Characters / Speed

Los Angeles Police Department

Jack Traven

Officer Jack Traven

Played By: Keanu Reeves

• Determinator: Jack is extremely determined to saving the lives of the bus passengers and apprehending Payne for his crimes. The poor guy is routinely pushed past the breaking point physically and psychologically over the course of the film yet remains strong. By the end of the film, he's earned himself a long vacation.
• Genius Bruiser: He's a tough, athletic guy as is required for his work but Jack is far from stupid, having a good knowledge of bombs and showing a talent for understanding Payne, figuring out he was in the building at the start and would blow the elevator anyway and later working out that he was watching them from inside the bus, and showing a knack for thinking on his feet to keep the bus going, turning into LAX where news cameras can't come and circling the runway to buy time, finding the camera he planted and figuring out how to turn it against him and earlier figuring out how to prevent the elevator from falling to foil Payne's first ransom.
• It's Personal: His enmity towards Payne becomes very personal after he kills Harry, his best friend/partner and later captures his new friend/love interest, Annie.
• Nice Guy: While the stress of the events and Harry's death understandably cause him to lose his cool a few times, Jack is generally a polite, brave and sincere person who tries to put everyone at ease and quickly strikes up a rapport with Annie.
• Plot Armor: Jack nearly gets his head blown off by Payne in the opening scene when confronting him in the freight elevator, but Payne luckily ran out of bullets in that exact moment due to his prior shooting, allowing Jack's survival. And the armor only gets more absurd from that point on until Payne is eventually defeated.
• Shoot the Hostage: When Payne has Harry as his hostage, Jack shoots Harry in the leg, which causes Payne to drop him by surprise. The same trick doesn't work when Payne takes Annie hostage due to the latter being strapped with explosives.

Harry Temple

Detective Harry Temple

Played By: Jeff Daniels

• Deadpan Snarker: Harry has quite a dry wit, as one would expect given that he's played by Jeff Daniels.
• Demolitions Expert: He's the go-to bomb disposal guy, armed with knowledge and years of experience,
• Knight in Sour Armor: A police officer with little illusions about his job, yet he does it well all the same.
  Jack: Tell me again, Harry, why did I take this job?.
  Harry: Oh, come on, thirty more years of this, you get a tiny pension and a cheap gold watch.
• Oh, Crap!: He supplies a major example of this trope when he sees that he has just triggered a motion sensor in Payne's house and, knowing Payne's expertise, can guess what is about to happen to him.
• Sacrificial Lion: He and several other SWAT cops are killed after raiding Payne's home. The house was rigged with explosives which Payne detonated after they made their way in.

Mac

Captain Herb "Mac" McMahon

Played By: Joe Morton

• Benevolent Boss: Values the lives of his subordinates, is willing to listen to his men and does everything he can to ensure Jack saves the passengers on the bus.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He's the leader of the bomb squad but he's willing to listen to men under him and never lets his ego or authority get in the way of his work and cares only about saving civilians and the safety of his men.
• Supporting Leader: Is a Lieutenant in the LAPD and as such is Jack’s superior. However, he's not the focus of the plot, instead supporting Jack with logistical assistance throughout much of the film.

Bus Passengers

Annie Porter

Annie Porter

Played By: Sandra Bullock

• Drives Like Crazy: She definitely does when she drives the bus, though it is justified since the bus will blow up if it drops below 50 MPH. Her driving habits are also why she lost her license and is taking the bus in the first place.
• Strapped to a Bomb: The final act has Annie strapped with explosives by Payne.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: As Jack tries to board the bus, she can be heard yelling "No, Sam, don't let him on!" The bus pulls away and soon goes over 50mph, arming the bomb. Quite hypocritical too, as she chased down the bus so that she could get on. At the end of the movie, she walks away with Payne, resulting in her being taken hostage (to be fair, she thought he was a cop and that she was safe with him)

Sam Silver

Sam Silver

Played By: Hawthorne James

• Disposable Pilot: Gets accidentally shot by the criminal inside the bus, forcing Annie to take over the driving.

Doug Stephens

Doug Stephens

Played By: Alan Ruck

Ortiz

Ortiz

Played By: Carlos Carrasco

Helen

Helen

Played By: Beth Grant

• Fear-Induced Idiocy: Her nervousness finally gets the best of her and she tries to leave the bus when LAPD SWAT pulls alongside with a truck and get the wounded driver out (and strictly because Payne let them), reaching towards the officers even as they and everybody inside the bus scream at her to stop. Payne punishes her transgression by setting off the booby trap on the bus' front steps, killing her.
• Lovable Coward: She is just a normal woman with an anxiety problem in an extremely stressful situation and doesn't immediately try to ditch the bus, but nevertheless when the wounded driver is offloaded she makes a break for it without considering how he must've felt in that kind of situation, while very slowly and carefully getting off the bus to avoid any real risk of getting the other passengers killed. This predictably ends in her being a Sacrificial Lamb, though Annie and Jack understand how scared she was.
• Nervous Wreck: She suffers from severe anxiety and panic attacks which is why she had to give up driving and start taking the bus.
• Sacrificial Lamb: She is notably the only bus passenger to not survive the experience.
• Too Dumb to Live: Had she listened to Jack, she would've stayed alive.

The Bomber

Howard Payne

Howard Payne

Played By: Dennis Hopper

Dubbed By: Patrick Floersheim (European French)

• Ax-Crazy: He's a cackling madman who has no issue whatsoever killing innocents for his own gain or simply for fun.
• Berserk Button: He takes it very poorly when anyone outsmarts him or even attempts to do so.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Payne makes no secret of what an evil bastard he is and relishes in all the horrible stuff he does, even letting out a chuckle of approval when a news reporter calls him a "mad man".
• Combat Pragmatist: He fights about as fair as how he places his bombs, which is to say not much. He shoots the train driver in order to sufficiently freak out Annie and wrestle the dead man's switch from her without damaging it, ducks under a couple of Jack's punches in order to take several swipes at his forearm, and punches him in the neck to incapacitate him for a sufficient amount of time. Unfortunately...
• Cop Killer: Besides murdering several innocent people, he also kills several LAPD officers, including Harry. When a SWAT team raids his house because they think he's there, he detonates explosives he had planted, which kills Harry at at least a couple of other officers with him.
• Deadpan Snarker: Makes a lot of snarky remarks to Jack:
  Payne: (after the bus driver was accidentally shot) "Jack... tell me you haven't been shooting the passengers. I thought cops were supposed to, y'know, shoot the badguy."
• Death by Irony: Having masterminded a plan to keep a bus going at high speed or be blown to bits, he dies from decapitation by a subway signal light (a red stop sign).
• Even Evil Has Standards: Oddly enough, he seems to be sincere about the fact he does not like that Harry used the words "fuck you" to show his defiance at having been taken hostage, seeing it as a devolution of American culture.
  Payne: In two hundred years, we have gone from "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country" to "fuck you".
• Evil Genius: He's described twice as "crazy but not stupid" and lives up to it, showing both his extensive knowledge of bombs and preventing any interference and figuring out a way to monitor the bus without Jack knowing.
• Evil Old Folks: He's probably around 60 years old given that his actor was 58 when the film released. Not extremely old but he's essentially a retiree committing acts of terror.
• Evil Is Hammy: He gives Evil Laughs a plenty, goes into screaming fits of rage on a semi-regular basis, and flat-out snarls during the climax.
• Fallen Hero: He went from being an Atlanta police officer and one of the most decorated members of the bomb squad to a violent terrorist.
• Fatal Flaw: Wrath. He flies into rages so easily it's clear he needed some mental help. While he can be made to see reason it's only as long as he's in control of the situation. In fact, him losing his head is his ultimate fate that he brought on himself when he engages Jack in a battle in a Traintop Battle on a subway, a battle he starts because of utter frustration.
• Faux Affably Evil: Payne has a cheery demeanor that barely conceals the maniac he really is. He speaks to Jack as though they were old friends, clearly loving his imagined superiority and control of the situation.
• Fingore: Lost one of his fingers to a bomb, which ended his career as a bomb squad member.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: If you notice the newspaper article on his retirement, it mentions briefly that he formerly served in the United States Marine Corps prior to joining the Atlanta Police Department.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: While he did become a villain due to losing his job and his thumb in a bomb-defusal job gone wrong, it's never played for sympathy, and he explicitly says he's only committing his crimes for the money.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: When his bus bomb fails after he's outwitted by Jack, he lures Annie, who is standing alone near the airport where his victims escaped, away from the scene by pretending to be a police officer, or much rather revisiting his time as a police officer so he can masquerade as one, so he can get Annie away alone and into his next trap. This works because, up until then, Jack was the only survivor who knew what Howard looked like, and Annie is easily deceived because she only knows him as "the Mad Bomber" without knowing what his face looks like.
• Insistent Terminology: "Poor people are crazy, Jack. I'm eccentric!"
• It's All About Me: All Payne cares about is getting the money he feels he is entitled to, and he doesn't give a damn about how many lives he takes to claim it.
  Payne: You don't get it, do ya, Jack? This isn't about you. This is about me! This is about my money! This is about money due me! Which I will collect!
• Kick the Dog: He blows up a bus, killing a totally innocent man Jack was on friendly terms with, for no other reason than sadism and to get his attention.
• Lack of Empathy: He has no problem whatsoever with killing innocent people to get some cash. When he stabs a man to death at the beginning of the movie, all he can utter is an insincere Nothing Personal.
• Large Ham: Dennis Hopper was clearly having a wonderful time.
• Laughably Evil: Payne is an evil bastard, but his hamminess and quips make him a blast to watch.
• Lawman Gone Bad: A former police officer who turned to committing multiple acts of terrorism in a fit of psychotic greed.
• Killer Cop: Retired Killer Cop anyway. A former officer in the Atlanta Police Department who spent most of his career on the bomb squad and was one of the most decorated members. After suffering an injury that forced him to retire, he starts making bombs and using them to carry out threats to procure ransoms as he feels cheated out of his money. He is directly responsible for every death that occurs in the film (besides his own).
• Mad Bomber: A former police officer who served on a bomb squad now makes bombs and plants them on corporate elevators and buses so as to procure ransom money. His bombs are scarily effective and kill several people throughout the film.
• Moral Myopia: He seems genuinely convinced Jack stopping him from blowing up a ton of innocent people during the Action Prologue is some kind of heinous crime deserving of revenge. He finds being cheated out of money wrong, but thinks murder to resolve it is okay.
• Off with His Head!: How he meets his end. His head is taken off by an overhead subway signal as he was wrestling Jack atop a train for control of his detonator.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Implied (if through a rather mild potential example), as he says "Poor people are crazy, Jack. I'm "eccentric".
• Pragmatic Villainy: He agrees to let the injured driver Sam off the bus after Jack explains that it would make the police a little more amenable to negotiating with him if he displayed a little reasonability. But, as poor Helen finds out the hard way, this is the only exception Payne was willing to make.
• Refuge in Audacity: After luring Annie away from the scene after Jack escapes his bus trap, forcing her onto a subway and handcuffing her to a pole, he tries to assure Annie that she's okay because the Dead Man's Switch he set up for the bombs strapped around her isn't going to set off and blow her up, because he's holding onto it. This is, of course, right after she has a Freak Out because he just shot a train driver for trying to call for help after Howard forced him to operate that train. Following that, he openly offers a bribe to Jack with the money he obtained (bribery being an offence that can already get him arrested even without his prior terrorism), and when the dye pack in the bag that contains the money he'd use for the bribe explodes and renders the money useless, he immediately explodes into a violent Villainous Breakdown that reveals his true self right after he committed to a facade to hide it from Annie like the sociopath he is, which is even more audacious on his part.
• Sadist: His main motive is money but it's clear he also enjoys killing.
• Sanity Slippage: Losing a finger to a bomb and getting a gold watch for it did not do wonders for his mind. Then again, Fridge Brilliance states he may have already been down the slippery slope from his long years of high-pressure situations.
• Smug Snake: He's extremely arrogant, condescending and full of himself and sees everyone else, especially Jack, as beneath him and isn't shy about letting them know it. Of course, whenever he finds himself challenged or outsmarted he breaks easily.
• The Sociopath: He hits just about every mark. He has an extremely high opinion of himself, believes he is entitled to the money he demands, kills people largely for amusement, is superficially charming and has absolutely no empathy or remorse for any of his crimes.
• Too Clever by Half: Payne is a genuinely dangerous and clever opponent due to both his encyclopedic knowledge of bombs and how police get around them as well as his schemes but he's not nearly the unstoppable criminal mastermind he imagines himself to be, being outsmarted by Jack who Payne regards as little more than dumb muscle.
• Trademark Favorite Food: He's seen chugging down countless bottles of Coca-Cola while he monitors the bus and watches news reports in the situation. This ends up backfiring on him, since the LAPD successfully pulls off their Camera Spoofing while he just so happened to be off taking a piss break.
• Villainous Breakdown: Payne completely loses it after an exploding dye pack leaves his money worthless, screaming semi-coherent death threats at Jack.
• Villainous Valour: While he's incredibly twitchy and gets completely paranoid when things go wrong, Payne is no coward. He's totally ready to go into a utility tunnel without any safety equipment, doesn't at all mind facing the much more athletic Jack in hand-to-hand combat, tricks McMahon alone into thinking he's dead so he can pull the 2525 radio and improvise without being too sneaky, and doesn't put his money in the bank because he knows that way Jack is going to have to tie him up first, then flips that on his head and just bolts across the station with Annie in tow despite the fact that Jack can easily shoot him.

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