Speed (30th Anniversary 4K Restoration)

Get set for the heart-pounding, adrenaline-soaked, explosive new film season Art of Action. Part of BFI's Art of Action, a UK-wide film season celebrating high-octane cinema, we're bringing a wide-ranging selection of the best-ever action titles to our screens, each including an expert introduction. 

Enjoy any three films from this season (excluding Kubo and the Two Strings, which is Donate What You Can) for the special price of £24 when you book them at the same time. Simply select your tickets and the discount will be applied automatically at the checkout.

Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock star in this ‘90s classic about a bus journey gone very wrong. We’re delighted to be screening this new 4K restoration in honour of the film’s 30th anniversary.

Few films have an elevator pitch as ridiculously irresistible as 1994’s Speed. A vengeful terrorist (Dennis Hopper) has planted a bomb on a Los Angeles bus that will detonate if the bus slows below 50 miles per hour, and it’s up to a LAPD officer (Reeves) and a passenger (Bullock) to save the day. 

Director Jan de Bont was director of photography on the original Die Hard, and you have to imagine this was great training for Speed; this film is so entertaining and slickly put together that it’s easy to forget that this was his directorial debut. 

Keanu and Sandra Bullock are fantastic together, effortlessly playing off against each other, Dennis Hopper is on great, scenery-devouring form as the film’s villain and there are also roles for Dumb and Dumber’s Jeff Daniels and Succession’s Alan Ruck. 

The film was one of those rare examples of a blockbuster film which pleased both audiences and critics alike, raking in money at the box office while receiving praise from the likes of Roger Ebert who gave it 4 stars out of 4, calling it “manic exhilaration” and writing “Films like Speed belong to the genre I call Bruised Forearm Movies, because you’re always grabbing the arm of the person sitting next to you.”.

In 2017, Mark Kermode declared the film a “timeless masterpiece”. 

For the sheer blockbuster fun, escalating tension and breakneck excitement that the action film can offer us, you’d be hard pressed to find a more purely entertaining example than Speed.