SPEED

All aboard for a thrilling joyride to hell!

This 90 minute masterpiece is a genius masterstroke of simplicity, yet it enthralls, entertains and keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout.

Keanu Reeves stars as Jock Traven, a street-wise LA cop who pisses off a 9 fingered nut-case during a routine orgy of explosive violence in a lift shaft.

Jock saves a bunch of accountants from plummeting 1,000 feet to the basement of a high rise office block and in doing so, mightily upsets the perpatrator, an ex-cop with the hump.

So the bad guy resolves to test of Jock's nerves of steel, by planting a bomb on a bus in downtown Los Angeles, and when the bus reaches 50 miles per hour, the bus goes boom! Unlike London buses, where if one reaches 50 miles per hour, there'd be an enquiry.

Jock spends the next hour trying to get the passengers off the bus without killing them, an experience most commuters suffer in the Monday morning rush hour.

But the villain is a twisted evil genius and he's clever too, as he invents a series of cunning ploys to keep Jock and the passengers guessing at where this horror ride will end. A bit like the 281 to Hounslow.

Highlights of this great movie include the bus going through red lights, jumping over a 100 ft gap in the road and being driven into an aeroplane... at one point the driver of the bus shows concern for his passengers, and therefore loses all credibility for me at this point, as this doesn't happen in real life.

Finally, with the heroine of the movie being taken hostage herself, Jock must draw on all his inner strength and resources and ends up chopping the bad guys head off in a train tunnel. What laughs!

They tried to follow this up with Speed 2: Cruise Control, but it turned out to be total bollocks.