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Top 10: Greatest-ever movie car chases
By Henry Biggs,
It is one of those topics of conversation that frequently descends into furious debate among petrolheads and film aficionados alike; what is the greatest movie car chase of all time?
A new book by respected motoring writer Jesse Crosse, The Greatest Movie Car Chases of All Time aims to do exactly what it says on the tin and provide the definitive answer.
Much more than just a countdown, the book traces the history of the car chase from its origins in silent cinema to today’s CGI-laden crash fests and takes a look behind the scenes at the directors, stunt coordinators and drivers who created some of the most thrilling moments on the silver screen. Crosse also counts down his personal Top 20 chases. Much of it is familiar fodder but there are some left-field choices in there as well. The number one chase is unlikely to be a surprise to anyone although controversially I’d have chosen classic anti-hero movie Vanishing Point, which Crosse relegates to a lowly 12th position. Here we countdown the Top 10.
10. Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
A tale of modern day moonshiners in which Bo 'The Bandit' Darville (Burt Reynolds) accepts a job from the sinister political duo of Big and Little Enos Burdette, which means he and buddy Cledus 'Snowman' Snow (Jerry Reed) must deliver a truckload of beer from Texas to Georgia against a tight deadline. The plan is for the Bandit to run interference in his souped up black Pontiac Trans-Am, giving Cledus a clear run free from 'Smokeys' or highway patrolmen. The Bandit soon picks up a hitchhiker in the form of Frog (Sally Field) who has just run out on her wedding. Unfortunately her prospective father-in-law is Sherriff Buford T. Justice, played by the wonderful Jackie Gleason and hell-bent on stopping her and her rescuer. Predictable mayhem ensues with the Trans-Am being pushed to the limit on freeways and backwoods dirt tracks alike and performing some very unlikely leaps while leaving an increasingly frustrated Sherriff Justice eating dust.
9. The Blues Brothers (1980)
"It’s a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses. Hit it." With these words Joliet 'Jake' and Elwood Blues (John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd repectively) set in motion one of the most hilarious chase sequences committed to celluloid with hundreds of black and whites trying to stop the Blues Brothers on their "mission from god". Of course it ends in a spectacular police pile-up and a hilarious comeuppance for the hated Illinois Nazis. Even more impressive is the high-speed chase through a shopping mall earlier in the film which will have you cringing and watching through your fingers. Of course the Brothers maintain their cool through it all and complete their mission to save the orphanage. Oh and there’s some singing in it too.
8. C’était Un Rendezvous (1976)
Not strictly a car chase, and in fact you don’t even see the car involved, but undoubtedly one of the most amazing pieces of filming in cinematic history. Director Claude Lelouch mounts a camera to the front bumper of a sports car, and films it howling through the streets of Paris very early one summer’s morning. For years rumours circulated that the car used was Lelouch’s own Ferrari 275GTB, one of the most stunning cars of all time and the driver a Formula 1 star of the time. The film, just nine minutes long, certainly demonstrates his exemplary car control at speeds calculated to be as high as 135mph as he races from the Périphérique to Sacré Coeur for his rendezvous with a mystery blonde.
Recently Lelouch, who was arrested after the release of the film, has claimed it was in fact a Mercedes 450SEL with a monstrous 6.9-litre V8 engine, which was then overdubbed with the noise from the Ferrari and that Lelouch himself did the driving. Whatever the truth, it is an astonishing sequence, filmed in one take as the driver runs red lights, mounts kerbs, drifts round tight corners, and narrowly avoids pedestrians and will certainly have you on the edge of your seat, if not hiding behind it. Repeating the feat would be impossible in today’s crowded conditions, not least because the streets would be full of rioting students.
7. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
Set in a post-apocalyptic Australia where petrol has become the world’s most precious commodity, the 'Mad' Max Rockatansky of the title (Mel Gibson) is a former cop whose wife and children were murdered in the first film by a group of bandits. Now a renegade roaming the highways in "the last of the V8 Interceptors", basically a Ford XB Falcon with a whacking great supercharger sticking out of the bonnet, the film opens with Max fending off a group of marauding bikers. The best chase scene however comes right at the end of the movie after Max has been taken in by a group of villagers and helps them flee a gang of murderous bikers hell bent on stealing their precious fuel. Max, driving an armoured petrol tanker, lures them away, allowing the villagers to make their escape in the opposite direction while Max fights a running battle with plenty of lethal looking stunts and gratuitous violence thrown into the mix.
6. The Bourne Identity (2002)
Paris, a battered old Mini and a man on the run from the CIA and the police. So far, so predictable, but the Bourne Identity ups the ante with some hair-raising driving sequences. Our hero Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) exhibits some precise wheelmanship as he battles Parisian traffic to evade his pursuers. The mini scrapes through alleyways, darts across pavements, hurtles up one way streets the wrong way and plunges down the inevitable set of stone steps all accompanied by terrified looks from Bourne’s girlfriend Marie, the owner of the car. Our hero wins out in the end of course when the last police motorcyclist, struggling to keep the mini in sight, doesn’t spot the knackered Peugeot 405 pulling out in front of him, colliding with it in bone-crunching fashion.
5. Le Professionnel (1981)
Nope, I haven’t heard of it either but the film stars Jean Paul Belmondo as French Secret Agent Joss Beaumont sent to assassinate an African dictator. The French government gets cold feet and double-crosses Beaumont who is arrested and sentenced to a lifetime’s hard labour. He promptly escapes to the Los Angeles underground... No wait, that’s the plot of the A-team. Beaumont returns to France, swearing revenge on his bosses and to complete his failed mission to bump off the dictator. The short car chase involves Beaumont in a Fiat 131 Mirafiori being pursued by two thugs in a black Peugeot 504. When one of the villains takes a pot shot at Beaumont, he becomes enraged and the tables are turned with Belmondo, clearly doing his own driving, using the Fiat as a four-wheeled battering ram in pursuit of the Peugeot down narrow alleys and the inevitable set of stone steps.
4. The Italian Job (1969)
Start whistling 'The Self Preservation Society' (actually called 'Get a Bloomin’ Move On') in any pub in Britain and I guarantee someone nearby will take up the refrain, such is this film’s place in the national psyche. Villain Charlie Croker’s (Michael Caine) plans an audacious scheme, bankrolled by genteel crime boss Mr Bridger (Noel Coward), to pull off a bullion robbery by gridlocking Turin and escaping in a trio of Mini Coopers. In theory each tiny car would have had to have been carrying twice its own weight in gold but that doesn’t stop them bounding down steps, over roofs, up a set of cathedral steps, through a sewer, over a weir and into the back of a coach being driven along an autostrada. Legendary stunt driver Rémy Julienne choreographed the driving sequences, destroying 16 Mini Coopers in the process, as well as several Fiats, Lancias and the 12th Jaguar E-Type off the production line.
3. The Seven-Ups (1973)
Produced by Phil D’Antoni, the man behind Bullitt and The French Connection, the Seven-Ups stars Roy Scheider, usually more at home in the company of giant sharks, as the head of an elite team of New York detectives, named after the average sentence faced by their many collars. After one of their number is murdered by a member of a kidnap gang, played by famous stunt driver Bill Hickman, the wheelman of the Dodge Charger in Bullitt, a deadly pursuit between him and Scheider’s Buddy Manucci takes place. Despite using humdrum '70s yank land yachts, a Pontiac Granville and a Pontiac Ventura, the eight minute chase sequence through city streets and then open country is nail-biting with some eye-wateringly close shaves and a brutal finale under an 18-wheeler truck. Legend has it that to beef up the action, the engine soundtrack from Bullitt was dubbed over the feeble sounding Pontiacs.
2. Ronin (1998)
A term used for masterless Samurai, many of the protagonists in Ronin are former secret agents disenfranchised by the end of the Cold War and available for hire no matter how dirty the job. Hired to steal a mysterious briefcase, whose contents are never revealed, the team pull off a spectacular hit in the South of France involving a high-speed pursuit down twisting country roads before being double-crossed. The action then moves to Paris where director John Frankenheimer used former racing drivers Neugarten, Lemarier and Jean-Pierre Jarier to stage a truly terrifying dice through Parisian traffic at speeds of between 75 and 100mph. It really will have you cringing in your seat and Frankenheimer put the stars of the film, Natascha McElhone and Robert De Niro in the cars as well to capture genuine looks of fear on their faces.
1. Bullitt (1968)
Hands up how many of you guessed which film occupied the top spot. Oh really, that many? Well OK, it does regularly top fan polls and with good reason especially as it features a man cooler than the other side of the pillow, Steve McQueen playing Detective Frank Bullitt, and two of the coolest cars, a Ford Mustang GT390 and a black Dodge Charger 440 R/T. To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure what the convoluted plot actually entails but at one stage, two hitmen in the aforementioned Charger try to follow and ambush Bullitt. He loses them and turns the tables by suddenly appearing in their rear view mirror.
The villains floor it and the race between the two mighty muscle cars up and down San Francisco’s vertigo inducing streets is on. The chase roars out onto the freeway where the baddies take a pot shot at Bullitt’s car before losing control and meeting a fiery end when they crash into a gas station. The chase may have its detractors, who point out its many continuity errors, but the uber-cool Lalo Schifrin soundtrack, howling V8s and the presence behind the wheel of the only man who can make a turtleneck sweater and sports jacket look good, mean director Peter Yates's masterpiece deserves its place at the top.
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That link is rather cool, thank you. I used to type "pink *whatever car* into google when playing the A-Z of cars game so have seen quite a few beauties but if I work out how to use the scanner will put that pink Nissan Micra. I got quite excited about it, to the extent that the person who was with me on my break at work thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn't speak!! *maybe shouldn't admit to that*
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