A young police officer must prevent a bomb exploding aboard a city bus by keeping its speed above 50 mph.
When a young Los Angeles police department, Special Weapons and Tactics (S.W.A.T.) officer called Jack Traven angers retired Atlanta police department bomb squad member Howard Payne, by foiling his attempt at taking hostages stuck in an elevator with a bomb, Payne in retaliation arms a bus with a bomb that will explode if it drops below 50 miles per hour. With the help of spunky passenger Annie, Jack and his partner Detective Harry Temple try to save the people on the bus before the bomb goes off, while also trying to figure out how Payne is monitoring them.—Jwelch5742
Los Angeles Police Detective Jack Traven gets stuck in a life or death situation when madman Howard Payne rigs a Los Angeles bus with explosives that will detonate if the bus drops below 50 mph. With passenger Annie Porter at the wheel, Traven must find a way to save the passengers on the bus and innocent bystanders.—crawforddarren
A young male police officer must work with a group of city people to stop a bomb from going off on a public vehicle by keeping it above a specific speed. As they all try to stop the bomb from going off, government officials do their best to locate who is behind the threat.—RECB3
A retired Atlanta Police Department bomb squad explosives expert, called Howard Payne, tries to extort money by threatening to kill some people, trapped in a Los Angeles Skyscraper's elevator, with explosives. The city is about to give in when rookie Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.) Special Weapons and Tactics (S.W.A.T.) officer Jack Traven stops him. Jack and his partner, Detective Harry Temple find Payne and corner him but instead of giving in he blows himself up. He is believed to be dead but has actually escaped and tries again to extort money from the city. This time he has placed a bomb on a bus that will arm itself once it reaches 50 mph and will explode if it drops below that speed. Payne dares Jack to stop him and tells whereabouts of where the bus will soon be and the rules of his twisted game. If Jack or the LAPD try and unload any passengers off the bus, Payne will detonate it. Jack tries to stop the bus before the bomb is armed but it's too late; all he can do now is to keep it going. With Harry trying to find Payne and Jack running out of Freeway and gas - This is one bus ride no one wants to miss.—[email protected]
LAPD SWAT officers Jack Traven (played by Keanu Reeves) and Harry Temple (played by Jeff Daniels) are called to an Los Angeles Skyscraper where a bomber (played by Dennis Hopper) is holding an elevator full of people hostage for a $3 million ransom threatening to blow the emergency breaks keeping the elevator from plunging to it's doom. Jack shows quick thinking, after he and Harry examines the bomb and gets an idea to rig a cable from a window washing crane on top of the building to hold the elevator. The bomber figures out the plan and triggers the bomb, but the crane holds the elevator long enough for the hostages to be rescued via an access panel.
Jack and Harry then figure out that the bomber is hiding in one of the freight elevators, which were not checked during the evacuation of the building. As they corner the bomber in a elevator, he takes Harry hostage. Jack intentionally shoots Harry in the leg, forcing the bomber to release him. The bomber flees and activates the bomb, seemingly dying in the process. Jack and Harry are praised by Lieutenant "Mac" McMahon (played by Joe Morton), with Harry being promoted to detective. Having survived the incident, however, the bomber watches on TV.
The next morning, Jack witnesses a mass transit bus explode, which kills the driver. The bomber contacts Jack on a nearby payphone, explaining that a similar bomb is rigged on another bus, which will activate once it reaches 50 miles per hour (80 km/h) and detonate if it drops below 50. He also demands a ransom of $3.7 million and threatens to detonate the bus if Jack tries to offload any passengers. Jack races through Los Angeles freeway traffic and after commandeering a civilians car he manages to get ahead of the bus, which had already gone over 50 MPH, and gets a message to the driver, Sam Silver (played by Hawthorne James) to keep the speed above 50 mph. Jack then gets on board by jumping onto the moving bus, however, a criminal on board, fearing Jack is about to arrest him, wildly discharges his gun, accidentally wounding Sam. Another passenger, Annie Porter (played by Sandra Bullock), takes over for Sam, but when she tries to slow down to get help, Jack is forced to reveal the bomb, shocking and horrifying the passengers. Jack examines the bomb underneath the bus and calls Harry, who works to identify the bomber.
After a harrowing adventure through city traffic, the police clear a route to the unopened 105 freeway. Mac demands that they offload the passengers onto a flatbed trailer, but Jack warns him about the bomber's plot. The press show up in helicopters which fly over the bus and would broadcast any rescue attempt made to the bomber, who calls Jack to reiterate his instructions not to unload any passengers but Jack convinces him to allow the injured Sam to be offloaded for medical attention as a show of good will. After witnessing a female passenger named Helen (played by Beth Grant), shaken by everything that's happened, attempt to get off, the bomber detonates a smaller bomb underneath the front bus stairs, killing her.
When Jack learns part of the freeway is incomplete, he persuades Annie to accelerate the bus to maximum speed so they can jump the gap, which narrowly succeeds, before directing her to the Los Angeles International Airport to use their unobstructed runways. Meanwhile, Harry manages to identify the bomber after realizing that the bomber had a missing thumb, and the bomb on the bus had a gold watch next to it, the kind that is given as a retirement gift at the end of the service period to police officers. Thus Harry is able to narrow the search to former Police officers claiming disability check. After identifying the bomber as Howard Payne, a former Atlanta Police Department bomb squad officer, Harry then leads a SWAT team to raid Payne's home. However Payne anticipates their arrival and rigs his house to explode which kills the SWAT entry team including Harry.
Back at the airport, Jack gets off the bus after getting permission from Payne, saying that he needed to talk to the authorities face to face to organize the ransom money. Jack's boss, Mac, points out that in the airport the press can't fly any helicopters into the restrictive airspace and thus can't report on any attempts to rescue the passengers but Jack still thinks the bomber will somehow still know. In a last-ditch attempt to defuse the bomb, Jack goes under the bus on a towed sled, but he inadvertently punctures the fuel tank when the sled breaks from its tow line. After the passengers bring him back aboard, Jack learns that Harry has been killed and that Payne has been watching the passengers on a hidden surveillance camera the whole time, allowing him to be one step ahead of Jack at every moment. Mac has a local news crew record the UHF transmission and rebroadcasts it on a loop to fool Payne while all of the passengers are offloaded onto an airport bus. Jack and Annie escape the bus through a floor access panel before the empty bus collides with a Boeing 707 cargo plane and explodes. With no one dead in the explosion and realizing Payne has no leverage anymore they decide to keep the ruse that the bus is still circling the airport and use this opportunity to get Payne.
Jack, Mac and a platoon of SWAT officers head to Pershing Square, to drop off the ransom money but Payne realizes that he has been fooled when he sees the sudden jerks in the video when the tape loops. Seeing the LAPD are waiting for him, a furious Payne poses as a police officer to kidnap Annie and mange's recover the ransom from underneath in a subway tunnel. The police start getting impatient and Jack realizes that Payne already has the money and goes into pursuit of who he thinks is Payne by following him into the Metro Red Line subway.
However, Payne is a step ahead of Jack whose actually been following Annie as Payne sent her to get his money as she has been fitted with an explosive vest rigged to a pressure-release detonator Payne appears and tells Jack that if he follows them he will explode the bomb and kill Annie. Payne then enters a subway station and pulls out a machine gun firing it into the air to scare people so he can get away from Jack in the confusion. He then hijacks a subway train, by threatening to shoot the driver and handcuffs Annie to a pole, but unknown to Payne Jack manages to sneak on board the train before it leaves the station. Payne then kills the train driver, who was going to radio for help, and hears Jack on the roof of the train car. Payne playfully jokes that Jack should accept a bribe and attempts to open the bag of his ransom money but a dye pack goes of in his face. Pushed into a psychotic frenzy, a crazed Payne battles Jack on the train's roof, during which Jack causes Payne to be decapitated by a railway signal.
Jack deactivates the vest from Annie but cannot free her from the pole as Payne had the key to her handcuffs. Unable to stop the train, Jack accelerates it to maximum speed, causing it to derail, where it plows through a construction site, and burst onto Hollywood Boulevard. Unharmed, Jack and Annie kiss while a crowd looks on, amazed.
