Movies You Might Have Missed: Bombs Away!

Before you were potty trained—or even born—Hollywood made some good movies. Movies You Might Have Missed is a recurring feature in which your SparkNotes editors recommend a few watchable films from the 1990s or before.

Right now, the big trend in Hollywood is the Doomsday Movie. (Think: 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Cloverfield.) But while films that depict the total annihilation of our planet are currently in vogue, it was not always so. Back in the 1990s, filmmakers were having a love affair with a different sort of destruction. What was it, you ask?

BOMBS.

Yes, for a good few years, there was no more ubiquitous movie villain than the evil genius bomb-maker. Able to craft an explosive device out of little more than a tube of toothpaste and a pair of dirty underwear, the Mad Bomber pre-dates Jigsaw as a master of unnecessarily creative evildoing, eschewing straightforward murder in favor of mindbogglingly convoluted killing sprees that, whaddya know, make for an awfully fun movie full of big explosions. Which ones should you be sure to watch? Here are our recommendations:

Blown Away
Made in a decade marked by continuing violence in Northern Ireland, this movie delightfully incorporates not one, but two of the more ubiquitous 1990s film trends: not only is our villain a Mad Bomber, he's also an angry Irish person! Featuring Jeff “The Dude” Bridges doing a downright terrible accent, and Tommy “Lee” Jones as the bomber, Blown Away is an excellent introduction to “movies where things blow up.”

Die Hard with a Vengeance
Once upon a time, before some jackass got his hands on it and made it ridiculous, the Die Hard franchise represented a holy trinity of action movies. Are you looking for a man who can kill terrorists, crack jokes, AND look sexy in a blood-covered wifebeater? Look no further, my friends. In this movie, the franchise gets a mid-90s update via Jeremy Irons, who plays a creative bomb-maker with a hidden agenda and a serious grudge. And if you're not already convinced that this is a film worth seeing, there's one other thing:

Samuel L. Jackson is in it.
YEAH.

Speed
Some movies are great because they're, well, great. Well-acted, beautifully written, helmed by visionary directors who bring them to life on screen. And then, there are some movies that are great not because they're great, but because they're so bad...that they're actually good.

Guess which kind of great movie this is! (Hint: Keanu Reeves is in it.)

Clunky dialogue, bad acting, and a ridiculous premise (Mad Bomber has rigged an explosive device on a bus, which will detonate if the driver's speed drops below 40 miles per hour) do not lessen the awesomeness of this film's tight action sequences and giant explosions. (And while Keanu is typically wooden in this role, he's also really quite hot.) Rent this one with a group of friends. Don't be surprised when the staccato violin soundtrack from the “OMG BOMB ON BUS” scenes gets stuck in your head for the next five years.

Do you have a movie to add to our Bomb list? Tell us in the comments!

Related post: Movies You Might Have Missed: The Other Cusack