"Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? What do YOU do?

Full of manic exhilaration, Roger Ebert described SPEED as a “bruised forearm movie, because you're always grabbing the arm of the person sitting next to you.” In lesser hands, this film could have been just another Die Hard on a ____, but in Jan De Bont’s capable hands (director of Twister and DP of Die Hard), this film becomes a nonstop thrill ride that blazes through its two-hour runtime in the blink of an eye. You can’t explain what makes SPEED good—it just is. It never has any pretense to be anything but what it is and never lets up off the action-thriller gas. Keanu Reeves always finds a way to anchor a movie despite a limited amount of talent, and a young Sandy B. is always a firecracker of charm and fun. Pepper in a maniacal Dennis Hopper and a sad sack Jeff Bridges, and you got yourself a picture for the ages." (Greg MacLennan)