Movie Crush Monday: Little C and Speed

Welcome back readers! We apologize for the lack of posts and hope you will forgive us. We have a really cool something for you coming up in the next few days. I can't tell you what it is or CT will smother me in my sleep. I promise it's pretty cool, and I'm sorry to be such a tease.

Anyhoo, Speed-ing *tee hee* right past that and on to a continuation in our October tribute to Jeff Daniels, I couldnt help but write about one of my favorite action films. One that forever disillusioned me to what LA traffic would be like... I'm of course referring to the brilliantly fast-paced *I can't help it* Speed.

Full confession time? I adore Keanu Reeves. He gets a lot of shit for not being an oscar-bait actor but I have never finished one of his movies and thought "well that was time I could have spent doing something useful". Keanu is consistently entertaining and he picks movies that are fun to watch. In the early 90s I watched Point Break and this within about a week of each other and that was it. I was sure that if I ever found myself in a high stakes hostage situation, I would only trust one man to get me out of it.

Speed is the epitome of the 90s action flick. It's got sort of snarky dialogue (in this case provided by Joss Whedon) and several completely over the top stunts. It doesn't ever get bogged down in morality questions, because the audience isn't really meant to disect anything that closely. It's not that I don't love a little social commentary or complex power struggle, but especially when Christy and I are writing heavy or dramatic stuff, mostly what I want is some explosions and two attractive people to fall in love mid-shootout.

As far as action flicks go, what Speed does best is to give us a memorable villain. Dennis Hopper was a master at being menacing, but as Howard Payne he is as gleeful as he is destructive. There's nothing scarier than a bad guy with no conscience.

Happy watching,
Little C