Speed 2:Cruise Control (1997) **1/2 out of ***** - Cast: Sandra Bullock, Jason Patric, Willem Dafoe, Glenn Plummer, Colleen Camp, Joe Morton, Tim Conway, Kimmy Robertson. Directed by: Jan de Bont. Running Time: 100 minutes.
Having the word "speed" in your film's title carries with it some responsibility. To use the word "speed" in your film's title, you need to either have a fast paced story, or at the very least, an object important to the story which moves very very fast. "Speed 2:Cruise Control" has neither one, which should almost make you feel cheated as you watch it.
Sandra Bullock returns from "Speed" as Annie. She's dumped Keanu Reeves and hooked up with another member of the "suicide team", played by Jason Patric. You can easily tell though, that this whole thing was written for Reeves, who backed out at the last minute. Anyway, the new happy couple go on a vacation aboard a cruise ship, and darn the luck, it's being taken over by a psycho (Willem Dafoe).
Dafoe is a disgruntled former employee of the cruise line who designed all the computer systems onboard. He developed some sort of copper blood poisoning illness from the computers (or something like that) and so the company immediately fired him. Now he's out for revenge. He plans to steal a fortune in jewelry from the ship's vault and then ram the ocean liner into an oil tanker.
Willem Dafoe is adequate, yet nothing special as the villain. But it's refreshing that he's working alone. He doesn't have a team of bad guys, and none of the crew members reveal themselves to be bad guys during the film. Bullock's character has gotten awfully annoying, and her main purpose in the film is to make repeated references to her character's experiences from the first film. Patric makes a satisfactory replacement for Keanu Reeves, and he actually fares the best of all the cast. And I always like to keep track of former cast members of "Twin Peaks" when they get work. Here, Kimmy Robertson who played Lucy the secretary shows up as the ship's cruise director.
The film's main flaw is it's big sequence towards the end where the ship is heading, very slowly, towards an island. This scene goes on forever, and shockingly is done with a sense of "Wheeee!" as mass destruction occurs, people's lives and property are ruined and quite possibly many people could be brutally maimed or killed. This sense of gleeful whimsy in the scene is almost insulting. And during this sequence there's yet another "dog in peril" scene, a movie trend which I am completely sick of.
"Speed 2:Cruise Control" isn't a bad film, and it's certainly better that most of this summer's offerings. But what keeps it from achieving a good rating is that it's just hopelessly standard action fare. There's nothing new in it to distinguish it from any other action movie of its type. And usually when you make a sequel, you want to try and outdo SOMETHING from the previous film. Not one moment here even comes close to being as good as anything from the original. [PG-13]
-- Chuck Dowling
Visit Chuck's Movie Reviews at http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/ Over 1,600 movies rated and/or reviewed! Movie news, film related links, and reader's reviews.
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