Prepare to be BLOWN AWAY

The Summer of 1994 had already exploded. Dennis Hopper was exploding everything in his path, including Jeff Daniels, in the movie that made you believe a bus could fly, Speed.

But a month after Keanu knocked Hopper's block off came the Irish 4th of July movie to end them all. A movie about identity, loyalty, and family. A movie whose tagline brazenly stated:

Boom Baby. Sweet Dreams.

And...

5...4...3...2...1....Times Up

It is the Boston Bomb Squad and IRA epic Blown Away.

The first scene introduces incarcerated Ryan Gaerity (Tommy Lee Jones) stabbing his cellmate in the face, throwing up a condom filled with explosives, building a bomb in his dirty toilet, exploding through the prison walls and escaping into a stromy Irish night. That is how Gaerity rolls.

The second scene pumps up the U2 (the movie is filled with it. Gaerity even buys a U2 cassette at a flea market) as Jimmy Dove (Jeff Bridges) motorcycles like a badass through Boston to his girlfriend's daughter's birthday party. He get's halfway through a game of pin the tail on the donkey when he gets a page from his bomb squad unit. Jimmy is pissed because of course it was his day off, but such is the life of go-to bomb squader James Dove.

Needless to say, Jimmy saves the day, and the reporters are all over him for the details. And who happens to be getting drunk as fuck in a local bar as the report airs? Why it's our old friend Stabby Exploderson, Ryan Gaerity. He watches the report with humor and intensity. He knows this man, but not as James Dove.

Bottom line, James Dove is actually Liam McGivney, former bomb builder for the IRA who was educated in exploding things by Gaerity. They built a bomb a long time ago that Liam wanted to use for good and Gaerity for bad. A whole bunch of innocent people exploded and Gaerity was arrested while Liam escaped to the US and assumed a new identity. So basically Gaerity is pissed and proceeds to explode everyone James Dove holds dear, no matter how improbable the bomb.

I don't know how he did it, but Tommy Lee Jones is zanier in this than his follow up as Harvey "Two-Face" Dent in Batman Forever. He must have been a fatigued from Blown Away. With an Irish brogue that has to be heard to be believed, Tommy plays around with crabs on the beach, sends cryptic and slightly gay videos dressed as the Statue of Liberty to the Bomb Squaders, and cranks up the U2 as he builds mega bombs.

The whole movie leads up to a climactic fist fight on the 4th of July between Tommy and Jeff inside Tommy's Rube Goldberg mega bomb he built in an abandoned ocean liner rusting on the bay. But even after Forest Whitaker jumps through fire to save Jeff from Tommy's final explosion, Jeff has to race to his girlfriend/fiance's orchestral performance of the 1812 Overture so that her daughter and her don't explode while driving back home.

Needless to say Jeff saves the day and walks home bloody with his girlfriend, shrapnel sticking out of his leg.

This movie contains the penultimate "OH MY GOD, DON'T TOUCH THAT, IT IS GOING TO EXPLODE" scene, but don't worry, it just ends with a dead dog.

Jesus, I haven't even told you the half the movie and I'm exhausted.