10 Best Movie Chases
Spoiler alert: I give away details of some of the movies listed below, so if there's one that you haven't yet seen, read only the underlined part, and then go rent it. Once you've seen it, come back and finish reading the rest of the commentary. You're welcome.
10- The car chase in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974): James Bond steals a red AMC Hornet from a dealership with a redneck Sheriff in it that he had met in a previous film, and proceeds to chase Scaramanga, this film's villain. This chase makes the cut for two sequences: At one point, the car is reversing and does a perfectly executed spin to change directions, and later on, there's a jump over a broken, twisted bridge where the car does a full sideways rotation before landing on its wheels on the other side…all stunts, no computer graphics. The villain eventually escapes in the usual way: by flying off into the distance after having added wings to his car.
9- The car chase in Ronin (1998): While there are several good chases in this film, the best is the one where Robert DeNiro and Jean Reno are in a Peugeot 406 pursuing their double-crossing partners in a BMW M5 through tight European streets, tunnels, and roundabouts. There's a cool sequence where they head into oncoming traffic, and eventually the BMW gets run off the road, where it rolls over and burns. There's no background music for the most part, only the sound of the engines which were carefully reproduced to be as authentic as possible. The director of this film, John Frankenheimer, also directed the movie Grand Prix, the best movie ever about Formula 1 that's worth checking out for the realistic racing footage.
8- Car vs. train in The French Connection (1971): "Police emergency! I need your car!" What a great way to start a chase, as Gene Hackman's character commandeers a 1970 Pontiac Lemans to pursue a criminal on an elevated train. He follows the train at high speed underneath the tracks, wrecking cars and trash piles alike…even scaring the crap out of a woman pushing a baby carriage. Meanwhile, the bad guy makes his way to the front of the train and forces the conductor to continue through the stations without stopping. Some of the sequences of the chase were real, with Hackman driving through actual traffic and running red lights while honking his horn and equipped with a fake police light on the roof while the director ran a camera from the back seat. Other sequences were scripted and done with stuntmen, though not without problems: Some crashes were unintentional, but they decided to keep them in the film nonetheless.
7- Truck vs. motorcycle in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991): It starts with young John Connor on his motorcycle being pursued by the evil terminator who starts the chase on foot, but eventually steals a truck to continue. Later, the good terminator gets involved as he rides his Harley Davidson into the chase and saves young John before he gets crushed by the truck. There's a great scene where the truck jumps off the overpass into the canal, and another where the Harley does a similar jump…all the while, the great beat of the Terminator chase-music plays on.
6- The pod race in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999): A young Anakin Skywalker races across the desert against others in their podracers (an antigravity pod pulled by huge turbine engines). The special effects are amazing, as the effects team did a lot of research to add realism: Real race car crashes were studied in order to make the debris in the pod crashes fly realistically, and the sounds of the engines included real race car sounds. The whole sequence is an homage to the chariot race in Ben Hur, which brings us to…
5- The chariot race in Ben Hur (1959): A fantastic race between chariots pulled by not one or two, but four horses in a huge arena filled with cheering spectators. There are no special effects here…what you see is how they did it: stuntmen driving actual chariots, and there are scenes where it looks like they may have lost a few in the process. Ben Hur's rival has a chariot with an extension on its wheels that he uses to cut the wheels of other racers, and at one point he even whips Ben Hur in frustration. The sound of multiple horse hoof steps, the sight of horses being pushed to their limits, and the cheering crowd make it a very exciting race to watch.
4- The foot chase in Casino Royale (2006): James Bond pursues his backpack wearing foe in this film's opening sequence in the best foot chase I've ever seen. It's a Parkour style chase, in that the human body is used to jump expanses and fences and scale walls without any equipment…almost like a monkey would. The bad guy Bond is after is played by Sebastien Foucan, one of the founders of the technique. They run through a construction site, climb an unfinished building, jumping from beam to beam, and have a fistfight on top of a crane. Bond eventually catches him, but must fight off soldiers in a gunfight while simultaneously dragging his opponent along. When cornered by the soldiers, Bond shoots his prisoner, and escapes with what he was really after: the backpack. The chase is fast and exciting to watch, and it's great to see stuntmen on actual high surfaces scaling dizzying heights.
3- The final chase sequence in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981): Driving a fuel tanker modified with protective spikes, barbed wire, and metal plates, and carrying several fighters armed with crossbows and Molotov cocktails, Max drives through a gauntlet of crazed post-apocalyptic renegades driving their own modified vehicles. There's lots of carnage and mayhem, and the sequence ends with a head-on collision with the main villain's vehicle, sending parts (car and body) flying everywhere, and forcing the tanker to crash.
2- The car chase from Bullitt (1968): Bullitt (Steve McQueen), in his green 1968 Mustang GT pursues a black 1968 Dodge Charger through the hilly streets of San Francisco in what many consider to be the best car chase ever. It builds up slowly with Bullitt following two shady characters in the Charger while some sixties jazz music plays in the background. Then the driver of the Charger fastens his seatbelt, the chase begins, and the jazz is replaced by the music of the rumbling V-8's…a car enthusiast's wet dream. The pursuit is filmed from inside the car as well, taking the viewer along for the ride. It ends with a bang when Bullitt rams the Charger into some gas pumps. It's a long chase, almost ten minutes, and it's cool to note that McQueen did some of the stunt driving.
1- The final chase scene in The Blues Brothers (1980): While this movie has many good chase scenes, including a hilarious one inside a shopping mall, the last pursuit of the movie is the best one. When they finally get the money they need to save the Catholic school from foreclosure, the Blues Brothers lead dozens of police cars on a high speed chase in their Bluesmobile (a 1974 Dodge Monaco), itself a former patrol car. Most of the police cars are wrecked in massive chain reaction pileups that must have depleted the country's supply of four-door 1970's sedans. When the car chase is over, a foot chase begins, where even the army joins in. It ends in a scene where the brothers are cornered by dozens of police and soldiers all training their weapons on them in a small room. This chase is special not only because of the hundreds of pursuers, but in the fact that there are sequences where the cars are actually going fast rather than appearing to do so by virtue of speeding up the film.
