Speed 2: Cruise Control, in which Annie Porter, played by Sandra Bullock, no longer drives a bus and no longer dates the cop she met during the hectic events depicted in the original Speed. When she agrees to go along with her new boyfriend Alex - Jason Patric - another cop, on a Caribbean cruise, they have fun for a while, but then bad guy John Geiger - Willem Dafoe - sets in train his elaborate plans for a bold and ruthless robbery... The biggest mistake made by this film is its title. The original Speed, Jan De Bont`s first feature, never let up - the runaway bus with the bomb on board barrelled along at top speed. In finding a story for a sequel, De Bont and his collaborators haven`t begun to match the original; Speed 2 is more like Die Hard 4 or Under Seige 3. The plot is serviceable enough, but not for a film with `speed` in the title - it moves at a snail`s pace until the enjoyably absurd finale. Bullock and Patric are rather wan heroes (Keanu Reeves wisely turned the sequel down), and Willem Dafoe can`t even make the villain very interesting; but Temuera Morrison is good value as the officer left in charge of the ship, and the spectacular climax, when it finally comes, is literally smashing. Good to see De Bont has a sense of humour: "No oceans were polluted during the making of this picture" says an end title. I`m relieved to hear it.
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