Rating: 
Summary: Maltin's right! A bulls-eye!
Review: Keanu is hot, Sandy is cute, Dennis is appropriately menacing. An action movie with humour, emotion and excitement? This is definitely in my top 10 list along with Armageddon, Titanic and My Best Friend's Wedding. Speed is awesome.
Rating: 
Summary: Eye-popping, edge-of-your-seat excitment!!!
Review: Keanu Revees and Dennis Hopper are spectacular in this explosion of action and danger. Bullock adds her Oscar worthy performance as a speed ridden passenger on the bus from hell. I can see it again and again and never get tired of it!
Rating:
Summary: But I'm taller
Review: Dennis Hopper plays an ideal psychopath. This is a perfect film. The conflict and the relationships among the characters is intense and perfectly acted. I'd recomend this film to strangers. END
Rating:
Summary: Riveting
Review: Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hooper head the cast in this excellent film, which captivated the audience from start to end. A must see movie! END
Rating:
Summary: I keep coming back
Review: SPEED has been one of the handful of movies made in the last ten years that I keep coming back to again and again when I need an action fix. I think it's partly because its premise is so impossibly simple: there's a bomb on a bus that will go boom if the bus goes below 50 miles per hour. That's it. I also think it's also because for all the noise and action, it really doesn't take itself too seriously. Everyone, even the usually sulking Jeff Daniels, appears to be having a good time. And, of course, it doesn't hurt to have the maniacal Dennis Hopper performing opposite Keanu Reeves who is properly underplaying his role as HERO. SPEED, I admit, is a no-brainer. But if I wanted to watch something cerebral and intellectual, there are plenty of others to choose from. I mean, from which to choose.
Rating:
Summary: Top Notch Action Film
Review: "Die Hard" was the prototype for the 90s action film and "Speed" remains one of the best reworkings of it. It delivers enough non-stop action and thrills to satisfy even the most-demanding action fans. Keanu Reeves (who'd have believed it before "The Matrix"?) stars as Jack Traven, LAPD SWAT commando. Traven and his partner Harry (Jeff Daniels) battle one-thumbed mad bomber Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) throughout nearly two hours of wall-to-wall testosterone and mayhem. The script by virgin screenwriter Graham Yost delivers not one, but three thrilling disaster stories, accomplishing that rare Hollywood miracle of actually giving the audience more than they expected. Reeves gives a surprisingly good performance, showing uncharacteristic confidence and ease. Daniels is largely wasted and Hopper gives his stock crazed villain performance--and once again I loved it. The always delightful Sandra Bullock, co-starring as Reeve's love interest, is excellent, giving just the right touch to her scenes. "Speed" was a remarkable directorial debut for veteran cinematographer Jan De Bont. He obviously learned a great deal while lensing pictures for Paul Verhoeven ("Basic Instinct") and John McTiernan ("The Hunt for Red October.") The action sequences and stunts in this film are as good as any you'll see. This is one movie that really delivers.
Rating:
Summary: "I feel the need. The need for speeeeeeeed!"
Review: You're going to say one thing after watching "Speed," and that will be "Whoa." This is an action film as exhausting as "Die Hard" and as exhilarating as the "Terminator" movies. It moves with the pacing of a John McTiernan picture and it has the perfection of a James Cameron action film. Its director, Jan De Bont, has worked on such films as "Die Hard" and "The Hunt for Red October," so it's no surprise that he bears a resemblance behind the camera to McTiernan. The film is blunt, fast-paced and extremely exciting. It stars Keanu Reeves as Jack Traven, a Los Angeles bomb squad member as cool as he is decisive. Jack has been called into duty, along with his partner and friend, Harry (Jeff Daniels), to stop a madman bomber (Dennis Hopper), who has taken control of an elevator and will drop it to the ground unless his demand of three million dollars is met. Jack takes his chances and ends up saving the day, but not before Harry is taken hostage and survives with a bullet shot. Howard Payne (Hopper) is dead, blown to pieces by his own bomb, and so they all go have a drink and party till the moon goes down and the sun rises up. You get the idea. But Payne didn't really die, and now he's very mad at a certain somebody who foiled his last plan. He's spent a lifetime being treated as dirt, and he has convinced himself that he deserves the $3 million more than anybody else. Jack begs to differ, but he has no time to argue when Payne reappears and triggers a downtown bus with a bomb. The catch? If the bus accelerates past 50 M.P.H. and then drops below that point as before...kaboom. Jack manages to board the bus, but not before it reaches 50, and not before the bus driver gets shot by a criminal on the bus and Annie (Sandra Bullock) has to play driver for the rest of the day. The problem is, downtown LA during rush hour is not exactly open to a large bus, so with the help of the LAPD, the bus is driven to a deserted stretch of highway, where they have a limited amount of time to either disarm the bus or pay up the sum of money to Payne. Meanwhile, Howard Payne is monitoring everything from his position in an apartment in LA, where he has a gadget wired up to the security camera in the bus, so that he can watch everything that's happening. If anyone tries to get off the bus, or if anyone tries to be a hero, he presses a little red button and.kaboom. Only this time, he's determined not to fail. This is a ludicrously and ridiculously delicious plot. I'm surprised it hasn't been done already. Well, actually, it sorta has. Yes, this film bears an uncanny resemblance to "Die Hard," only on a bus, but you know what? It's just about as good. It's exciting, humorous, and absolutely fun from start to finish. It never stops to go into boring conversations back at the FBI headquarters that so many action films do to try and make them look smarter. It never lets up for a moment once it starts. All good action films have comedic relief, and "Speed" - apart from occasional witty remarks between Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves and/or Dennis Hopper - has Alan Ruck and Jeff Daniels. You may remember Ruck as Cameron Frye in John Hughes' "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (1986), and you may remember him from the television show "Spin City," and here he plays a tourist who isn't really able to understand the situation they're in on the bus. "The airport?" he says as the bus swerves down a runway. "I've already been here." Daniels is one of cinema's great character actors with dry subtle humor. He can do dramatics ("Gettysburg"), he can do comedy ("Dumb and Dumber"), and he can now do action. It takes an odd sort of acting genius to subtly upstage Jim Carrey, but he did just that in "Dumb and Dumber" by making a subtle goofball out of his character, Harry Dunne. Here he does the same with the sort of bleak sarcastic quips he was born to say. Jan De Bont knows how to film action. Just when you think everything's going to slow down after the bus finally stops, we realize it's just the beginning. Payne kidnaps Annie, takes her to a subway train, and tries to run away with her to lure Jack. It works. And in the climatic gripper, Jack and Payne fight on the top of a speeding subway train. It was done in "Mission: Impossible" a small number of years later, but this came first. And the film is better. Can Keanu Reeves act? Hardly. He does his usual "Whoa" routine here, where his lines primarily consist of long pauses and, "Huh?" "What?" "Whoa," "Wow," "F--k me," "Bogus," and so on. But an action film doesn't need a good actor, and Reeves fits the part. It was his breakthrough action role - without it, he never would have appeared in "The Matrix." "Speed" is one of the great action films. It bears similarities to "Die Hard," "Lethal Weapon," "RoboCop," "Total Recall," "The Terminator" (1 and 2), "Predator," and all those other hard-punching action films with a fast pace and a real kick (it doesn't bear resemblance to all of the films as much as the raw force behind them). You know the kind of hard action flicks I mean - the kind that make you feel beaten up by the time it's all over. The kinds that make you leave the theater bruised and swollen. You're going to be going 50 miles per hour watching "Speed," and in this case, that's a good - no, great - thing.
Rating:
Summary: Love watching this time and again
Review: I can't much improve on A. Ross of New Zealand's review. I enjoyed Speed when it first came out on VHS (remember that?) because it was a different type of movie at the time. It was, and still is, refreshing to watch because it offers something different.
Dennis Hopper's character was the unofficial star of the film, his deed was the film's plot, but he had the least amount of screen time. When he did make an appearance you paid attention, wondering what this psychopath ("...with fingers numbering 9") was going to do next.
Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock had great on-screen chemistry (which I understand they're trying to duplicate in another movie). Dennis Hopper played his part so well that you just wanted to put him through a wall for being one step ahead of the good guys.
Speed may well be "one extended action scene" but it was a refreshingly different premise and it's one that keeps you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.
Rating:
Summary: EXCEEDING THE SPEED LIMIT
Review: Yes, SPEED Is one heck of a ride, from its tense elevator opening to the sheer agony of riding on a bus that could explode at any minute. Yes, Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper and Sandra Bullock are great in their roles, and the movie moves along at warp speed, a rare exercise in adrenaline-inspired action. My problem with the movie ultimately is SPEED should have ended after the bus exploded. The writers could have come up with a more interesting and definite ending for Hopper's character. The addition of the speeding train only proved an excess to what had been a crisp, fluent movie. By going this far over the limit of audience tolerance, DeBont and crew sabotaged what should have been a five star movie. But up until the poorly conceived ending, SPEED is one fun ride.
Rating:
Summary: Speed Still Thrills
Review: In the past decade or so there has been a plethora of Hollywood action films. Most have been absolute dross. "Speed", however, is a notable exception.
For a two hour period, "Speed" keeps the viewer glued to his seat as we watch Keanu Reeves attempt to foil the efforts of Dennis Hopper using hostages to keep the city of Los Angeles at ransom. Both Reeves and Hopper are excellent in their roles.
Yes, I know it can be argued that the film's plot is perhaps absurd. However, don't let this point obscure an edge of the seat story that still resonates well in 2005 after debuting in cinemas in 1994.
Whether for the first or umpteenth time, "Speed" is a great ride.
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