Just when the situation is almost deescalated, some construction man gotta be a hero and tackles the guy with the gun, accidentally shooting Sam the bus driver. Great. This is not what Keanu needs right now!
Keanu tells Sandra Bullock to take the wheel so he can try to find the bomb, and then they have this exchange, which is really all you want from a movie:
Sandy: I should probably tell you that I’m riding this bus because I had my driver’s license revoked.
Keanu: What for?
Sandy: Speeding.
Sandra Bullock is an unmatched charm powerhouse, and I feel like nobody acknowledges that anymore because she made too many comedies for women, and men can’t stand that. Watch Sandra Bullock in action. Watch Sandra Bullock in Speed and then tell me you don’t want to frame your spouse for a crime so you can marry her instead! Watch While You Were Sleeping and try not to send Sandra Bullock a thank-you card with $4,000 inside. I DARE YOU.
Keanu inspects the bomb and calls Jeff, who’s back at the office trying to dig up dirt on Dennis. Keanu tells Jeff that “there’s enough C-4 on this thing to put a hole in the world,” and also mentions that the timer on the bomb is a cheap gold watch—the kind of shitty watch the bomb cops get when they retire! (Can you imagine being this pissed about getting a comfortable retirement, a lifetime of unconditional hero worship, and a present??)
There’s heavy traffic ahead, so they have to exit the freeway to stay above fifty, and here begins one of the great mysteries of the movie Speed: WHY DOES SANDRA BULLOCK HAVE TO DRIVE THE BUS? Keanu—a highly trained police officer dispatched to handle this extremely dangerous situation—just kind of hovers over Sandy B.’s shoulder, occasionally gabbing to Jeff or Dennis on the phone, while she—A RANDOM CIVILIAN—navigates crowded Los Angeles surface streets in a bus going fifty miles per hour. What if she runs someone over? What if she is bad at driving? Who is accountable for all of the human lives on the bus when they are put into the hands of a person who doesn’t even have a driver’s license?
Sometimes Keanu and Sandy take a little time to flirt as Sam bleeds out behind them and they hurtle toward death.
Sandy has to make a hairpin turn at top speed in order to get back on the freeway. (See, not to be one of those analog bitches, but this is all I need from an action movie. Just an exciting bus turn! I do not require Transformers!)
Dennis told Keanu that nobody is allowed to get off the bus, and he’ll know if they do because he is monitoring them via secret video. Keanu convinces Dennis to let Bus Driver Sam get off so he doesn’t die, because I guess mayors never give $3.7 million to terrorists who let one bus driver die, but they do sometimes give $3.7 million to terrorists who didn’t. He gets the big beefy construction worker to help him move Sam by saying, “You! Gigantor!” (Hey, how about sir when you want someone to do you a favor?) The cops pull up alongside the door of the bus on a trailer and Keanu and Gigantor, I mean sir, pass Sam over to them in a way that definitely seems like everyone would die.
Even though Keanu just explained that only Bus Driver Sam is allowed to get off the bus, the temptation is too great for another passenger, Helen (the great Beth Grant), and she tries to jump off after him. Dennis was ready for this, and he activates the Helen Contingency, a smaller Helen-shaped bomb right under the door of the bus, which he put there in case any Helens try to escape. Helen blows up and gets run over and is dead. Now it’s not so fun being on the Speed bus anymore! Adventure? More like I’m-sadventure!
Oops, turns out the freeway isn’t finished. (Nobody knew that???) There’s a fifty-foot gap coming up in three miles. Keanu thinks about it and decides that they’ll have to fly the bus over the gap. It’s the only way. Really, you can’t exit and go around it? There’s not an exit for the next three miles? In Los Angeles? OKAY!
Keanu tells Sandy to floor it (again, why isn’t he just driving?! Abolish the LAPD!), and they accelerate toward the gap and fly over it effortlessly, you know, like a real bus would. It definitely wouldn’t 100 percent absolutely tip straight down into the pit and accordion into a bloody, clattering disc!
Hey, if you guys had a flying bus this whole time, why didn’t you get off the fucking freeway instead of causing four hundred car accidents?
Keanu directs Sandy (STILL DRIVING) to LAX so the bus can circle around and around on the tarmac without endangering other drivers, and so that the news choppers will stop broadcasting their every move straight to Dennis’s TV. Now it’s time to defuse the bomb.
Keanu slides underneath the moving bus on a little skateboard attached to a rope. He scoots down to where the bomb is and tries to dismantle it while Jeff gives him instructions over the phone. It makes total sense that Keanu has to personally do this. Did you know there’s only one guy in the LAPD?
Keanu can’t figure out the bomb and then starts careening out of control underneath the bus. In order to not die, he has to stab the fuel tank with a screwdriver and cling to the bottom of the bus like a lil spider, until Sir Gigantor opens a hatch and pulls him up into the bus. Wow, this is a beautiful movie about teamwork in adversity! If I’m making Dennis Hopper an allegory for mediocre white male greed,
