The director Keanu Reeves called a mad genius: “This is a person with a vision”
Keanu Reeves has worked with an impressive roster of directors over the years, many of whom could affectionately be referred to as mad geniuses. Gus Van Sant, Francis Ford Coppola, and Bernardo Bertolucci come to mind, though the Wachowskis would certainly come before all of them if it was a competition. The Matrix series broke new ground in Hollywood and set Reeves on a new path of action movie stardom.
However, when the actor invoked the ‘mad genius’ moniker, he wasn’t talking about any of the aforementioned auteurs, but the man who directed a 1994 action movie in which Reeves starred with Sandra Bullock and Dennis Hopper. Speed – which is definitely not 2004’s Crash no matter what my brain tells me – takes place on a city bus that Hopper’s character has rigged to explode if it dips below 50 miles per hour. Reeves plays an LAPD officer who hops on the bus to sort out a solution, while Bullock plays a passenger who takes the wheel when the bus driver is killed.
It’s a pulse-pounding action movie that fared well at the box office and with critics, and that can largely be attributed to the masterful direction of Jan de Bont. Although Speed was his first directorial effort, the Dutch filmmaker was already a veteran cinematographer, having lensed everything from Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October to Basic Instinct. He knew how to shoot an action sequence, and he picked the perfect vehicle (pun intended) to prove it.
When he was approached about doing the project, Reeves wasn’t particularly keen. The premise was a bit far-fetched, even for someone who had recently played an undercover FBI agent infiltrating a surfer gang who has a transformative skydiving experience. However, as soon as he met de Bont, he changed his mind.
“I met this mad genius, and I was like, ‘This is an auteur. This is a person with a vision,’” Reeves told IndieWire during a 30-year retrospective of the movie in 2024. He was particularly impressed by how the director wanted to use practical effects rather than CGI to create those breathtaking action sequences. “How many camera bodies did you destroy, 12?” he asked, turning to the director. “No, just five,” de Bont responded.
The filmmaker admitted that starting his directorial career on such a high note was a double-edged sword. “You think about the next one and [ask], how can you improve on that?” he said. “The stress of making those big movies is pretty intense, and as a director, you’re completely exhausted for a long time after the movie’s over.”
He took a two-year hiatus, but when he returned to the director’s chair, he did what most people – including him, apparently – had assumed was impossible. He made a film that was even more successful. 1996’s Twister upped the ante in every way. It features a car chase, like Speed, but also a race against a tornado. No matter how it was received when it was released, Twister is an all-time classic. Speed 2: Cruise Control… not so much.
