Who doesn’t enjoy a 90s action thriller starring Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hopper? My thoughts exactly. Speed really put the former on the map as a fresh, sexy actor destined for Hollywood stardom, but enough of that.

What’s great about this particular trailer — aside from it being extremely detailed in pretty much the entirety of the film’s plot — is the awesomely deep, retro voiceover that kindly takes us through, offering even more info and exposition regarding the movie.

Synopsis

In layman’s terms, a known terrorist (the late, great, Dennis Hopper) plants a bomb on a public bus that activates once it reaches 50mph, and will explode if it then goes under that speed. A young cop, Jack Traven (Reeves), must get aboard, take control and keep said bus from blowing up. And that’s all you need to know.

Trailer

*If you’ve not seen the film then the analysis that follows contains spoilers*

What the trailer reveals

As I said, the amazing voiceover does a good job at offering even more detail, just in case you weren’t following the comprehensive exposition of the characters involved: we see the relationship between Jeff Daniels and Keanu Reeves, and also what Dennis Hopper has been indulging in (namely blowing other shit up, the cheeky scamp).

It takes the trailer about 1 minute 20 to get to the focus of the film — the bomb on the bus in question. As usual, it falls into the pitfalls of the many other action film trailers I’ve covered, which is to show us all the explosions, thrills and incident that form the fundamental excitement nature about seeing the film.

Aside from the entire story being played out in little under 3 minutes, we’re granted some shots of what happens at the end in regards to the speeding bus full of people in 2 wonderfully brief, yet unsubtle shots. The first being the bus crashing into and blowing up a plane, quickly followed by the rescued passengers on a different bus looking on in shock from complete safety. Phew.

There’s also a revealing snippet of a Reeves-Hopper fight, so we know — albeit it in predictable, Hollywood climactic fashion — that the pair slug it out.

After seeing this, there’s no real offer of suspense from watching the film. We all know beforehand that the good guy saves the day, but we don’t need to be reassured so blatantly… do we?

Spoiler rating: 8 out of 10