Anything to do with cars in movies that stands out for you as either exceptionally good/original/bad/stupid/whatever.
As long as it pertains to cars in movies (or TV) and strikes you as noteworthy, have at.
Thunder Road – For a late-50’s flic, nit bad for the time Rebel Without A Cause – Chickie run was very effective Bullitt – First REAL car chase I know of The French Connection – Even more realistic and harrowing Ronin – Frankenheimer’s effort to update from TFC – worked for me
Anytime a car bursts into flame going over a cliff, I wince. Especially if it’s out of gas, or not even running.
Does anything predate Keystone Kops for crazy antics with cars?
Is there any movie in the “action” genre in the last 20 years that does NOT have at least one car chase sequence?
Did anybody see the Bob and Ray “car chase” where they get hung up in traffic in taxis?
Well, it seemed like every episode of CHiPs involved a crash where a car hits another from behind, miraculously vaulting onto two wheels before crashing spectacularly.
I’m pretty sure Conan the Barbarian was car-chase-free, but if you buy the DVD of Conan the Destroyer, it includes a deleted scene involving an 18-wheeler and an AMC Gremlin.
Oh, wait, you said 20 years, and Conan the Barbarian was made in 1982. My mistake.
I think a Hall of Shame award should go to the recent remake of Gone In Sixty Seconds, where the car jumps were faked digitally. Like, what’s the point?
This CGI crap is really starting to piss me off. How much of the stunt footage in a movie like “The Fast and The Furious” wasnt faked? Is “Ronin” the last real car chase movie?
If we can consider the category broadly, then I’ll nominate the chariot race in Ben Hur as perhaps the best ever. I’ve been told that no special effects were used – all the action is real.
Hall of fame: the entire tanker chase sequence in The Road Warrior, particularly the one where a motorcycle flips over a culvert and the rider somersaults in mid-air for what seems like hundreds of feet. That was a real person doing that.
Hall of shame: The “jeep roll” from the “A” Team, in which an old CJ5 with a roll cage was launched via a ramp hidden behind a parked car. Seems as if they did that one in every single episode; probably the same jeep, too.
Yeah, there’s no real reason to restrict this to fossil-fueled conveyances. If it’s in the general field of transportation and reaches some level of superlative status, go for it.
I guess we could even stretch it to include boats and planes and spacecraft, if the accomplishment in the filming is either: a) the best; b) the worst; or c) some other most type of thing.
In fact, there’s something tugging at my mind in the way of the slowest chase I’ve ever seen, but it’s just that: a vague thing.
In The Seven-Ups, there’s what I consider one of the best car chase scenes ever. I understand that the stunt driver was almost killed when Roy Scheider’s car smashes beneath the back of the truck
The best car chase scenes were in “The Rockford Files” TV show. Most of them were short and sweet (as opposed to the ones in current movies which drag on forever) and involved Rockford using some clever trickery to get away from the bad guys. My favorite one was the time he drove a bus down an alleyway between two buldings and parked it at the end of the alley so the bad guys were trapped behind the bus. Now those were some good chase scenes!
Hall of Fame: The alien spacecraft in “Life of Brian,” especially when it skids, gets “sideways” and then slams into an asteroid. I laugh just thinking about it. Hall of Shame: O.J.'s “low speed chase.” Hey! It was on television.
The_Raven, actually, I belueve that most of the stunts in 2Fast2Furious were real. The one with the Saleen running under the truck and then being hit by the Vette definitely was.
Other good ones: The Rock. And I’m partial to the Matrix: Reloaded, but I have a Cadillac CTS.
I enjoyed the chase scene in “Running Scared,” starring Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines. They wind up on an elevated railroad track in Chicago, if memory serves.
Hall of Fame Live and Die in LA. Lousy plot in the Miami Vice wannabee, and the cars during the chase act as if they have super manual transmissions. But a great chase sequence.
Honerable mention: Mad Max and some of the morotcycle work on the movie Knight Riders. Great fun for lowcash!
Hall of Shame With the sole exception of Live and Let Die any movie that tries to make a boat chase in any way exciting. Sorry directors, it ain’t gonna work. Boats can be fast, but it don’t work as a chase.
Dishonerable Mention: The picosecond editing during the car chase in The Rock. Its a chase, not a blipvert!
Hall of Fame - The Blues Brothers… especially the parking job in front of the Ritzy restaurant.
Rockford Files… great chases
Sorcerer… not a car chase, but driving the truck full of explosives across the rickety bridge was pretty cool
Bad New Bears in Breaking Training… the scene where the 14 year old driver acts cool enough that the cops don’t pull him over.
The Great Escape… the motorcycle chase, of course.
Was anyone else bothered by the constant flashing of the headlights during both Ronin car chases? It got to the point of distracting for me. I kept thinking “How can they be driving a stick that fast, steering and flashing their headlights all at the same time?” Plus, why are they so safety concious of the other cars all of a sudden, when at the same time they’re causing huge traffic accidents, making police cars crash and explode, etc?
Hall of Fame - Rendezvous, directed by Claude Lelouch. This is a nine-minute film made by bolting a 16mm camera to the front bumper of a Ferrari and driving flat-out across Paris in the early morning. No closed streets, no permits, no permission. The first time the movie was shown, the director was arrested.
