In the film's table-setting first scene, Aronoff's life is threatened (by character actor Tom Sizemore, no less) before we even know what's going on. Sizemore's baddy says his boss wants to rent a boat, but Aronoff won't return his boat-related calls. Why can't he just take some money in exchange for a boat? (Meanwhile: a giant boat called "The Cigarette" looms over Sizemore.) Travolta then steps out of Aronoff's office and says something like, Ok, Tom Sizemore, I will give your wealthy boss a boat. Tell him to come by my office, and pick the boat out. That's not good enough for Sizemore's heavy, who makes some random-seeming comments about loyalty: "I'd do anything for my boss. Anything—and everything. I'd never turn my back on my boss." Then John Travolta gets shot while pulling out of his boat store's parking lot. After that: boom, the film flashes back 25 years, and we learn how John Travolta's boat-having dude came to be threatened by Tom Sizemore's boat-seeking man in Miami.

Somewhere unspecified in New Jersey, 1962: Aronoff is using a pay phone. Some guy named Meyer Lansky (James Remar) has threatened Aronoff's construction business, so Aronoff decides to flee to Miami, where he falls in love with boats. We don't know why he falls in love with boats, mostly because it's hard to tell what exactly you're looking at in the first few scenes where Aronoff drives/rides around in speedboats. There's a bunch of poorly assembled clips of guys in boats, lazily circling each other and laughing with joy. There are also some hastily stitched-together shots of Travolta's Aronoff smiling behind sunglasses while his competitive(?) co-pilot Knocky House (Mike Massa) laughs heartily by his side. There's also some all-time-low voiceover narration from Travolta, who, as Aronoff, makes boisterous, but unspecific declarations like: "And boom, just like that, I was in love. The speed, the water, the rush: I wanted it, I needed it, I would have it." I still don't really know what "it" is, but I imagine it's boat-racing? Maybe boat-building? A boat-related sex metaphor? (there's three or four lines of dialogue that refer to how "sexy" speed-boats are, though that quality's hard to convey when your boat footage looks like it was spliced together with a cheese grater).

Honestly, the only thing to do if you're confused while watching "Speed Kills" is to just keep right on watching. Some answers are inevitably forthcoming, though not enough to redeem the film. Lansky is a mobster, and he gave Aronoff money. So Lanksy wants Aronoff to use his boat business--by the way, after winning a bunch of races in a montage, Aronoff becomes a boat salesman—as a front for Lanksy's drug business. Also, Lansky has a pushy nephew named Robby Reemer (Kellan Lutz), though Robby doesn't become important until the DEA starts to close in on Lansky's business, and inevitably puts the squeeze on Aronoff too.