Blown away

Year of release : 1994

Run time : 2h1m

Genre : Thriller / Action

Cast : Jeff Bridges, Tommy Lee Jones, Forest Whitaker, Lloyd Bridges

Irish terr0rist Ryan Gaerity escapes the castle prison in Ireland by turning his toilet into a bomb.

Some time later, in Boston, USA, veteran member of the police bomb squad, Jimmy Dove is disarming his last bomb, before deciding to retire, and train new recruits. He proposes to the woman who is dating, who has a daughter from a previous relationship, who both, love him very much.

They get married, and right on their wedding night, his former colleagues are called on a bomb mission. One of them dies trying to defuse it.

Jimmy tries to solve the case, and finds out it's his former friend and leader of a terr0rist cell, Gaerity. Their friendship ended when Jimmy realized Gaerity wanted to k1ll many civilians, and tried to stop it, but it still k1lled his girlfriend (who was Gaerity's own sister!), among many other civilians.

In the aftermath, Gaerity was caught and thrown in jail, and Jimmy changed his name, moving to the USA, becoming a police officer of the bomb squad, trying to atone for his actions in the terr0rist cell.

Now, Gaerity seems to target Jimmy's colleagues, as two more colleagues, called to a fake b0mb site, are k1lled when they turned on their b0mb disposal robot.

Jimmy tries to find out how to find Gaerity and catch him, as he's also targeting his new family.

The movie was good, it's fast paced, doesn't miss a beat, and it's backed up by good performances, the best to me, being Jeff Bridges, because he had to act emotional,scared,panicked.

The car scene towards the end, reminded me of another terr0rist movie released in 1994, Speed, with Keanu Reeves. Speaking of Speed, apparently the release was pushed forward, to "beat" this movie, and it worked!

Cuba Gooding Jr. who was supposed to play one of the major roles makes a cameo appearance.

Forest Whitaker's character is very cocky and annoying, always saying how he's the best, but I kept on seeing the opposite.

The visual effects were good. The ship explosion towards the end was real, and it shattered 8.000 windows in East Boston!

The soundtrack was beautiful, it has a few beautiful songs, quite a few by the Irish band U2, one of them being one of my absolute favorites, "With or without you".

The movie grossed 52.7 million dollars at the box office against a budget of 28 million.

It received mixed reviews, the critics criticizing the Irish accents of the 3 leads, especially that of Tommy Lee Jones. Jones also had to speak Gaeilge, one of the official languages of the Republic of Ireland.

The audiences of Cinema Score gave it a B on an A+ to F scale.

The movie was followed by a video game and even a book!

Rating : Worth a watch !