In a downtown highrise building in Los Angeles, a psychopathic bomber and extortionist rigs an elevator full of people to plummet into the basement if his $3-million demand is not met. When SWAT Officers Jack Traven and Harry Temple foil the bomber's plan and rescue the hostages, the bomber retaliates.
First he blows up a city bus, then contacts Traven to warn him that a second bus has a bomb attached to it. Once that bus hits 50mph, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it will explode. The bomber also warns Jack that if any attempt at rescue is made, the bomb will also explode. Jack races down the freeway and manages to board the bus.
When an accident injures the driver, young bus passenger Annie is forced to take over behind the wheel and keep the bus running at 50 in order to stay alive. Will Jack and his fellow SWAT members be able to stop the psychopathic bomber - or will the Innocent passengers be killed when the bus runs out of fuel?
Factual Mistake Elevators' emergency brakes must engage faster than that, otherwise they would be useless if the car fell when nearer the base of the shaft.
Factual Mistake A bus jumping a gap in an unfinished freeway would nosedive, not jump up and soar across to the other side. Director Jan de Bont has admitted getting around this by having the bus drive up a ramp.
Revealing Mistakes When the bus is landing after jumping over the gap in the freeway, you can see that it is completely empty with nobody on board.
Revealing Mistakes When the elderly woman refuses to be helped out of the elevator that is about to drop twenty floors, the floor outside the elevator can be seen through a hole in the bottom left hand corner of the elevator, revealing the fact that it is only one or, at most, two floors up.
Revealing Mistakes Although the last shot from inside the bus before the jump shows the roadway simply ending, once looking from outside the bus we see it run over something just at the end of the road, then rise suddenly above road level. Obviously this is an end view of a ramp.
Revealing Mistakes In the bus jump on the freeway, the missing bridge section is cut out digitally. However, the shadow of that part of the bridge is still visible.
Continuity At different stages in the movie, Harry's limp fluctuates between left and right leg.
Continuity At the beginning of the movie after Jack has hooked up the crane from outside to the lift, there is a shot of the crane outside, and the line going through the vent. If you look closely there is a pipe in front of the vent, yet when the crane goes through the vent, the pipe has vanished.
Continuity Annie's ring changes frequently.
Continuity Skid marks are already visible on the tarmac when Jack and Harry turn up at the building where the bombed elevator is.
Crew/Equipment Visible When Jack is talking to Howard Payne at the pay phone, the boom mic is reflected in the phone in several shots.
Character Error The SWAT team members are all sans helmets when they respond to the elevator-hostage crisis.
Trivia:
In the original screenplay of this movie, Howard Payne's name was Howard Fisk.
Some of the scenes shot in the subway train as it runs off the rails are of a miniature model.
Filming scenes at the airport took around three weeks. Was made slightly difficult when a plane's engine was being tested and it was extremely noisy.
The subway train that comes crashing up onto Hollywood Blvd at the ending was actually a bus, decked out to look like a subway train.
Keanu Reeves actually did approximately 90% of his own stunts.
According to Graham Yost, the credited writer of Speed, Whedon wrote most of its dialogue. Script doctor Joss Whedon rewrote the script unaccredited.
Sandra Bullock to real learned to drive a bus for the film, passing her test on her first attempt.
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