Here’s the thing… I REALLY wanted to watch “Speed” tonight. You know, the 90’s action classic with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock where they can’t hit the brakes on a bus or else it explodes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it start to finish, but it seems like the best kind of action movie; dumb enough to be fun but also fun enough to ignore the dumb. Here is the trailer, and it looks glorious.
Unfortunately, that movie is popular enough for it to cost real money, and who has $3.99 lying around for that? No, I’m going to take the next best thing that happens to be free on a streaming service. And what do you know, “Speed 2” is on Hulu. Starring Sandra Bullock and Willem Dafoe, it’s gotta be good! Guess I know what I’m watching tonight. Here’s the trailer.
Oh god… what am I doing, and why am I doing it? Why does a movie about a boat have a subtitle of “Cruise Control”? Is Jason Patric supposed to be Keanu Reeves or somebody else? Here we go, I guess…
I was planning on watching this thing before writing the rest, but I’m 10 minutes in and it seems like this is a movie made for “live blogging”. So far, I’ve seen a motorcycle chase, apparently Sandra Bullock is a horrible driver despite having driven a bus, and I’ve already seen some super sappy relationship-y stuff between the two leads that it certainly feels like I should care about, but it feels unearned. I honestly think Patric might’ve been cast because he looks similar Reeves, only to have them decide he needed to be an entirely different person day 1 of filming. Literally, the two leads are acting like they’ve been in a relationship for years, but lets do some quick math… Its been 3 years since the first film. Sandra Bullock makes a comment that Keanu Reeve’s character gave her some mace for a present for their second anniversary. That means Patric’s character and Bullock’s character have been dating for a year, tops. And they are now going to the Caribbean on a spur of the moment seven day vacation. Why does everything in this film seem so forced? I literally just want to see a dumb action movie. Why is this movie causing me to overthink the details? This is not a good sign for the remainder of the film.
Ugh… Sandra Bullock is horrible in this movie. What is it? I have seen her in 90s movies where she is outstanding (A Time to Kill, Demolition Man). I’ve seen her in movies where she can carry the load (basically everything in the last 15 years). But in the 90’s, she is just insufferable as the lead. I REALLY want to give her a pass, but she is sooo bad in this movie. It’s like she is trying to be “quippy”, but doesn’t know how to do it yet. I’d go into how bad Patric is so far too, but that is just going to make me sound like a broken record.
WHY ARE THEY SPENDING ANY TIME ON THEIR RELATIONSHIP?!?! They have zero chemistry. We are now 30 minutes into this thing, and all I want to see is some speed-based action scenes, but they keep giving me scenes of Sandra Bullock painting toenails, dressing up for fancy dinners, and the two main leads talking about if they want children.
Oh, great, now Willem Dafoe is getting going. I’m happy he is actually “action movie-ing” up this joint, but is he really explaining his motivation to the captain as he tosses him overboard? It seems he was a chief designer of cruise ships, but was unceremoniously fired and is out for revenge. Seems a bit unoriginal, but ok. AND now that the captain is dead, we are back to the two leads slow dancing and close-talking.
LOL, his marriage proposal was interrupted by an explosion on the boat. I’m pretty sure this is “generic action sequel plot #3”.
Ok, so action-y stuff is happening, but I am wondering why this has to be called “Speed 2”. Is it just because the first was popular and they wanted to milk the audience goodwill for Round 2? Because that is absolutely what it feels like. Clearly this was written to be Keanu Reeves, daredevil FBI agent who happened to still be dating Sandra Bullock. I’m not interested enough to look it up, but I’m guessing Reeves received the script and said “I’d rather not” and they just decided to do a “Find and Replace” on his character name with “Alex, daredevil cop”.
OH, I get it now… “Cruise Control”, because they are on a cruise ship. Lame. I feel like we could come up with better name puns for this one. Movie is still going on, but honestly i think ill spend the rest of it trying to come up with cooler names. “Speed 2: Nautical MPH.” “Speed 2: Come Sail Away”. OH OH OH, i got it… “Speed 2: Caribbean Boogaloo”.
Alright, 30 minutes left of run-time, its time to get our bearings… Bad guy has Sandra Bullock captured on a speed boat, but “Not Keanu” has been able to prevent the cruise ship from T-boning an oil tanker. My prediction for the rest of the movie… Willem Dafoe vs. “Not Keanu”, but Willem Dafoe ends up doing something that results in his own downfall. Lets see where we go from here.
OMG they just ran into a sailboat and it EXPLODED. A SAILBOAT.
You ever watch a movie, and its obvious that hundreds of people died in an action set piece? Like, right now i am watching a cruise ship just decimate an island community, and everyone just seems so excited that this ship didnt get destroyed. But I’m pretty sure literally everyone on the dock died. So, this movie just killed hundreds of people in an island community to save maybe 30 on the boat. Way to go, “Not Keanu”.
Ok, thank god this movie is done. Willem Dafoe died in a huge fuel tanker explosion, “Not Keanu” proposed to Sandra Bullock, and the credit sequence got to make a funny about a speeding bus. I REALLY want to try and find something good about this movie, so lets see… The action sequences were at best, fine. The set pieces looked expensive. Thats… about all I’ve got. It’s all pretty generic. It isn’t fun enough for me to ignore the plot, and the plot isn’t good enough for me to give it a pass on the action.
In this day and age, I generally have a high opinion of 90’s action films, but I think this movie leads me to second guess myself on that. The main 90’s movies I love are generally the best of the decade, but its not often I watch the lesser offerings. So, for every great 90’s flick, we have a pretty generic sequel to go along with it. Normally, I can find something in a movie to recommend, but this one has nothing to highlight. That being said, I find it hard to recommend this movie to anyone. Avoid this movie, which should be easy since I bet most people my age have never heard or cared about this one.
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