‘Blown Away’ bears many similarities to the same year’s ‘Speed’, also involving a deranged bomber with an axe to grind who sets explosives with timers, which are set up for the sole benefit of his nemesis whose keenness to defuse the said bombs is matched only by the vehemence of the villain in seeking some form of justice for their cause. The other film which ‘Blown Away’ reminds me of is 1992’s ‘Patriot Games’ with its similar theme of the Irish terrorist – in both cases the villains are deemed as too extreme for the IRA – who has a score to settle after a previous betrayal which led to their conviction and incarceration.

Jeff Bridges in ‘Blown Away’ is a Boston Police Department bomb squad team member who is about to relinquish his career for a gentler life with his new wife and her daughter, but the past cannot escape him as it turns out that he has a personal connection, buried decades earlier, with Tommy Lee Jones’s unhinged Irish terrorist who was once his mentor. Bridges has since changed his name and identity, and soon realises that the bombs in public squares, music concerts and cars have all been set up to cause him maximum damage, with the clear implication that if the bombs are detonated they will be his personal responsibility.

There are, however, a few less comfortable scenes, as when Jones, who early on admits to having been ‘out of the mainstream’ for so long he has never heard of U2, then becomes their biggest fan, and is shown setting up his explosives to the sound of ‘With Or Without You’. Bridges is very much the counterpart and counterpoint to Jones, as his character is shown to be as rash, impulsive and fervent as his former mentor, even throwing himself back on the bomb squad on the night of his wedding after a detonation at the harbour which (deliberately) kills his replacement. The more Bridges tries to fix, even to atone for, the past, the harder it is for him to extricate himself from all that has happened.

The film is of course implausible. After all, Jones has many opportunities to get up close and personal to his foe, but instead sets up intricate schemes involving marbles, red wires, chutes and timers, as if he is trying to impress with his advanced scientific wherewithal, which include pinpointing the exact location that his intended victim will be standing when a bomb goes off so that instead of being in the safest of locations he is instead in just the right spot to be assaulted by another weapon which is conveniently set in motion once the explosion has taken place. This all feels like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, though Jones and Bridges deserve credit for committed and exuberant performances.