Speed [4K DCP]

Director: Jan de Bont

1994 / 116min / 4K DCP

Screenwriter Graham Yost supplied the delicious premise (a city bus is carrying a bomb rigged to go off if its speedometer drops below 50 miles per hour); cinematographer-turned-director De Bont, the nonstop demoniac action; Dennis Hopper, the scenery-gnashing villainy and infinitely quotable catchphrase (“Pop quiz, hot shot…”); and Keanu Reeves, as the LAPD bomb disposal expert tasked with taking him down, the preternatural cool equal to the crisis. The result was a mid-budget actioner that became the sleeper smash of summer 1994 and the movie that made a bona fide action star out of Reeves, who’d begun the shoot with trepidation about his viability for the part and, by the end, was enthusiastically doing much of his own stunt work.

Distributor: Walt Disney Studios/20th Century