Blown Away

This is the summer of mad bombers at the movies. Blown Away is the newest entry into the boomathon that began with Speed. Unfortunately, Speed has most of the bangs, while Blown Away offers mostly duds. It's the more lacklus­ter of the two movies, even though it does man­age to blow up a portion of Copley Square, half of Boston Harbor and all of Lloyd Bridges. But in between the fireworks, Blown Away spends most of its time making a half-baked stab at being serious.

A crazed, but brilliant, bomber (Tommy Lee Jones) goes on an explosive vendetta against a member of the Boston Police bomb squad (Jeff Bridges). The new twist to this very old — and very tired — story is that Bridges and Jones used to work togeth­er in Northern Ireland in a renegade terrorist group (supposedly, Jones was too loony for the regular IRA). Since Bridges has been working for the Boston PD under a forged identity, he's not too happy to see Jones in town. Besides, Jones keeps blowing up everybody Bridges knows (which, strangely enough, puts a strain on their friendship).

But the real question here isn't when will Jones reveal Bridges' duplicity. No, the real question is: how well does Blown Away stack up against Speed? Put it this way; these days, Jones does a better job at playing psy­chos than Dennis Hopper. Of course, in Speed, Hopper didn't have to work with puppets; Jones does, in a scene that even Laurence Olivier couldn't have gotten away with.

Then there's the fact that Bridges is a more interesting actor than Keanu Reeves, but who isn't? These movies aren't about acting talent, anyway — it doesn't matter who's standing around while the set blows up.

Furthermore, Speed lives up to its name; long stretches of Blown Away drag so badly that they leave you desperate to be blown away.

Besides, Los Angeles looks better than Boston when blowing up.