Speed (1994) Review

From reviewing the 2 films ‘Psycho’ & ‘The Birds’ which come into the sub-genre of a Psychological thriller, I've now watched a film that comes into the Action Thriller sub-genre which I tell from the wording that this will use active, tense situations to drive suspense in the audience e.g. some sort of high action, hugely tense/ nerving car chase of some sort which I could tell Speed would be similar to by looking at the italic-like typography of the title and the bus flying through an explosion behind the main actor/ star of the film; Keanu Reeves.

From what I've seen, Speed and its respective sub-genre seem much more realistic and use realistic events/ possibilities in turn are more effective than ‘The Birds’ as you could imagine yourself on the bus in Speed, and what’s frightening is how it’s much more likely to happen in terms of terrorism than birds that have become interested into killing humans.

What me and my peers should try and do for our Opening Titles task is to attach the audience to the concept of the film, so that it makes them strong feel like they are/ could be the character in the situation of the film.

The use of music in this film ties in with the amount of switching between camera shots hence the fast paced action to keep the audience intact and interested, and a similar thing is used in music videos where the music helps assist the fast switching shots, so that the viewer isn't getting dizzy and is multi-tasking rather than concentrating on an array of quick camera shots.

This could be used in our Opening Titles if we were to have a fast paced/ tense scene of fear/ suspense hence our theme of Thrillers.

The Opening Titles of this film have you descend down a lift shaft, as a way of keeping the audience interested whilst the opening credits appear from behind lift frames as you descend and disappear as another frame flies past the camera, which we could try to incorporate into our opening titles if we were to have an opening scene; especially on the move.

The good thing about this 'classic'-considered film is that the story line is very simple as it is obviously an action- thriller in which most of the film is targeted at delivering high paced action scenes in Los Angeles. The Story starts off with an old, clever man/ terrorist planning to make money by  killing/ threatening lives in an attempt to blackmail the authorities (i.e. the police) to pay him a very large sum of money. This man targets a lift shaft in a building where small explosives have been set onto the lifts  which could of sent dozens of people falling to their deaths, but the L.A.P.D (Los Angeles Police Division) special ops are contacted quickly and get the citizens out of the lift before it plummets where they find the armed, old man in a unused lift who runs off into a room whilst being chased down by 2 of the special ops. From what they see, they see the old man walk into the room and explode from the explosives strapped to him around his torso.
Somehow he survives and seems to have a plan B, where he contacts one of the L.A.P.D members on their time off duty and sets off an explosive on a bus down the road and warns him that the same explosion could happen to a bus nearby (a km or so)  which is heading for a highway where if it reaches 50mph, it will explode if it drops back down below 50mph. The man also tells him that the bus will explode if anyone tries to get off, where you see shots of the man in his base with screens showing CCTV, news channels, helicopter cameras to see the amount of work he has put into doing his terrorism, and his control. So the rest of the film simply takes this police officer onto the bus where he tries to outsmart the old man in order to get the passengers off safely without falling below 50mph.

The pacing of this film is very constant luckily, as there isn't a moment in the film (maybe except the L.A.P.D presentation scene 30 minutes in) where I got really bored/ peered away from the screen, as when the bus phase of the film arises, it doesn't settle down in terms of suspense and action until the closing credits. The pacing of the film is helped by the gimmicks/ parts in the story where when you think some of the minor problems have been solved e.g. the highways/ roads being cleared  for the speeding bus, more small problems arise to keep the viewer engaged i.e. sharp turns the bus has to make or even an extreme situation of jumping over a 100ft-ish gap on a highway interchange. So I can say the writers/ others behind the film definitely thought out well how they were going to keep the audience entertained with this speeding bus and what obstacles are going to arise on its journey.

Overall, for what the film is (an action- thriller), I really enjoyed it and would agree with reviewers on sites like IMDb who would regard this as a classic. Thinking about it, I cannot think of anything really wrong with the film as a whole, as the pacing is well made, the characters/ actors are believable in the tense atmosphere of the film. I would give this a 4.5/ 5.