You gotta just love a great movie car chase, no? Some fave squeal and peel-outs can be seen in these excerpts from Terminator II, Bullitt, Bourne Supremacy, Matrix Reloaded, The French Connection, c'mon...The Road Warrior! ...but to try to pick just one?
So hard to pick just one.
My finalists each have something in common...they're all sans CGI and musical score accompaniment-free. As in...no viz effects, and the sound of roaring engines, shifting gears, and screeching tires...that's the music of the scene. If you haven't seen these spectacular sequences before, check em out:
The Seven-Ups:
Ronin:
To Live And Die In L.A.:
I watched them all again tonight and as much as To Live And Die in L.A.'s sequence still holds a special place in my heart (it was the first time I was blown away by a car chase in a theatre), and The Seven-Ups sequence also holds a special place in my heart (first time I was blown away by a car chase while watching on television), Ronin definitely rules the movie car chase roost in my books.
It's perfect.
Feel free to agree to disagree.
PS - post inspiration didn't come from screening the latest The Fast And The Furious flick actually, but rather from watching Young People F***ing and at one point thinking: "Man, this could use a good car chase right about now."
4 comments:
Best car chase ever is between Eddie Valentine’s flunkies and the Feds at the beginning of Rocketeer! Nah, I’m kidding.
I’d pick the chase through Paris in Ronin, especially since it manages to top the earlier extended chase sequences in the South of France.
Terminator 2 chases were okay, but when I watched the film recently I realized the film was just too slick and shiny, you know. If studios stopped writing Cameron such big cheques he’d make far more interesting movies.
Bullitt used to be a benchmark until I noticed the VW bug that kept popping up, meaning it was one shot filmed from multiple angles that kept being spliced together.
Out of the three Jason Bourne movies, the Russian chase provides a whole lot of crunch but I still like the mini scooting around Paris in the first film. Maybe it simply reminds me of The Italian Job. (And by The Italian Job I mean the original, which is a hilarious nose-thumbing commentary on Britain’s entry into the Common Market, as opposed to the vapid Hollywood remake).
To Live And Die in LA is just tops, and I was bowled over by it in the cinema. One thing about it I hadn’t noticed, until Friedkin brings it up on the DVD commentary, is that once the car hits the freeway everyone starts driving on the left.
The commentary by Frankenheimer on the making of the Ronin car chase was just excellent, too. Perfect example of the lost art of doing a commentary that actually tells you something, and isn't just a big wank.
cool stuff man... I came here off your Twitter btw
"Who the fuck are these guys?"
Man oh man, I saw To Live and Die in LA five times in the theater, just to watch that chase again. That's a lot of Wang Chung to wade through.
I have to stick with Road Warrior, though. It goes above and beyond.
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