Category: Dennis Hopper

HOOSIERS

By Marc S. Sanders

Hoosiers is a sports film offering nothing truly new or inventive.  What sets it apart though is that this high school basketball picture has Gene Hackman as the coach, Norman Dale.

Like so many films, this one occupies its opening credits with the cross country drive of the outsider arriving in small town USA with Jerry Goldsmith’s orchestral horns conducting the journey.  Welcome to the sweeping farmlands of Hickory, Indiana, 1951.  

Coach Dale has been hired by the local high school to lead the team of seven boys for the upcoming season.  Everything typical happens from there.  The potential love interest gives the guy the cold shoulder.  The town, who take such pride in the boys basketball team, find the coach unfit and work the first half of the story trying to vote him out. There’s the one kid who makes every shot and is stand offish, but just won’t play.    There’s a player who has strife with his father, the town drunk called Shooter (Dennis Hopper).  Coach gets kicked out of the games too.  Even Hackman’s recognizable short fits are here to stir it up with the referees.

Yet, is this team gonna get in shape and take it all the way to the championship?  I’ll let you decide if that’s rhetorical question.  

I dunno.  Maybe it’s because I’ve never been wild about basketball that Hoosiers just didn’t do much for me.  A film like Hoop Dreams or even the actor/players shown here impress me with their abilities to make one jump shot after another, while their capabilities to dribble appear like artistic forms of dancing.  The game however has never done much for me.  A team scores and then they go to other side the court where the other team scores.  For me, only the last few seconds of a basketball game seem important.  Otherwise, it’s a back-and-forth scrimmage to me.  Hoop Dreams lends more of a story within its tragic documentary footage than Hoosiers provides.

When I observe the team making plays on the court, there’s not much to open my eyes wider.  David Anspaugh was a new director when this movie was released. Much of the cuts within his footage are the players jumping and passing and Hackman’s sideline expressions where he slaps his play sheet before another cut to the cheering or booing crowd.  This is nothing but action takes. Where are the shortcomings and triumphs that come with cinematic athleticism?

Even the final game does not work like a story.  It’s all just a collection of basketball players making shots.  It never worked for me because I hardly know any of the kids.  The star player, Jimmy, literally has three lines in the film.  I could never pick out which young man was Hopper’s son because most of the team members are given such little attention.  It’s only when a scene or two finally presents itself for the father and son that I connect the dots, but that’s resigned for a quick last act.  The one I could always pick out was the short guy who is not very good and mostly sits on the bench.  The kid who prays too long?  Good gag, but when he’s not on one knee I don’t recall who he is among the crowd.  The players are not given distinct personalities. They are scarcely shown in close up and so I don’t know one from the other.  

Watch Teen Wolf with Michael J Fox.  Beyond the lead who is a werewolf, there are two or three others on the team that triumph, as well as faithful members of the school student body. Thus, that movie ending game becomes something entirely special and touching.

Gene Hackman is always an attraction even if some of the traits he lends to his characters are the same.  I love his grin and his quiet, sometimes sarcastic, cackle. When he throws a temper it’s not one that can be duplicated.  I’ve never seen someone who can do an exact impersonation of Gene Hackman.  He’s simply one of a kind. He’ll always be favorite actor of mine, no matter the material.

Dennis Hopper is very good as well.  He’s not just a drunk, but Shooter is a likable guy who looks worthy of a second chance.  Hopper’s body language defines all of that.  It’s not just the booze or the drying out moments that lend to the performance.  The celebrated actor is given scenes where the character is lost and helpless while trying to contribute moments of value to the basketball team.  Even the unpressed, oversized suit and greasy combover he wears tell a story.

Barbara Hershey seems underutilized.  For most of the film she proceeds with a scowl on her face, and I was never certain of her disdain for the Coach or the school where she teaches.  I could never confound exactly what her problem was anyway. At best, she’s here for an eventual on-screen kiss with the lead, but then the relationship doesn’t progress.  I read that much material went on the cutting room floor, and I can’t deny there’s an absence to her storyline.

Hoosiers is serviceable, but nothing it offers moved me and grabbed my attention.  This is a step by step sports film with every standard cliche included.  I didn’t stand up and cheer when that final shot swished through the basket in slow motion because I did that at the end of Rocky and The Karate Kid, and Teen Wolf too.  When The Bad News Bears ended I did a hard clap because those tykes had balls.  At the close of Slapshot, I couldn’t contain my laughter.  I couldn’t stop thinking about Hoop Dreams for good, long week. Other pictures focusing on athletics always possessed a way of making their stories special.  Hoosiers looks like it stole its play by play from those wunderkinds. 

TRIVIA: Look for Sheb Wooley, who portrays Hackman’s first assistant coach. He is the origin of the famous Wilhelm Scream uttered by Indiana Jones, several Stormtroopers and during the demise of various superhero villains.

GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL (1957)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: John Sturges
CAST: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Jo Van Fleet, John Ireland, DeForest Kelley, and a young bit player named Dennis Hopper
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 87% Fresh

PLOT: Lawman Wyatt Earp and outlaw Doc Holliday form an unlikely alliance which culminates in their participation in the legendary Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.


In real life, the legendary gunfight at the O.K Corral in the frontier town of Tombstone lasted thirty seconds, but what kind of movie would that be?  (Kill Bill: Vol. 2 springs to mind…)  A 1950’s Western requires a long-to-medium shot of the good guys – Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holliday – striding down the street to meet the challenge of the dastardly Clantons, who had gunned down Wyatt’s youngest brother in cold blood.  We need a gunfight, not too long, but longer than 30 seconds.  And we need to make sure the ratio of surviving bad guys to good guys is just right: 0 to all.

John Sturges’ Gunfight at the O.K. Corral delivers the goods in a remarkably mature film for its time, free (for the most part) of cheap sentimentality and distractions from the main plot.  That’s a double-edged sword, though: we rarely leave the side of either Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday, but the result is we get little to no information about Earp’s brothers until the final reel, nor do we get many details about Earp’s romance with the lovely Laura Denbow, a high-class gambler who knows enough about cards to beat the men at their own game.  We only find out they’re engaged as an afterthought, it seems.

As for Doc Holliday’s relationship with Kate Fisher (Oscar winner Jo Van Fleet), the word “dysfunctional” is woefully inadequate.  Loosely based on Holliday’s real mistress, referred to only as “Big Nose Kate” on Wikipedia, she seems to exist only to serve as Holliday’s psychological punching bag when required.  Her emotional yo-yoing gave me whiplash: she pledges her unending devotion in one scene, tries to stab him in another, helps him escape a lynch mob, takes up with the loathsome Johnny Ringo after yet another fight, begs to be taken back, and eventually tells him, “I’ll see you dead!”  With friends like these…

But even that kind of sordid melodrama is not enough to derail the throughline of the film, which is focused intently on establishing the rocky relationship between the morally good Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster) – who nevertheless wears a black hat the entire film – and the morally chaotic Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas), a professional gambler who leaves a string of dead bodies behind him, all killed in self-defense, of course.  Earp also helps get Holliday out of town before a mob can lynch him, so Holliday decides to stick around until the debt is paid.

I think the essence of their relationship is summed up in a scene where Earp is forced to deputize Holliday when no other options are available.  Earp reluctantly walks up to Doc, tells him to raise his right hand, and says, “Do you solemnly swear to uphold…oh, this is ridiculous.  You’re deputized.”  Doc: “Wait a minute, don’t I get to wear a tin star?”  Earp: “Not on your life!”  Both men are torn between their philosophy and their sense of honor.  Holliday is no hero, but he’ll help Wyatt until his debt is paid.  Earp despises Holliday’s moral code, but he’s the best gunslinger in town.  What can you do?

All of this is handled in dialogue that seems mostly uncluttered by the hokey clichés I’ve heard in so many other films of the 1950s, even some of the great ones.  This may perhaps be due to the fact the screenplay was written by Leon Uris, a novelist who would eventually go on to write, among many others, Exodus, Topaz, and QB VII.  Listening to the characters talk, it was interesting to hear how natural they sounded, compared to the overblown melodrama of so many other westerns and dramas of that era.  The dialogue was clearly written by someone with a writer’s ear, who wants to get to the point of every scene with a minimum of fuss or flowery exposition.

As I mentioned, however, this quest for directness means we spend all our time with Earp and Holliday and almost no time at all with the Clantons or Earp’s brothers or anyone else.  By the time we hear Wyatt’s brother, Virgil, is in trouble, we’ve almost forgotten he HAS brothers.  As far as the Clantons go, we hear everything about them secondhand until we finally meet them in Tombstone.  We never even see Wyatt propose to Laura; we barely even see them courting (their courtship appears to consist of one false arrest and one kiss in the moonlight).

And I would be remiss if I did not mention…that song.  I learn from IMDb that the song, “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” that plays over the opening and closing credits, and which also plays over any transitional scene as Earp moves from one town to the next, was one of the inspirations for the theme song for Mel Brooks’s parody Blazing Saddles.  Brooks even got the original artist, Frankie Laine, to sing for his own movie.  It is so corny and earnest, juxtaposed against the gritty characters and scenery, that any sequence featuring that song loses all credibility.  If the filmmakers had just ditched that song, I might consider this one of the greatest Westerns of all time.  (see also Rio Bravo with Ricky Nelson’s crooning.)

But…having said all that, I must report that Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was entertaining from start to finish.  By avoiding the temptations to give in to melodrama and hokeyness, we are presented with a surprisingly solid Western drama that culminates in a decent (for the late ‘50s) gun battle.  It’s not as flashy as anything from one of Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns, and it’s not quite as thrilling as the one at the end of 1993’s Tombstone, but it’s satisfying, nevertheless.

(And for the record, when it comes to memorable lines, against Val Kilmer’s immortal “I’m your huckleberry”, I would gladly put Kirk Douglas’s venomous, “You slut!” …you have to see it in context, trust me.)

APOCALYPSE NOW

By Marc S. Sanders

Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War masterpiece, Apocalypse Now from 1979, focuses on a madman assigned to find another madman and assassinate him.  I look at the film as a spiral into a dark, demented psychosis.  Each section of Coppola’s film appears like some variation of insanity within an environment and period of time where there was no end in sight for a war that was going out of control.

Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) is first shown in a hotel room that he has ransacked during a drunken rage, going so far as to smash his fist into a mirror.  His voiceover explains the horrifying experiences he has already endured.  Now he is at a point where killing is all he is capable of performing. He is summoned to a General’s lunch where he is assigned to seek out a highly decorated Special Forces soldier named Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando).  Kurtz has taken his squad over to Cambodia without authorization.  It is believed that he has gone insane with his will to harbor people over there into a cult that he controls while engaging in his own actions against the Vietcong.  The army needs this problem contained and Willard has been selected to terminate Kurtz.

Apocalypse Now is primarily about the journey, rather than its destination.  Willard is to be escorted by patrol boat up the Nang River to find Kurtz and complete his mission.  Along the way he will encounter a variety of scenarios and characters. 

The standout character is Lt Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) the commander of a helicopter calvary battalion.  Willard meets up with Kilgore early on as he will provide an opening on the river for the long journey to begin.  This is the most memorable section of Coppola’s film.  Robert Duvall is truly maddening as he relishes in the destruction he commands.  Kilgore is amused to blare Wagner’s The Ride Of The Valkyries as his choppers blast the shore line where Vietnamese villagers and farmers reside.  Duvall almost seems god like during this sequence because he does not even flinch as explosions and armory are set off mere inches away from him.  He’s crazed enough to even send his troops out into the ocean to surf while the mayhem is still occurring.  When he takes off his shirt while proudly wearing his calvary hat, sunglasses and yellow scarf around his neck, he utters the famous line “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.”  There is no hint of sarcasm in that line.  Kilgore truly means it.  The commands of war are his absolute pleasure.  The only human feeling that Kilgore shows is when his personalized surfboard turns up missing.  Otherwise, the carnage he leaves behind is a job well done.

Why do I focus on this sequence so much?  First, it is a perfect construction of filmmaking and acting combined.  Coppola’s clear daylight shots of the choppers advancing on the surf are an amazing sight to behold.  To have that much control of so many vehicles in the air so that a select number of cameras can take in the sequence amazes me.  It is feats like these that show why I love movies so much.  The moment is more enhanced with Wagner’s piece accompanying it.  This could all be appreciated as simple documentary style filmmaking.  However, when you combine the mayhem Coppola stages with the proud march of The Ride Of The Valkyries, and Duvall’s crazed glee of commanding this episode of mass destruction, you start to see a pretense.  The hypocrisy of all the elements contained in this sequence tells the story. This country and its people are being obliterated by a crazed individual arriving from the heavens above.  As the scene progresses, my mind returned to the overall plot of the film; the mission of the protagonist which is to kill a lunatic.  At this point in the picture, I have yet to meet Colonel Kurtz.  So, how much of a madman must Kurtz be when compared to a maniac like Kilgore?

Later sequences carry on the insanity theme.  A trio of Playboy playmates are brought in to entertain the troops during one of Willard’s stop overs.  Yet, the crowd of soldiers gets out of control and the entertainers are forced to flee by helicopter with some of the men grasping on to the chopper as it takes flight.  My thoughts were you must be insane to continue hanging on while it gets higher into the air.  Let go for heaven’s sake before you plummet to your death.  Nevertheless, these half naked women are the purest, most angelic thing that these boys have ever seen since being recruited into this hellish nightmare. 

Willard’s crewmen on the patrol boat seem too green with the impacts of war.  They are not as battle weary as Willard.  There’s a guy named Lance (Sam Bottoms) who seems happy go lucky to play the Rolling Stones.  There’s a chef by trade (Frederic Forrest) and a young kid who goes by the name of “Clean” (Laurence Fishburne).  Chief Phillips (Albert Hall) drives the boat.  Willard must keep his mission classified.  These men are only supposed to get him to his destination no matter how far up the river it takes them.  These soldiers are riding into the unknown, escorting a crazed fellow who knows that a positive outcome is not likely.  Coppola provides moments where the men lose control of their senses.  These boys don’t come as informed about what is right and wrong within the parameters of war.  Innocent lives are taken as the patrol boat continues its horrifying tour.  Their lives might be taken as well.  The question is what is the worse cost?  Death, or the horrors they encounter, act upon, and live with thereafter?

It’s notable to watch Frederic Forrest’s performance as he transitions into a mindset with no other option but to slaughter as he dons camouflage makeup later in the film.  Albert Hall’s performance lends some sensibility to the picture.  However, how does Chief Phillips’ receptivity measure up to the crazed obsession that Willard has for completing his assignment?  It’s all quite tragic as the film moves from one moment to the next.

As expected, the third act of the film focuses on Willard’s encounter with Kurtz.  Before all of this, we follow along as Willard reads through the extensive files of Kurtz’ history and career.  This man seems like a giant among giants and in 1979 it seems only befitting that a giant of an actor portrays the mysterious Colonel.  So, that actor had to be none other than Marlon Brando.  Oddly enough, this portion of the film is where the film starts to wear out for me.  Kurtz is insane in a quiet and dark way.  Coppola shoots much of Brando’s performance in darkness.  I’m aware of the purpose with that kind of filmmaking, but it is a long section of film to watch an actor move in and out of the light.  Brando comes off mysterious with lines of dialogue that make little sense at times.  Some allegories work as he describes Willard’s purpose as that of a clerk delivering groceries.  Yet, Kurtz seems the least crazed of all the crazies provided within Coppola’s film. 

A babbling, hippie photographic journalist (Dennis Hopper) greets Willard upon his arrival.  He’s talking in circles with envy for Kurtz, his leader, who resides within the tomb like structure along the banks of the river.  The natives also seem to heed towards Kurtz’ influence.  Willard is taken captive and tormented.  Still, when Kurtz speaks he doesn’t come off so kamikaze like the others we’ve seen before.  I can only presume there are levels to insanity.  Madness is not a well-defined ailment.  I find it ironic that Kurtz, the great soldier and decorated war hero, is deemed the greatest threat to the armed forces’ image within this conflict.  Kilgore, on the other hand, has free reign to slaughter helpless women, children, and farming communities all in the name of victory while commanding his underlings to surf along the coastline. 

What is so mystifying about Apocalypse Now is how thematic the movie seems to be.  It follows this common pattern demonstrating how crazed the effects of war can have on people.  The killing and bloodshed are the most apparent of course.  However, the military declares early on that there is a loose cannon within their ranks that must be contained.  The only option is to kill this man, who has done his bidding for the progress of its army for so long.  This man, Colonel Kurtz, has sacrificed promotions in ranking and a return to a quiet life with his wife and children, so that he can continue with carrying out the agendas administered by his government.  Yet somehow, he crosses a border, and he no longer kills the way his superiors want him to, and now he must be terminated.  The hypocrisy is to send a madman to do a madman’s bidding, as if that will preserve some sort of sanity within this out-of-control conflict.

I could not get away from that impression during the whole three-hour running time of the film.  Practically every caption, scene, expression, or scenario is rooted in madness.  Francis Ford Coppola wrote the script with John Milius and it’s been said that much of the filmmaking was done on the fly.  Still, with Coppola’s direction along with a strong cast, particularly from the quietly, reserved Martin Sheen, the message comes through clearly.  War begins with a difference in politics and a need for further control.  Pawns are the collateral damage used at will to settle the argument.  Rules of engagement may appear formally on paper.  However, is anyone with a gun in his hand or facing the end of a loaded barrel going to pause and consider what’s just and appropriate before taking action? 

Apocalypse Now speaks to an end of days where the soldiers sent to do the bidding of others respond by doing what they ask of themselves.  Therefore, I’ll end this piece on a vague note. 

There is no organized effort when it comes to war.

NOTE: This article is based on my viewing of Coppola’s third iteration of his film, entitled Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut.

TRUE ROMANCE

By Marc S. Sanders

The structure built into the script for True Romance by Quentin Tarantino, directed by Tony Scott, is like the trunk of a solid oak tree with strong, sturdy branches representing its collection of seedy characters in off color scenes. Tarantino sets it up – an Elvis infatuated boy meets a rookie call girl (Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette). Boy marries girl, and then boy & girl find a suitcase filled with a fortune in uncut cocaine. A simple storyline that now allows a bunch of fun, short vignettes to be played out, all leading to one moment after the other within this universe of outlandish, lurid debauchery.

What works so well in True Romance is that literally from beginning to end, you are always meeting a new and incredibly interesting character. Each scene welcomes someone else into the fold. For that, you need an all-star cast. Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Walken, Val Kilmer, Conchata Farrell, Dennis Hopper, James Gandolfini, Brad Pitt, Bronson Pinchot, Saul Rubinek, Michael Rapaport, Tom Sizemore, Chris Penn, Ed Lauter, Elvis & martial arts master Sonny Chiba. The list goes on and on. It should be noted that some of this cast were hardly bankable stars before this film, which flopped at the box office in 1993. Before the movie became a cult B movie obsession on home video and cable, it was blazing the trail of well-established careers for much of its talent.

Nearly every character can have a story of their own written about them. Take Gary Oldman in one of his best roles as the vicious looking pimp named Drexel, a white guy adopting a Jamaican gangsta accent with dreadlocks, gold caps on his teeth, a blind eye and wickedly curved scar down the side of his face. His appearance alone makes me beg to know this guy’s background in a whole other movie. Drexel’s introduction comes early when he pumps a shotgun into two hoods. Shortly thereafter he’s conversing with Clarence Worley (Slater), and we know who’s in charge of this scene. Oldman is only given about 10 minutes of screen time, but it’s hardly forgettable.

The same goes for Walken, as a well-dressed mafia don interrogating Clarence’s father (Hopper). This scene has become legendary for film lovers, and it carries into a stratosphere of intelligence and timing in performance duality. It remains one of the best scenes Tarantino ever wrote as we learn a probable origin of Sicilians from a doomed Dennis Hopper. This is an acting class at its finest.

Jeffrey L Kimball filmed the piece showing contrasts of a wintery cold and dirty Detroit versus a sun-soaked Los Angeles. It’s sharp photography of gorgeous colors schemes.

Hans Zimmer scored the soundtrack, deliberately saluting Terrance Malick’s Badlands where we followed a similarly young criminal couple played by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Zimmer’s fun, melodic tones to celebrate Arquette and Slater’s adventures is perfectly in tune with the two-dimensional charm of their new and happy relationship. Most of Tarantino’s script is not taken seriously. Zimmer was the right device for that.

A few spare moments are played with dread, though. Slater and Arquette are truly in love. So, Tarantino & Scott threaten what the film treasures. Arquette as a call girl named Alabama Worley is incredible throughout the film. She’s a silly, adorably cute Southern belle dressed in secondhand store accessories, such as a cow spotted patterned skirt with neon blue sunglasses, and red cowgirl boots. This is not someone you’d hire to manage your accounting firm or run a library. However, Arquette’s emotional range really comes through during a brutal beating scene with Gandolfini. It pains a viewer to watch the moment, but it comes long after we’ve grown to love her.

Later, towards the end, our favorite couple is again endangered during a three way Mexican standoff. It’s hilarious, and way off kilter, but then it also gets downright scary.

That’s the beauty of True Romance. It’s a well-organized mess of emotions from comedy to drama to violence and silliness. Tarantino has great set pieces put together in a connect the dots rhythm.

It’s an endlessly quotable film. It’s a visual film. It’s a literal roller coaster of dangerously amusing storytelling told with affection and gratuity. It’s also quite sweet.

True Romance remains one of my favorite films of all time.

SPEED

By Marc S. Sanders

Jan de Bont’s Speed is one of the best action thrillers ever made. It moves at a breakneck pace with huge suspense, big laughs and never-ending excitement. It’s also really smart with its crazy storyline.

A mad bomber (Dennis Hopper) manages to terrorize the city of Los Angeles by rigging a high-rise elevator with a bomb. Thirteen hostages need to be rescued and for an opening scene of a movie it does not get better than this. The heights and cramped space of the elevator and shaft are tightly claustrophobic, leaving you biting your nails. Small explosions come unexpectedly. This is what Hitchcock is always talking about. Putting a bomb under a table is suspense. The moment you detonate the bomb, the fear is over. De Bont blows up some bombs, but he leaves you hanging for when he’s going to set off the biggest bomb of all – the one that’ll put a hole in the world.

Later, the bomber does the same to a city wide transit bus traveling the freeway routes of rush hour traffic in the city. If the bus’ speed drops below 50 MPH, it’ll explode. Imagine pulling two tricks of Hitchcock all in one film. Imagine trying to never slow down a bus. This bad guy is destroying the city without even setting the big bomb off yet. This is great writing from Graham Yost. The whole scenario is tension at a maximum level.

The cop trying to stop the bomber is Jack Traven (at the time of release, an unlikely Keanu Reeves). Reeves is a perfect hero in this film. He allows the film to stand apart from being just another Die Hard rip-off by avoiding the Bruce Willis smart aleck stance. He’s a smart guy who keeps focus on just the situation at hand. He’ll get the bad guy later.

Sandra Bullock plays an adorable character named Annie who consequently has to drive the bus. This was Bullock’s breakthrough performance and I truly think it still holds as one her best. She’s funny, but she has some good dramatic moments as the tensions build up where Hopper’s crazed bomber makes things more difficult for Jack and the passengers. Bullock is good at crying on film, but she also knows how to deliver a line too.

De Bont does a great job at poking fun at the mundane trappings of traffic and intercity daily activity. As the bus careens through the city, pedestrian crossings are at risk, tow truck cars are problematic, cop cars are bashed up, and Annie is mindful enough to turn her blinker on as she careens around the corners. That last gag kills me every time. De Bont does what I always insist works in most films. He makes the setting of his film the character as well. This bomb rigged bus is stressing out the city of Los Angeles, for sure.

Seeing Speed holds a special memory for me. I saw it on its opening Friday night with some college buddies. Two days later, I insisted on taking dad to see it. Dad could not stop laughing through the absurdity of it all as street signs crash down, cars get totaled, and the fast editing blended with Annie’s laughable panic. Most especially, he loved a hapless driver (a scene stealing cameo from Glenn Plummer) in his gorgeous Jaguar convertible known as “Tuneman” by his license plate. Jack desperately hijacks his car as a means to catch up to the bus. As Tuneman’s car gets more and more wrecked, Dad could not get over it. He was in stitches. This is why movies can be so vital in our lives. I’ll never forget Dad’s nonstop laughing. I carry it with me forever, and I heard it again last night as I caught up with Speed. He’s gone now, but these are the moments I miss most about Dad.

A third act of the film is just as thrilling. Let’s see. We’ve done an elevator and a bus. How about a subway train? It’s a briefer sequence for the climax of the film, but it keeps the thrills ongoing.

Speed works on so many levels with a brilliant cast of B actors (at the time of 1994) that also include Joe Morton, Alan Ruck and a great Jeff Daniels as Jack’s partner with bomb experience. The action sequences cannot be complimented enough, and the Oscar nominated editing from John Wright with De Bont’s direction pair perfectly in timing.

Speed is an absolute thrill ride and a rocking great time at the movies.