Speed 2: Cruise Control 1997

Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune: Speed 2 is the most exciting to date of this summer's big action pictures. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Even the film's big-ticket closing stunts are more impressive for their size than for any excitement they generate. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: In Speed 2, De Bont is, so to speak, at sea. Read more

Desmond Ryan, Philadelphia Inquirer: De Bont remains an expert director of action, but putting the reference to cruise control in the title serves as fair warning of an unengaged filmmaker on automatic pilot. Read more

Keith Simanton, Seattle Times: [A] truly horrid sequel. Read more

Susan Stark, Detroit News: Read more

Janet Maslin, New York Times: Speed 2 doesn't have much in mind besides convincing an audience that a runaway ocean liner is a dynamic menace. Fine, but it doesn't beat a runaway bus. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Speed 2 is frantic action, tinny dialogue, perfunctory characterization and tried-and-false plot pilferings. Read more

Stephen Thompson, AV Club: Speed cost something like $30 million; this sequel cost four times as much. So why is it such a feeble, aimless piece of junk in comparison? Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Do yourself a favor and see a movie instead. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: It's a complete lack of story that explains why this expensive production from the proficient creator of Speed and Twister sputters out on the high seas. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: An ear-splitting amusement-park attraction posing as a movie. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Speed 2 can be numbered among the worst second chapters ever made. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Movies like this embrace goofiness with an almost sensual pleasure. And so, on a warm summer evening, do I. Read more

Charles Taylor, Salon.com: I hope that somewhere Keanu Reeves is laughing about being considered a nonactor while the wax dummy Jason Patric has somehow achieved a rep as intense and gifted. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: They keep getting worse and worse and worse . . . Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: The human propensity to tamper with a good thing is probably ineluctable. Read more

Nick Bradshaw, Time Out: Dafoe's take on Dennis Hopper's Hopper impersonation is plain pointless; Bullock too is wasted in a ditzy half-role; and Patric is unsmiling and resolutely uncharismatic. Read more

Emanuel Levy, Variety: Speed 2 suffers from a slender script, a tedious first reel and a routine villain who lacks the entertaining menace that Speed's diabolical madman projected. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: [It] sinks faster than a rock. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: What a reeking bag of nothingness! What emptiness, what vaporous vapidity! What rot, stink, and whiff of mold spore! Read more