10. “The Raid 2” (2014)
Okay, so if you’ve seen “The Raid 2” the below clip should serve its purpose as a brief reminder of the scene I’m talking about, in case for some reason it’s not emblazoned on your memory. If you haven’t however, it’s only a small sliver of a whole that actually goes on a good bit longer and gets progressively more insane as time goes on. Gareth Evans’ follow-up to this already terrific “The Raid” doubles down on the action, if that were possible, and also releases it from its single-location, never more effectively than during this brvura sequence. Using one camera but three cameramen, one of them famously disguised as a car seat, we move from outside the cars to inside one of them (where we see some inventively awkward, small-space martial artistry from all angles) outside again and into the pursuer’s vehicle, and what makes it so exciting may actually be that it’s not seamless and slick at all: It feels real, and genuinely bloody dangerous.
9. “To Live and Die in LA” (1985)
On one level it’s fair that William Friedkin‘s 1985 title is less celebrated than “The French Connection“–it general William Petersen is serviceable but can’t compare to the peerless Gene Hackman, while the story feels a tiny bit rote underneath some neat details, like a tremendous soundtrack. But one way it nearly level-pegs with its better known older brother is in terms of its car chase; as much of LA as ‘Connection’ is of New York, it sees Petersen and his partner, played by John Pankow chased across the city’s freeways, parking lots and flood channels by gangsters, finally ending up going the wrong way on a crowded highway — a trope that’s become borderline cliched since, but has a twanging sense of life-or-limb peril here.
8. “Death Proof” (2007)
The virtues of casting your stuntperson as one of your lead actresses are made manifest in Quentin Tarantino‘s wildly uneven and unnecessarily overlong half of the “Grindhouse” project (seriously, if you just cut out the entire first half with the other set of girls, you get exactly the film everyone wanted). Here Zoe Bell becomes a life-size hood ornament when Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) decides he wants to continue his run of misogynistic vehicular manslaughter. But the freedom that Tarantino has, to cut into close ups and out to wides and not to have to worry about “matching” the stuntperson to their counterpart is almost palpable, contributing to one of the most visceral and lively sequences the director ever shot, and one of the most oddly uplifting and feminist of car chases (second only in that regard, to the one at the end, of course).
7. “The Blues Brothers” (1980)
Give John Landis 40 stunt drivers, 60 blue-and-whites, 106 miles to Chicago, a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, and two pairs of sunglasses and he’ll deliver “The Blues Brothers,” a film that rides the line between profoundly silly and just plain profound with astonishing panache. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd are Jake and Elwood, and the car chase they become involved in is all-time epic, ultimately snarling up several precincts’ worth of cops, some rival musicians and a branch of the Illinois Nazi Brigade in its increasingly insane conga line of mayhem, before culminating in an almighty pile-up of quasi-biblical proportions. But of course it is. They’re on a mission from God.
6. “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991)
*Whiny nerd voice* “I thought this was supposed to be a car chase list and this is a truck and a motorcycle?” You got me: while almost everything else on this list has involved at least one vehicle that could be described as a car, this one does not. But consider the alternative a second: that we have to do an entirely separate list for truck-on-bike chases, merely so that this one can sit at the top? Because ignoring its stratospheric, heavy-metal, gear-grinding concrete-pounding Cameronian greatness is just not an option. It’s proof that within a film noted for its cutting-edge effects and high-concept time-travel premise, it’s the simple things that work best. Like an enormous 18-wheeler bearing down on a little boy on a dirt bike in an inescapable narrow moat, while a leather clad ex-Mr Universe robot decides how best to save him. Simple things.
5. “The Italian Job” (1969)
Car chases, as I think this list has proved, can be characterful, story-based, pulse-quickening or lighthearted, but seldom do they ever elicit the reaction “Awww!” Still, Peter Collinson‘s original “The Italian Job” (and F. Gary Gray‘s remake is surprisingly not bad at all), gets that kind of “oh how adorable” response a lot, never more so than during its mulitple-Mini Cooper chase through the sidewalk cafes, colonnades, marble-floored malls, staircases and very occasionally the streets, of traffic-choked Turin. Car chases can have grit and stakes and high drama, but they can also, very occasionally be cute and toylike and makes us children again, and “the Italian Job”‘s rightly iconic chase sequence never fails to do just that. Aww!
4. “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015)
If the “Fast and the Furious” people were subconsciously making a bid for their 8th instalment to be a kind of “Fate of the Furiosa” by enlisting Charlize Theron‘s services, by all reports they fell somewhat short. But it’s not like roles as instantly classic as her one-armed, grime-covered, resilient, bullish Imperator come along that often. Here, as at most times in the film, (which, again, is basically one long chase, so take your pick really) the focus is on her rather than Tom Hardy‘s nonetheless terrific Max, and that off-center fascination with a character who technically should be a supporting part, is part of what makes sequences like the one below so compelling. The unquestioning synchronicity between Furiosa and Max, the sense-memory-style practise of their movements, the dangerous but exhilarating wild freedom that Miller seems able to work into any frame–every moment of “Fury Road” is a revelation, never more so than when it is engaged in a life-or-death, fate-of-humanity chase.
3. “Bullitt” (1968)
One of the key elements of a really great car chase is location, and so Peter Yates “Bullitt” which is, notably the oldest film on this list, has a head start in that it was the first to really grasp the potential of San Francisco’s urban hills and valleys, and the chicane-like roads sometimes used to navigate them, as a way to enliven a chase sequence. It’s San Francisco’s sheer inconvenience as a car chase venue that gives “Bullitt” such terrifically memorable shots — well, that and Steve McQueen’s ne plus ultra cool-guy driver (McQueen was famously passionate about racecar driving), his blue eyes glinting impassively as his iconic Mustang charges, corners and practically flies. Tires squeal, the steering wheel spins and hubcaps and bits of trash go scudding across the road and all of it feels realer than real.
2. “Ronin” (1998)
If Steve McQueen brought a certain level of cool-headed authenticity to the driving scenes in “Bullitt” due it being one of his own hobbies, John Frankenheimer borught even more to his late-career highlight “Ronin.” Frankenheimer, who had previously been a racecar driver himself, albeit an amateur one, directs this show-stopping sequence as though his life, and not just the lives of every one of the characters, depended on it. As a result it feels like an unusually inhabited car chase–the culmination of several other good chases in the film (especially one Nice-set section), but the undeniable pinnacle. Belting through Paris (there were reportedly 300 stunt drivers on hand, which seems like it might be more stunt drivers than exist in the world) trading gunfire and dodging oncoming traffic, it’s the sheer groundedness of this sequence, as well as its that’s-really-Paris! effect that makes it feel like you’re getting away with something you can’t quite believe you were allowed to do.
1. “The French Connection”
The thing with William Friedkin‘s “The French Connection,” and the reason it will always ride even higher in our hearts than the perhaps more pioneering likes of “Bullitt,” or the maybe more extensive chases like those in “Ronin,” is that it’s an exceptional car chase wrapped inside an equally exceptional film, and not a lot of these other titles can say that. But even with basically GOAT ’70s actor Gene Hackman on peerless form in a serious-minded thriller that is so embedded in the New York of the early 70s that you practically come away with its grit under your fingernails, the car chase is something special. Friedkin, of course, self-consciously designed it that way (the second clip below is of him talking about how he took “Bullitt” as inspiration, but wanted to do it for real, without controls), and that realness seeps into every terrifying, jolting frame of these few minutes as Hackman’s Popeye Doyle chases down an elevated train, and pedestrians and other cars, none whom knew what was going on (he did not close any streets and had no permits) swerve out the way. They don’t make em like this anymore, because they basically can’t: it is wildly illegal.
I know you’re annoyed about something on this list–so vent in the comments.
