Speed (Blu-ray)

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Video:
My contact at Fox tells me that there have been some "issues" regarding the Samsung Blu-ray player and Fox discs. I hope Samsung addresses the problem in the next software update. This one failed to load several times before finally working. And then, it went through stages that normally don't occur. First comes a blue bar with dots, then a colored bar, then a black-and-white shaded circle with dots, and finally a "stop" command followed by a "play" command. All the while, you hold your breath, so that the wild ride begins even before the bus pulls onto the freeway.

As for the quality, though, once the disc loaded it was very good. The film was transferred to a 25GB single-layer disc using AVC at 14MBPS and presented in 1080p HD resolution at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. For an older film and a fairly low-budget one at that, the picture has good color saturation and black levels and is sharp except for soft-focus shots.

Audio:
But the audio is even better. The English DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio is phenomenal, with a crisp, bright treble and booming bass in perfect balance, and with great sound effects coming from all sides. The rear speakers really get a workout with this film, which offers a French Dolby Surround 2.0 option that pales compared to the uncompressed sound, and subtitles in English (CC) and Spanish.

Extras:
The extras are a mixed bag. I hate to say anything bad about a director who's so obviously intelligent and committed, but De Bont is really dry and uninteresting in his commentary. He says a lot of things, but what he says doesn't often match up with what you wish he'd talk about. The better commentary of the two included here is the one with screenwriter Graham Yost and producer Mark Gordon, who give plenty of anecdotes and behind-the-scenes trivia--the kind of things that fans really like to hear. A trivia track is pretty standard stuff, and a trailer is also included in High Definition (which is more unusual). There's a nice search-content feature here that allows you to find scenes according to topic, and a personal scene selection feature that seems more work than it's worth.

The only other feature is a pretty ridiculous "Takedown" game, where you choose to be either Jack or the bomber. While a scene plays, you're supposed to find hidden bombs if you're Jack and defuse them. The problem is, there's about as much logic here as there is in the movie. You don't look for places the bomb might be. You simply keep moving your cursor arrows right or left, and up or down, until the finder turns yellow (meaning you've found a bomb) and then press "enter" to defuse it. All random, and not much fun unless you're five years old.

Bottom Line:
"Speed" quickly sets things in wild motion, like a runaway buckboard in an old western that the cowboy has to catch and slow down. What makes this action film work so well is that Reeves can't catch up to this thing until the final scene. Now why didn't Gene Autry think of that?