die Hard 3, Broken Arrow, Under Siege 2, Air Force One, Con Air, The Rock, Face Off, Executive Decision, GoldenEye, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Ronin, Bad Boys, and Jan de Bond's very own Twister (I am surely forgetting a few more as well) are all to various degrees influenced by this remarkable 1994 action-packed masterpiece. 

 

Speed's influence over movies would not significantly tail-off until another Keanu Reeves action classic, The Matrix, came out in early 1999. 

 

1994 was the year I became a movie nerd as I became old enough to be visiting the movies without someone older (even though I needed my older cousin to take me to Interview With The Vampire, another awesome 1994 film that is criminally underrated) That was an excellent year. It saw the triumphant arrival of Jim Carey (Ace Ventura, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber in the same year!!!) Tarantino's magnus opus in Pulp Fiction, Tom Hanks' most successful and iconic role in Forrest Gump, the high-water mark of Disney's animation return with The Lion King, the last great collaboration between Cameron and Arnie in True Lies, the arrival of Brad Pitt with Legends of the Fall and starring opposite Tom Cruise in Interview With The Vampire.

 

Speed was a landmark movie in a landmark year. 

[Johnny Tran]

On 2/10/2017 at 2:47 PM, Webslinger said:

I've been on an O.J. kick lately with the release of The People v. O.J. Simpson on Netflix and the availability of the Made in America documentary on Hulu, and I couldn't help but make the connection that this movie first took off the same week as the murders occurred and finished second at the box office during the weekend of the infamous Bronco chase. I'm sure the coincidence wasn't lost on people who followed box office at the time.

 

I enjoy the hell out of this movie, but I prefer that same summer's True Lies by a slim margin.

 

I was very young at the time but I remember this quite well.  My mother took me to the drive-in and we watched a double feature of Speed and True Lies!  What a blast 

[Maxmoser3]

Keanu was in something more serious than his teenage slacker comedies, and Sandra Bullock had the girl-next door look. 

 

Fox had it right this time! A modest budget, an appealing premise, and now bankable stars.