SPEED BUMPS

by Michael Ferguson

"Feel the rush!" And how; a tag-line that appeals to the visceral
senses and not the mind. We weren't being asked to imagine a scream that
couldn't be heard in space or even what was wrong with the Davies' baby, we
were simply asked to feel.

SPEED is an American classic. Since it captures the essence of
what's right and what's so wrong with Hollywood filmmaking, I think it
deserves a second look. C'mon, let's go for a second feel.
Time magazine called it "Brain Dead But Not Stupid," capturing it
in a caption by crying out rhetorically: "If making mindlessly enjoyable
summer movies is so easy, why can't they all be as satisfying and well
executed as SPEED?"

Like all good macho thrillers about guys with guns, SPEED is
replete with sexual innuendo and phallic double-speak. "Was it good for
you?" Keanu asks partner Jeff Daniels, panting and exhausted after their
spectacular elevator shaft experience. Hopper's jumping the gun and firing
off his elevator bomb three minutes prematurely is jokingly couched in
terms of his having "blown his wad."

Hopper taunts that Reeves has "all the balls in the world," while
Daniels calls Keanu a "little prick" after being shot in the leg by him,
later claiming that "6 inches off the mark" and it would have been all
over. "Man sure has a hard-on for this bus," says a passenger as Keanu
buzzes alongside and tries to alert the driver of danger. The bomb is, of
course, "a pretty big wad...brass fittings," and Keanu's inviting "Fuck
me!" when he gets a load of how much explosive she's rigged with provides
an appropriately sodomitic trope. (One almost expects the wise-cracking
Bullock to say, "Okay, somebody else grab the wheel.") When Keanu leaves
the bus mid-ride, one passenger muses, "He's somewhere jerkin' off," then
after considerable derring-do beneath the bus and just as our hero is
pulled to safety, our Hispanic passenger chuckles, "You're not too bright,
man, but you've got some big, round hairy cojones!"

How the hell could that have looked in the script? Just like this:

Ortiz (chuckling): You're not too bright, man, but you've got some
big, round hairy cojones!

Traven: That's very gross, Ortiz.

Ortiz: Uh, can't even pay him a compliment!

Yeah, man, I'd do that script. Wouldn't you?

Naturally, there's even a psychosexual feature to the bad guy.
Hopper has no thumb (how Freudian), fleets with impotence when firing his
gun point-blank into the ultra-hot Keanu's face (out of bullets or just
plain beauty-struck?), watches football and guzzles beer while a mannequin
is glimpsed in the background of his warehouse hide-out [no doubt also an
in-joke, as Hopper's first film with Reeves was THE RIVER'S EDGE (1986), in
which Hopper had a bizarre love relationship with a blow-up doll], carries
a detonator he refers to as his "stick" when threatening the chick, and
loses his head in a climactic spurt.

Films that are beautifully acted, flawlessly written, and
impeccably directed can still be destroyed in the editing room. This is
where SPEED delivers...sort of, kind of...maybe. Action sequences depend
on a complex series of decisions about what images are to follow what
images and precisely how long we are to look at one before the next appears
in ways that dialogue scenes do not. With action, the editing is designed
to fool you, to camouflage reality and suspend disbelief. It is here in
the flexible world of kinetic illusion that time compresses and elongates
at the edge of a blade. This is how you can have two cops (one a bit
paunchy and middle-aged) scale 30 flights of stairs in a matter of seconds
(by only showing them run up floors numbered 29 - 32, for example). This
is how you can have an amazingly foresightful Keanu decide he'll whisk his
way up to the 53rd floor (a mere 24 floor jaunt) in two and a half seconds
so he can conveniently put to use a rooftop crane and reel off enough steel
cable to reach an elevator 24 floors down and allow it to drop another 10
before kicking in and straining itself. The big-ass eyelet on the top of
the elevator that an inverted-Reeves effortlessly hooks into is just too
cool for words. (Though I'm sure it looked good in the script.) Bear in
mind that these guys have got exactly 20 minutes to accomplish all this
from the time they're briefed on Floor 1 of the building! Kinetic cutting is how you can have these same two cops
effortlessly run down to precisely the right floor the elevator has fallen
to, without giving the audience time to wonder how, and peel off the access
panel in order to pull only 8 (of what we were told were 13) passengers out
before it plummets to the basement. (By the way, without getting
political, what happened to the black female passenger we saw get in the
elevator? We certainly don't see her being helped out.)

SPEED was nominated for Best Editing at the Oscars for 1994 and
somehow I find that an interesting occurrence. Acknowledging that peer
editors gave it the nod is an important testament to how such a badly
conceived and sloppily spliced film did all too beautifully what it was
supposed to do; it made you feel the breakneck pace, it propelled you
forward and through the action, pulling a big sheet over your eyes and
performing sleight-of-hand like some flashy Vegas act. The inexcusable
shot of the bus actually seen lurching forward as the driver is forced to
apply the brakes and SLOW DOWN so as not to hit the squad car escort
immediately in front of it (a shot right after the chief radios Keanu to
get on the 105 freeway interchange) is reason enough to deny it the
nomination, but the fact that no one took notice or even cared is the very
reason it deserved the nod. (It eventually lost to FORREST GUMP.)
John (LAST ACTION HERO) Wright's editing also has great difficulty
sustaining the illusion that the "2525" (add them together and you get the
key speed) is going 50 m.p.h. or more through the entire flick. Several
aerials, as well as flattened perspective zoom shots, simply fail to
convince us that the bus is moving at the essential speed, whether it
actually was at the time or not. Yet, this is a movie that requires a
viewer's complete abandonment of such rationale and more often than not
gets it. Roger Ebert's **** review simply tells us this isn't the kind of
movie from which you ask such questions.

Other editing cheats include cutting away as the bus smashes into
parked cars on the off-ramp so that we won't see how many times those
exterior shots resulted in the actual bus grinding to a halt. And worst of
all, a complete cheat, with Dennis Hopper's on-board video camera not
revealed until conveniently self-serving. Not only is the silly thing not
wired for sound, but an earlier anchor news report that a cop had jumped on
board the bus has Hopper asking "Could that be you, Jack?" Well, he oughta
know, all he's gotta do is look at his monitor.

It's positively James Bondsian when Keanu pulls the jokey, but cool
stunt removal of the Jag's door, with "Tuneman" providing comic relief and
abruptly coming to a stop after hitting road barrels that explode as
harmlessly as water balloons. There are lots of Bond movie theatrics found
here, from the silly, yet exciting jaunt beneath the bus on a cabled cart
(and since the bus is supposed to be circling, this stunt would be
impossible), the painfully ridiculous bus jump over 50' of missing freeway,
and the nearly tipped bus careening along on two-wheels, to the need for
the thing to blow big time...not on its own...but by careening into an
empty jetliner. SPEED is as much witting or unwitting spoof of the
Testosterone Flick as TRUE LIES (1994); the difference being that SPEED's
audience was too wowed and caught up in the action and movie star good
looks to find it funny...then.

Keanu Reeves, thought to be the most unlikely of action hero stars,
is in many ways a remarkable working actor, whose performance in POINT
BREAK (1991) should have been a clue to his ability to do this sort of
thing. His career examples such a diversity of work, such a variety of
roles and of genres and periods in which to play them, and he's
consistently hired by top directors in films whose budgets cross the
spectrum of low-rent to high-end. For someone still struggling with
critical and even public recognition of his relative gifts, his elusive
appeal may have reached its nadir in SPEED. The guy is a movie star.
Talented or not, genius or joke, he has a face that the camera loves. Toss
in two months of Gold's Gym work-outs to bring pulsing veins to his
impressive biceps, buzz off his Ted Logan shaggy locks (the bullethead
haircut was Reeves' own idea), give him a gun, a black Jag, a cute girl and
a bus and look out. This feat is that much more astonishing if you've seen
LITTLE BUDDHA (1993), Keanu's film just prior to SPEED, in which he's so
thin he resembles no more than a reed growing beneath the Tree ofEnlightenment.
Reeves' substantially hollow voice and limited vocal range is
perfect for hotshot Jack Traven. He brings forthrightness, purpose,
single-mindedness and beguiling trajectory to his character, even managing
to carry out the shades of a romance with remarkably chipper Bullock by
flashing a smile that bleats through the physique. He's not only damned
good looking, but he's engaging, too. Oh, and in praising the film on AT
THE MOVIES, Gene Siskel said he thought Keanu Reeves should be nominated
for an Oscar for his work here. I didn't make that up.

Keanu has a reputation for script-meddling and it was reportedly at
his request that the original screenplay's standard tough-guy one-liners
routine be cut to a bare minimum. In fact, it really doesn't show up until
nearly the end, with his post-mortem comment to Hopper about his height and
his answer to Bullock's wondering what happened to the bad guy: "He lost
his head."

Sandra Bullock was roundly praised for her performance, but there's
not a whole hell of a lot to it. It may seem revolutionary that we've got
a woman in the driver's seat, but that's only if you've managed to have a
wailing Karen Black exorcised from your memory in AIRPORT '75. Bullock
gets to drive all right, but she also gets to snap off sidekick chick
lines. Her first to Keanu after he leaps aboard is, "Excuse me, are you
out of your mind?" And after screeching while others pull Reeves to safety
from under the bus, her first crack to her would-be savior: "You are a
complete jerk, you know that?" How unique, a beautiful woman with spirit!
As for Jeff Daniels, he's good, but anyone who was surprised by his
fate from the outset also broke down in tears when Anthony Edwards' Goose
got cooked in TOP GUN (1986).

"Irwin Allen's" SPEED is unabashedly the disaster movie of the
1970s re-visited, right down to the little character vignettes afforded a
supporting cast of passengers that never once seem believable and are
afforded the worst lines of dialogue. After an on-board scuffle and Keanu
has to shout to the passengers that there's a bomb on the bus and they
can't slow down, one turns to him and says, "Bullshit...yeah, there's a
bomb...some funny joke, man!" Can't you just hear the actor rehearsing
that line in front of his bathroom mirror?

I like how one of these segways has Alan Ruck, the tourist yokel,
soliloquizing that he can't be on this bus, he can't die like this, only to
start a tempestuous exchange with other passengers who think he's saying
he's better than them. This is classic disaster movie stuff. The only
problem being that such banter usually comes as a result of going
stir-crazy and that's certainly not believable at this pace. It also used
to be that all the co-stars were burnt-out TV or movie character actors
looking to make a fast buck. Ideally, I would have populated the bus with
Tatum O'Neal, Ralph Macchio, Tommy Chong, Jimmy McNichol, the guy who
played "Meat" in PORKY's, and Susan Tyrrell as the lady who blows up. But
that's just me.

Other favorite bits: Keanu hears a pay phone ringing while he's
standing next to a blazing bus (no doubt that's what clinched the Best
Sound Oscar). For several shots while Keanu's on the phone, there's
absolutely no one on the street behind him, nor sirens nor screams or
shouts. (That's where that Best Sound Effects Editing Oscar came
in...editing out realistic noises is an art form.) Keanu is in such a
hurry that he drops the phone and runs before Hopper finishes telling him
what cross street the bus is at.

Keanu judiciously drives alongside the bus and flashes his badge
and yells "There's a bomb on your bus!" without ever checking his own
speedometer to see if the bomb has been activated. Luckily, Sam the Bus
Driver doesn't apply the brakes, signal to pull over or do anything else
you or I might do when a cop flashes his badge and yells at us while in
pursuit. Equally wise, Keanu has Tuneman write "BOMB ON BUS" on a piece of
paper so that Sam will get the idea and maybe instinctively speed up. When
the paper flies ala Alfred Hitchcock onto Sam's windshield, he carefully
drops his speed to 51 and suddenly his hearing improves. Keanu's strangely
slow reaction time during the confrontation with a gunman on the bus allows
another passenger to wrestle with the guy resulting in Sam's taking a
bullet. Then there's the shot of the school kids and teacher marching out
into the street immediately after squad cars with sirens and flashing
lights fly by them; well, when the assistant director says "go," you go,
dammit! The ambulance takes Keanu and Sandra to the site of Hopper's money
pick-up and then Sandra is allowed to wander in plain sight and absolutely
alone for Hopper to snatch. Why don't other cops follow Jack into the hole
in the sidewalk?

"Annie, you won't believe this," understates Jack when he finds out
the track on the subway, like that of the freeway, isn't finished either.
And then there's the SILVER STREAK finale, complete with the driver of the
guided tour van getting out of his vehicle after it's been nudged by a
runaway subway car and saying, "I can't believe he hit my van."
My absolute favorite line, though, and the movie's instant rewind
spot, comes shortly after Bullock has a fit following the death of the
woman blown up in the bus doorway. While trying to remind her that Hopper
is the bad guy, that "he's" the jerk, Reeves' enunciation clips the "h" and
we hear him say with all sincerity: "Ease the asshole, Annie." Sounds like
damn good advice to me.

Christian M. Chensvold, writing in Film Comment and admitting the
experience of SPEED resulted in his seeking out a tome of Nietzsche,
writes: "SPEED is an ideal piece of entertainment for a certain variety of
culturally bankrupt and intellectually vacant Americans, wearied from the
dull drudgery of daily life, and only roused by highly sensationalized
stimuli. The film's perfection, and hence the reason for its prospering at
the box office, lies in its total lack of mental demands on the viewer:
there is no assembly required."

SPEED is one of those good movies that just play so bad, or vice
versa. It doesn't really matter which. Nobody cares. We just like it.
Me, too. Maybe. Kind of. O.K., sure.

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