Chill Factor

This Speed clone from Hugh Johnson describes the effect of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar on your career. David Paymer, who was nominated for Mr. Saturday Night, waxes portentous and absurd as Dr. Long, inventor of a lethal chemical weapon. When a test goes awry and soldiers are killed, Dr. Long takes up fishing and intoning phrases like "I am become death, destroyer of worlds" -- until Colonel Brynner (Peter Firth), the officer scapegoated and imprisoned for the test debacle, returns with a commando team to seize the weapon (code-named Elvis, as in "Elvis has left the building" -- the movie doesn't get any funnier) and propel Paymer into the most prolonged and lugubrious death scene of any career.

But first Dr. Long slips Elvis to local yokel Tim Mason (Skeet Ulrich in the Keanu Reeves part). Enter Best Supporting Actor victim number two, Cuba Gooding Jr., Mr. "Show Me the Money!" from Jerry Maguire. He's Arlo, the driver of an ice-cream truck, and since Elvis ignites when it reaches 50 degrees, Mason commandeers Arlo and his vehicle to get the blue goo to safety. With Brynner in bumbling pursuit, the ice-cream truck is succeeded by a rowboat and a UPS van, and cell phones and styrofoam coolers figure heavily in one of the most desultory chases since Speed 2. Gooding brings to the Sandra Bullock role all the charisma of Jar Jar Binks; he better hope his Pepsi One campaign doesn't go cold.

-- Peter Keough