Plot Summary (Speed) Speed
A bomb in an elevator tests two SWAT officers against an unseen extortionist
LAPD SWAT officers Jack Traven and Harry Temple respond to a hostage situation in a downtown Los Angeles high-rise. An extortionist has rigged the express elevator with a bomb and is holding thirteen people hostage, demanding $3 million in ransom. Jack and Harry descend the elevator shaft, evacuate the passengers through the roof hatch, and confront the bomber when the car drops. The bomber takes Harry hostage, but Jack shoots Harry in the leg to remove him as a useful shield — a gamble that works. The bomber, apparently cornered, triggers a deadman switch and detonates a smaller charge, seemingly killing himself. Jack and Harry are awarded medals for valor.
The bomber is alive, and he wants Jack to know it
The extortionist — Howard Payne, a retired Atlanta police bomb squad officer — faked his death in the elevator explosion. Missing a thumb from the blast, embittered by a career that left him with a meager pension, Payne has targeted Jack specifically. He destroys a city bus with a remote-detonated bomb to demonstrate his seriousness, then calls Jack on a payphone with his new terms: a second bus, Santa Monica line 2525, carries a bomb that arms when the bus exceeds 50 mph and detonates if the speed drops below 50. The ransom is now $3.7 million. If anyone tries to unload passengers, Payne will detonate the bomb himself.
Jack boards the bus and a wounded driver forces a passenger to take the wheel
Jack commandeers a civilian's Jaguar and races through freeway traffic to intercept the bus, which has already exceeded the arming speed. He boards by leaping from the car to the bus door at highway speed. A small-time criminal on board, fearing arrest, panics and draws a gun; in the scuffle the driver is shot in the shoulder. Annie Porter, a passenger whose license has been revoked for speeding violations, takes the wheel. The irony is structural — the woman who drove too fast is now the only person qualified to keep driving fast enough.
The bus becomes a sealed world with its own community and crises
Trapped together at speed on the freeways and surface streets of Los Angeles, the passengers form a reluctant community. Jack establishes communication with Payne via a phone on the bus and with his SWAT team through a handheld radio. Payne monitors the bus through a hidden camera, watching every move Jack makes. The passengers face a series of escalating obstacles: a gap in an unfinished freeway overpass that the bus must jump, a woman named Helen who attempts to leave the bus and is killed when Payne detonates a charge under her step, a leaking fuel tank that limits how long they can keep driving.
Jack discovers the camera and uses it against Payne
Jack realizes Payne is watching the bus through a concealed camera when Payne references details he could only know by seeing inside the vehicle. Jack and his team devise a workaround: they loop the camera feed, playing Payne a recording of the passengers sitting calmly while the real passengers are evacuated through a hole cut in the floor of the bus onto a rolling platform beneath it. The deception works — the passengers escape, the bus runs empty into a cargo jet at LAX airport, and the bomb detonates without casualties.
Payne kidnaps Annie and the fight moves underground
Payne, watching the explosion on television, discovers the loop when a handbag flickers in and out of a passenger's hands — a glitch in the looped footage. Furious, he abducts Annie at the airport, disguising himself as a police officer. He straps a bomb vest to her and drags her onto a subway train. Jack pursues them underground. On the roof of the moving train, Jack and Payne fight hand to hand. Jack forces Payne upward into a signal light, decapitating him. But the train is now uncontrolled, accelerating through the tunnel with Annie still handcuffed inside.
Jack crashes the train out of the tunnel and onto Hollywood Boulevard
Unable to stop the subway train and unable to free Annie from the handcuff that chains her to a pole inside, Jack forces the throttle to full speed and derails the train by triggering a curve at maximum velocity. The train plows through a construction barricade and bursts out of the ground onto Hollywood Boulevard, finally grinding to a halt in the middle of the street. Jack and Annie emerge from the wreckage alive. Annie, surveying the destruction, tells Jack that relationships that start under pressure never last. Jack suggests they base it on sex instead. They kiss in the wreckage as emergency vehicles converge.