Hello. John Travolta is starring in a new movie called Speed Kills. It is about speedboats. And drug smuggling. And drug smuggling in speedboats. It has a trailer, which you can see above, and should see, at least eight or nine times in a row to really soak it all in. It’s mesmerizing and quite possibly peak late-stage Travolta, which is really saying something just a few months after Gotti came out.
I have a few notes.
– The trailer for Speed Kills opens with Travolta introducing his character thusly: “My name is Ben Aronoff. I’m a self-made millionaire and an offshore boating champion. My boats have won hundreds of races. Oh yeah, they’ve also moved 100 million pounds of cocaine through Miami.”
– Is there a cash register sound after he says “self-made millionaire”? I am pleased to report that there is.
– Look how happy he is on his speedboat.
– A little Googling reveals some very important information about the movie Speed Kills: It also exists as a “virtual reality experience.” It was converted into eight smaller narrative chunks and converted to be seen on Oculus-style VR headsets. There’s a website for the VR version and everything. The tagline on the VR site is “Speed. Money. Murder.” I have never wanted to see a movie more.
– Can we talk about the casting? Let’s. Matthew Modine plays then-VP George H.W. Bush. James Remar plays legendary mob money man Meyer Lansky. Jordi Molla is in it because it’s a drug movie, and that’s the law. Tom Sizemore plays a character credited as “Mobster.” Somehow, against astronomical odds, Eric Roberts is not in this movie. How is Eric Roberts not in this movie? It’s a crazy speedboat movie set in Miami and made for VR headsets. Eric Roberts should fire his agent.
-Have you looked at Travolta’s IMDb page lately. I do recommend it. In 2018 alone he has this and Gotti listed, plus a race car movie called Trading Paint (co-starring Michael Madsen and Shania Twain) and a movie called Moose that is directed by Fred Durst. My working theory is that John Travolta and Nicolas Cage really did switch faces on Face/Off.
– Speaking of faces, let’s look at some more screenshots from this trailer.
– The little graphics cards that pop up through this trailer, the ones that are supposed to help set the drama, say the following things: “Live for sex.” “Live for money.” “Live for power.” “Live for speed.” Dammit, movie, I’m doing my best over here.
– Every line Travolta delivers is incredible, of course, but my favorite is the “Yeah, I know that” at the 0:45 mark. I wish you could put sound in GIFs because I would watch it constantly on a loop for an hour.
– I love that Tom Cruise made a huge fun movie about smuggling drugs in airplanes — American Made, it’s really good and super-rewatchable, I swear — and now Travolta has a cheap weird one about smuggling drugs in speedboats. Famous Scientologists In Drug Smuggling Movies is an entire genre of film now, apparently. I think … yes. This is fine with me. I hope we get more, and they get progressively weirder and cheaper until there’s one about Giovani Ribisi smuggling drugs on a Vespa.
– Here are some more screencaps I made because once I started I couldn’t stop.
We are all seeing this movie.
