Plot
An unidentified man (Dennis Hopper) traps several businesspeople inside a skyscraper elevator using small remotely-detonated bombs. He demands a large sum of money or otherwise will detonate the emergency brakes holding back the elevator from plunging down the shaft. LAPD SWAT members Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) and Harry Temple (Jeff Daniels) are able to sneak inside the shaft and rescue the hostages before the bomber is aware, and then track the bomber to the building's basement. The man takes Harry hostage, but Jack shoot Harry in the leg (as Harry told him to), forcing the man to drop him. Jack tries to follow, but another explosion occurs and the bomber appears to have been caught in the debris. Jack and Harry are commended for their actions, and Harry is promoted to detective with a desk job while his leg heals.
The next morning, Jack witnesses the destruction of a Santa Monica Transit commuter bus, killing its driver. Jack answers a nearby ringing payphone, discovering the bomber on the line and has escaped the building explosion. The bomber informs him that another bus is rigged with a bomb that activated when the bus exceeds 50 miles per hour and then will detonate when it falls below that, demands a larger sum of money to deactivate the device, and warns that trying to remove the passengers will cause him to set off the bomb. Jack races to catch up to the bus, and manages to get on, but only after it has passed 50 miles per hour. While Jack explains the situation to the driver Sam (Hawthorne James), a paranoid passenger, thinking Jack is there to arrest him, threatens Jack with a gun but fires, striking Sam in the arm by accident while being subdued by another passenger. Another passenger, Annie Porter (Sandra Bullock), takes over as Sam is cared for and Jack restrains the paranoid passenger and informs the rest of the situation. With advice from the police, Harry has Annie drive the bus off the busy freeway, through city streets, and eventually onto an incomplete freeway devoid of traffic. The police soon arrive to escort the bus, while news helicopters fly overhead and report on the story.
Jack, with the help of the passengers, is able to describe the bomb on the undercarriage to Harry; Harry focuses on a cheap gold watch that is part of the bomb's mechanism. Jack convinces the bomber to allow them to offload Sam to a police flatbed truck to get medical attention; however, another passenger named Helen sees the opportunity to escape, as she can't stand staying any longer. Eventually, the bomber sees her trying to escape, and detonates a smaller bomb under the bus' stairs, sending Helen to be crushed to death by the bus' tires. Jack realizes the bomber is monitoring the situation from the news helicopters and orders that they be cleared out. The police discover that the incomplete freeway has a gap in an overpass, and Jack directs Annie to go at full speed, allowing them to clear it. Jack sees they are close to Los Angeles International Airport, and directs Annie to it; its tarmac will give them enough clear space to drive while the news helicopters cannot enter the airspace.
Jack, after getting off the bus, then sends himself under the bus via a cart towed from a vehicle leading the bus to try to defuse the bomb with Harry's verbal help to no avail, but Harry's team soon discover the identity of the bomber: Howard Payne, a former police officer who worked on Atlanta's police force bomb squad. Payne was forced to retire in 1989 after an explosion that caused him to lose a finger. With this knowledge, Harry gets his team to track down Payne's Los Angeles address while telling Jack to stay put. Debris on tarmac causes the cart to become unsteady, and Jack's only recourse is to puncture the side of the gas tank with a screwdriver to avoid falling under the bus. The passengers use a floor panel to rescue Jack in time. In the meantime, Harry and his team arrive at Payne's home, but realized it is also rigged with explosives, and they are killed in the explosion. Payne calls into Jack to brag and taunt him of Harry's death, and thus frustrated, Jack realizes from Payne's message that there is a camera inside the bus. He gets the police to work with one of the news crews to find the camera's signal, record a sequence of footage, and then rebroadcast that on that channel to falsify the camera signal back to Payne. This allows them to rescue all the passengers safely as the bus' fuel level drains. Jack stays with Annie to keep the bus steady, and then escapes with her using the floor panel. The unmanned bus then runs into the side of an empty cargo plane and explodes.
Following the explosion of the unmanned bus, Annie joins Jack and the police as they wait at the designated drop spot with marked bills for Payne, since they want to take Payne alive to prevent any more threats he has in store. However, Payne finally discovers the looping feed and sees that the police are waiting for him, much to his anger. Observing Annie nearby, Payne poses as a police officer and leads her away. The police drop the money in a trash can (the designated drop spot), but Jack later finds a hole below it leading to the subway system. Jack follows and encounters Payne with the money and Annie as his hostage, now wearing a vest lined with explosives that will go off if he drops a trigger on a device he holds. Jack angrily demands Payne to let Annie go, saying that he can get away with the money, but Payne refuses, still threatening to drop the trigger. Payne then drags Annie onto a subway train, forcing its conductor to set the train in motion while forcing the other passengers to leave by threatening to shoot them. As the train heads forward, Payne kills the conductor after handcuffing Annie to a pole, but Jack is able to catch onto it at the last moment. After learning that Jack is in the train, Payne opens his money case only to discover there is a dye pack in it, which explodes, rendering the money useless. Angered, Payne gets onto the roof of the train and engages into a fight with Jack, hoping to kill him in revenge of his loss. However, Jack manages to decapitate Payne by forcing his head into a passing signal marker while grabbing the trigger away from him. Though Jack frees Annie from the vest safely, they find the brakes on the train that are now broken and no way to communicate to the police. Even worse, Jack cannot free Annie from the pole, as there are no keys to the handcuffs. Jack realizes their best chance to survive is to derail the train along a curved part of the track, and sets the train into its highest speed. As expected, the train derails through an area under construction, and the car they are in slides along an uncompleted tunnel, flying out and landing on Hollywood Boulevard. Jack and Annie are both safe, and realize that they have fallen in love with each other.
Read more about this topic: Speed (1994 film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)