Blown Away should’ve been a surefire summer blockbuster. It stars Jeff Bridges who is always good to watch on screen as well as Tommy Lee Jones, mere months after picking up an Oscar for his role in The Fugitive. It reportedly had one of the biggest practical effects explosions ever on screen that would make Michael Bay and Christopher Nolan bust a nut from the sight of it.
The supporting cast included Forrest Whitaker, Suzy Amis and Lloyd Bridges. It was set in the Boston area focusing on a bomb squad dealing with a mad bomber seeking revenge. Even though Ryan Gaerity (Jones) is supposed to be a former IRA official, there’s little references to the Troubles which was going on in Northern Ireland at the time. It was just supposed to be a silly summer blockbuster ride. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, there was a movie called Speed that had opened about three weeks before the July 4 holiday weekend. And it was already making a killing. On paper, the idea of a Los Angeles mass transit bus that can’t go below 50 MPH or else it’ll explode seemed like a silly idea. And it was starring Keanu Reeves who was still mostly known for his slacker dude roles and that awful performance in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Yet, it worked brilliantly. Audiences liked it and the critics loved it, a rarity for a genre action movie.
Needless to say, comparing Speed to Blown Away is like comparing John Wayne to Clint Eastwood or Paul Newman to Steve McQueen. Blown Away focuses on Lt. James “Jimmy” Dove (Jeff Bridges) who is a master at deactivating bombs. He has a serious girlfriend, Kate (Amis), who plays for a Boston area orchestra. And she has a daughter, Lizzie (Stephi Lineburg), who loves him and wants him to marry Kate. He’s got the perfect American life it seems.
But the pressure and stress is getting too him. When he has to deactivate a bomb connected to a computer at M.I.T., he suffers post-traumatic stress from memories of events that happened decades before. Jimmy used to be called Liam when he lived across the pond and was working under Ryan as they were setting off bombs in the United Kingdom in the latter 1960s and early 1970s. However, one of the bombs resulted in the accidental death of Ryan’s sister who was dating Jimmy. Ryan went to prison while Jimmy fled to America where his uncle Max O’Bannon (Lloyd Bridge) helped him start over by becoming a cop with the Boston Police Department.
Jimmy decides it’s time to leave the squad where he can focus more time on Kate and Lizzie and teach younger officers, such as the cocky arrogant Anthony Franklin (Whitaker) who is brought in to replace him. However, on the day he marries Kate, Ryan sets a bomb near a bridge that results in the death of his friend and former partner, Blanket (Ruben Santiago-Hudson). Ryan begins to target other bomb squad members while terrorizing Jimmy.
The difference between Speed and Blown Away is that this movie relies more on suspense. Director Stephen Hopkins stages some scenes that work on the Hitchcockian philosophy of having the audience know there’s a bomb that doesn’t explode. During a scene where Kate and Lizzie return home when Jimmy knows Ryan has been at the house, simple things like turning on the food pantry light or eye on the stove are handled with thrills. Then, Anthony is put in a situation where he has a bomb in his head phones as Jimmy and Officer “Bama” (Loyd Catlett) stress on what wires to cut.
Maybe people going in to the movie were expecting more action, which aside from a Rube Goldberg-style bomb on an abandoned ship in Boston Harbor and a chase sequence at the end, that’s not the case. Some of the criticism was on a scene where a character has a bomb strapped to him that is set to go off if he makes any movement. People wondered how someone would allow a delicate apparatus to be placed on them. I think they’re missing the previous scene where the character is knocked out by Ryan.
It’s easy to criticize someone’s chili at a cook-off when you still got the taste of better chili in your mouth. The characters in Speed were mostly presented with no back stories mainly because it wasn’t needed. Reeves’ character was a SWAT officer. Bullock’s character was taking the bus because her driver’s license was suspended for speeding. It was all in the moment. Reeves and Bullock added their own charm to their roles that you didn’t need to know too much about them. Here, the goal seems to present the culture and lifestyle of Bostonians in how it relates to the jobs. Jimmy is suffering from guilt and trauma. Yet he’s trying to keep his past from coming back to hurt those around him.
There has been some criticism over the accents and I’ll admit Jones’ Irish accent and Jeff Bridges’ Bostonian accent are both bad. Jones sounds like the leprechaun from the Lucky Charms commercials and Bridges says words like “caaahh” when referring to a car. But Lloyd Bridges actually gives some three-dimension to what is basically a minor supporting role. This is the last time the elder Bridges played in a serious role before his death four years later.
Making the movie was problematic as the ship explosion at the end caused 8,000 windows in East Boston to shatter. Jeff Bridges also came close to suffering a serious injury as Entertainment Tonight showed video of shrapnel flying close to his head during filming of an explosion. Produced on a $28 million budget through MGM, it was opened fourth on the holiday weekend taking in $10.5 million, still the biggest the troublesome studio at the time had in many years. But domestically, it only grossed about $30 million with $53 million worldwide.
Both Speed and Blown Away were released less than a year before the Alfred P. Murrah Building was bombed in Oklahoma City. I think audiences were still gullible to believe that it couldn’t happen in an American city where angry militant former government officials could be seeking revenge by setting off bombs. Now, we know people like Ryan Gaerity and Dennis Hopper’s Howard Payne from Speed do exist and they are dangerous.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 