Car chases, valuable movie excitement or tired old cliche?
sorry, should probably elaborate.
Do you LIKE car chases in your movies?
Or do you think that moviedom in general would benefit if this piece of action fluff was removed from the scene?
(In case it’s not obvious, I’m not fond of them.)
Depends on the chase fits the movie (e.g.: pretty much every movie Steve McQueen ever made) or is just there (e.g.: the last few Bond movies before this latest one).
Car chases are out, though aren’t they? I don’t remember seeing any in the 0’s (are they called that?) The 0’s are the most serious decade in movie making ever, I think.
Car chases, like any other action sequence, can be good or dull, depending on how they fit into the movie and how well they’re filled. In many films, they are (just like gunfights and explosions), inane filler. Filmed correctly, as in the Frankenheimer action masterpieces Grand Prix or Ronin, and they can be raised to high art. The current Casino Royale, as mentioned, has a fantastic chase sequence involving a fuel truck which is reminiscent and compares favorably to the famous “Truck? What truck?” sequence in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. If your exposure to chase scenes is limited to the likes of The Fast and The Furious though (I refuse to link to it) then I can understand why you’d consider them superfluous.
Stranger
You’d lose some of the best part of the film if you cut the car chase out of Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
I think that was the best part of that film. I’m still a little perplexed, however, as to how they got from suburban New York to Los Angeles (obviously the 110 Freeway) inside of a few minutes.
Stranger
I was in a real life car chase once. Exciting stuff.
Simple, they took a left at Albuquerque.
I think the answer is that car chases are great if done well. The chases in The Transporter were very cool, although pretty unbelievable.
I know The Color Purple that I was dragged to when I was a kid would have been MUCH MUCH MUCH better with a car chase or two.
Some movies manage to have good chases and bad chases. For example, Driven is full of entertaining race scenes, but is marred by that ridiculous chase in downtown Chicago.
Other great car chases include The French Connections, The Bourne Supremacy and, of course, The Blues Brothers. Mostly, I dislike car chases, but I can acknowledge one well done.
My only complaint about the car chase in The Bourne Supremacy was I started getting motion sick.
The Blues Brothers does have the best car chase EVER!!!
The best car chases all go through Chinatown; you gotta have flapping chickens and babbling stereotypes for a real car chase.
it occurs to me you are probably not serious.
The 00s did usher in the age of a car chase involving a car-carrier truck launching it’s car out the back at high speed. Bad Boys II comes to mind but I know there are others.
Taking that Humvee downhill was pretty good–unless it was an H2.
Movie car chases are like drum solos in the middle of songs. Very cool, very fun, but sometimes they go on far too long and nothing can really “happen” until it’s over.
What absolutely kills a car chase is editing that is too quick.
Was it The Rock that has a Hummer chasing a Ferrari through San Fran?
Can’t miss, right?
Wrong.
Cut to car spinning around corner.
Cut to Hummer jumping a hill.
Cut to car accellerating away.
Cut to Hummer slamming into a parked car.
You couldn’t even tell they were in the same city, much less on the same road.
The strength of a car chase like Ronin was a lot of the long shots, and the faraway shots. You need some perspective. I’m a fan of a good car chase, but I like drama, danger, driver skill.
It helps if the point of the chase carries some weight.
When you see a chase in a Bruckheimer movie, it’s usually liek “big deal”. The whole movie involves putting a guy into shit and then bailing him out of it. Whether he gets away in the chase is immaterial.
I was at the opening of Mad Max and I guess to some whippersnapper action moviefans it seems kinda old and stilted 25 years later, having only had the opportunity to catch it on the small screen.
But in the original,when it went from 4:3 B/W archive footage to widescreen and color with the screen expa-a-a-a-nding and all those low shots, showing only the lines in the road and a spinning wheel, way before CGI was even a dream for most filmmakers… Well. It wasn’t action, it was a ballet with cars, beautiful choreography, nihilistic violence, “The Ayatolah of Rock’n’Roll-ah”.
It’s like Spielberg’s Duell - there are very few lines, no real acting, no real plot, o good reason for any of the stuff that happens, and yet… for me, it’s probably one of the best movies, and certainly the best action movie, ever made. Possibly because it’s so simple.
What’s the point of answering when Stranger on a Train has done his usual fantastic job of summing up? 
But as an answer, I like my books deep and my movies shallow so I love a well-done car chase. Be it comedy or action.