20. “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” (2014)
If there’s one thing that dogs the modern movie car chase, it’s a sense of familiarity, of expectedness, which is why this very unexpected, fluidly shot and extremely cleverly edited seqeunce from Joe and Anthony Russo‘s ‘Captain America’ sequel was such a pleasant surprise. In a Marvel universe characterized somewhat by the relative weightlessness and anonymity of its action sequences, this stands out not just for seeming to actually happen in real place, but for the emotional stakes they manage to invest in it. It would arguably not be till the Russos own “Captain America: Civil War” that the MCU had an action sequence as effective, but where there it’s a superhero-team-up, here it’s just Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and his very smart car, which is nonetheless outgunned and outrevved by the Bad Guy’s malevolent forces. It’s one of the only times we’ve felt actual peril watching a Marvel film.
19. “Smokey and the Bandit” (1977)
The daffy, magnificently dated “Smokey and the Bandit” is neither a deep nor a meaningful film, but depending on your tolerance level for “yeehaw”s and banjos on the soundtrack, the second-highest-grossing film of 1977 (after some little sci-fi bauble) may still exert considerable nostalgia-based charm. But there is one inarguably wonderful part of Hal Needham‘s honty-tonk classic and that is the whole end portion of the film which is one extended chase during which Burt Reynolds aka Bandit, completes his noble quest to smuggle a truckload of Coors across the Mississippi (something that was bizarrely illegal back then) with runaway bride Sally Field aka Frog by his side, and pursuing office Jackie Gleason, aka Buford T Justice aka Smokey, on his tail.
18. “The Dark Knight” (2008)
Perhaps the textbook example of a chase that is so skillfully concealed within a gripping, textured and highly characterful sequence that you kind of don’t notice it’s a car chase, the section of “The Dark Knight” in which Heath Ledger‘s Joker kidnaps Aaron Eckhart‘s Harvey Dent and then Christian Bale‘s Batman and Gary Oldman‘s Gordon comes to his rescue basically doesn’t contain one single extraneous beat, despite being one of the longer sequences here. Every shot is functional, everything does something: it conveys psychological information about the Joker, it provides background texture (as when the kids in the car mimic shooting at other vehicles which then unexpectedly blow up) or it just proves, once again, how Batman’s toys, especially the ineffably sexy Batpod, are the absolute best.
17. “Drive” (2011)
It’s not derivative if it’s homage, and it’s not shallow if it’s aware of its shallowness, go the two most prevalent defenses of the work of Nicolas Winding Refn. We feel like they apply to some of his films more than others, but the one movie of his for which you probably won’t need them is his acknowledged masterpiece, “Drive.” It’s not that it’s startlingly original (Refn often seems to regard his influences as ingredients that will combine into a new recipe), but it is just blisteringly cool, and for a film that is so reliant on soundtrack it’s to be commended that Refn knows exactly when to play things suddenly, eerily quiet, as in this beautifully shot car chase that raises the film’s pulse while somehow keeping the tone in that doom-drenched, throbbing neo-noir register.
16. “Fast Five” (2011)
Sometimes the best car chases, certainly to my non-purist eyes, are hybrids: they’re where a car chase fuses with a gunfight, or a desperate, heartrending bid to smuggle crateloads of anodyne domestic beer into another state. or, as here, with a heist. “The Fast and the Furious” is a franchise built on car races, chases and stunts, but if there’s a flagship moment it should go to the film that relaunched the franchise and is probably the best in the series so far. Here with the grace and elegance of a pair of prima ballerinas, human pistons Paul Walker and Vin Diesel drag an enormous vault behind their two cars letting it bounce around like a wrecking ball, yet magically only demolishing unimportant infrastructure rather than claiming innocent human life. It’s as gleefully meatheaded as anything in this franchise, but still for now, with its wheels on the ground.
15. “Vanishing Point” (1971)
Even on the rare occasions when there are no cars following the central antihero Kowalski (Barry Newman), in Richard C. Sarafian‘s absolutely essential road movie, he’s being chased–by his demons, encroaching sobriety, burgeoning celebrity, generational malaise, the Death of the American Dream, whatever you want to call it. This entire film is one long chase as a result (and fittingly we can’t find one single segment online that does it justice, so you’ll have to make do with the trailer below) but it takes on mythic overtones, as Kowalski’s pointless benzedrine-fuelled quest–to deliver a Dodge Challenger to San Francisco from Denver (a 1200 mile distance) by 3pm the next day–aided by Cleavon Little’s radio jock egging him on, becomes a symbol of dusty, open-road, big-skies American freedom. Needless to say, he’s doomed.
14. “The Bourne Identity” (2002)
The Bourne franchise may have become more closely associated with Paul Greengrass’ trademark docu-drama, handheld style, but Doug Liman‘s marginally more sedate and classical approach did the first film in the series no harm. In fact arguably his restraint is what makes this car chase the best one the series has to offer — there’s never a moment in which the human stakes of the two people inside that relatively rickety little tin can take a backseat (sorry) to flashy action. Instead, in the best advertisement for the maneuverability and versatility of the classic Mini Cooper since “The Italian Job,” Matt Damon and Franka Potente careen around Zurich in a thrilling sequence that set the high bar for realist thrills that Greengrass would then attempt to clear.
13. “The Driver” (1978)
If Walter Hill‘s Ryan O’Neal-starring “The Driver” is probably the primary influence on Nicolas Winding Refn‘s “Drive,” it should also be noted that Hill’s movie was itself heavily indebted to Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samourai.” However, the car chases within are all vintage Hill, impossibly slick, neon-soaked, darkly lit thrillrides with O’Neal as the taciturn calm at the center of the storm. They’re so good, in fact, that we can’t restrict ourself to just one clip, so here are two: the first builds to an absolutely classic game of chicken as its climax, and the second is just so dizzyingly well-shot and skin-of teeth exciting that there are times when you actually feel like the camera car itself must have been in grave danger.
12. “The Seven Ups” (1973)
If the classic car chase movie has a God figure, it’s probably William Friedkin, but if it has a patron saint it might very well be Philip D’Antoni, director of this now-seldom-seen 1973 title, and producer of both “Bullitt,” and “The French Connection.” Very much in the mold of those two films (it even stars Roy Scheider, as does the latter) and featuring stunts co-ordinated by Bill Hickman who also worked on those other two touchstones, it has a slightly sketchy plot, but makes up for it in the authenticity of its ’70s New York location photography, and the genuinely thrilling car chase, surely one of the most grittily real year exciting ever filmed. It’s strange that this was D’Antoni’s only directorial film, and a damn shame, on this evidence.
11. “Mad Max: The Road Warrior” (1981)
Until recently, when um, a certain other movie happened, this extraordinary, ferocious and fast-paced road movie looked likely to retain its title as the best, and most exciting film George Miller would ever make (depending on where you fall on “Happy Feet,” obviously). And most genre directors would be happy to have anything half as iconic to their name: establishing Mel Gibson as a huge star, and more or less perfecting the art of the gonzo, post-apocalyptic, quasi-punk desert car chase only to top it again five minutes later, it’s a pure hit of grimy action excellence whose greatness has not dimmed one iota since the early eighties. This sequence is pretty representative (extra marks for dog in a bandanna and bandit in a gimp mask) but really you could probably slice “The Road Warrior” up more or less at random and come out with something equally, unmistakably awesome.