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The budget for Speed 2 was a fantastical $160 million, owing in part to large salaries for the director and stars, but also reflecting the problematic nature of filming away from land, and a few noteworthy scenes of destruction as well. Opening at only a few million higher than its predecessor, Speed 2 was dead in the water by July 4th and finished with under $50 million. With international figures, it eked out making back its production cost, but just barely. Siskel and Ebert gave Cruise Control its only positive reviews of note. On Rotten Tomatoes today, Ebert’s take is the only positive among 50 mostly scathing reviews. What could have been a trilogy, if not a franchise, came to a dead halt with the finality of a...sinking ship.

As visual metaphors that sum up a movie’s troubles go, the penultimate finale, with an unstoppable cruise ship wreaking extensive havoc as it crashes through the harbor of a tiny Bahamian seaport and comes to rest in the town square, fairly encapsulates what is wrong with Speed 2. I don’t doubt that there is a way to make it seem exciting to watch a cruise liner gradually slow down even as it crushes boats, piers, cars and buildings in its way, but when the ship doesn’t appear to be moving all that fast to begin with, it creates a base problem of visual logistics.

De Bont and his editor keep cutting to the ship’s navigator, stunned and dazed, reading aloud the digitally displayed speed (which the audience also sees) as it slows from 10 to 9 to 7 all the way down to zero. This is done at least half-a-dozen-times and after it fails as comedy and an interesting plot choice the first time, it becomes agonizing to keep returning to it.

Also, at this point, there is nothing that anyone on board can do - the prior sequence is one of the ship being agonizingly turned starboard manually to avoid a head-on collision with an oil tanker and it does pack a visual wallop - so the audience is also treated to stunned reaction shots of the passengers and crew, alternated with stunned reaction shots of the locals on land for what amounts to nearly ten minutes of interminable “so-what” destruction.

Two thoughts kept running through my head during this and other sequences involving the imperiled passengers. The first was that for all its millions of dollars, there is a certain shoddiness that hangs over much of Speed 2, ultimately rendering it as a particularly low-rent version of the “disaster flick” sub-genre (nothing in Speed 2 wasn’t done at least as entertainingly in something like Airport ’77). My other musing concerned how the Steven Spielberg who helmed 1941 might have handled the destruction for destruction’s sake.

Casting Willem Dafoe as John Geiger, the disgruntled computer whiz seeking revenge on the employer who terminated him when he became sick, seems a foolproof path to action movie nirvana. Giving him leeches that he self-administers to help suck out his poisoned blood screams over-the-top-camp. And yet, the film bobbles his character arc. Early on, he seems weird but not evil enough.

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