Today’s poll at the IMDb is for the favorite “chase or suspenseful scene atop a moving train”, and one of the choices is The Spy Who Loved Me. I’ve seen that movie, but it’s been a while, and I don’t remember a chase atop a moving train. Are the advancing years catching up to my powers of recall, or has the IMDb made a mistake? Either way, my faith is shattered.
I can see a possible source of confusion. Richard Kiel, Jaws in TSWLM, was in a train-top chase scene in Silver Streak. (How many times did they climb on top of the train in that movie, anyway?) And there was a train-top scene in Octopussy, also during the Moore era. Could it be that simple?
AFAICR Jaws and Bond meet in a suspenseful scene inside a moving train. Bond defeats Jaws by braking a lamp and making the exposed live socket touch the villain’s metal teeth. Followed by launching Jaws out of the train’s window . . .
No chase scene on top of the train. And in any case, the best sequence on the top of a train is in Police Story 3: Supercop (Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh), which isn’t one of the choices.
Roger Moore’s best Bond movie.
Not on top of train, tho. Under it.
Roger Moore’s 1st Bond movie. Voodoo guy after him. On a train for some reason.
On top of train was Roger Moore in the one with the nuclear bomb at the circus, knife throwing guy chasing him on top of train, Russians or other Soviets wanting us all to stop worrying and learn to love the bomb. Pretty sure it was The Spy Who Loved Me
They all start to run together to me.
*Top Secret * with Val Kilmer had a good train scene.
Live and Let Die does end on a train though, as Bond (Roger Moore) fights with one of the goons (Julius Harris) in a battle very similar to the one he would have with Jaws (Richard Kiel) in The Spy Who Loved Me. It would end with Harris being tangled up when Bond cuts the wires on his artificial arm and then getting tossed through the window to his death. The final shot is Baron Samedi (Geoffry Holder) sitting on the locomotive and giving his distinctive laugh.
The single best train fight scene in the Bond series is the one between Bond (Sean Connery) and Grant (Robert Shaw) in From Russia With Love.
Counting the time the bad guys went up to get the professor (which we don’t see on screen per se), there were three trips to the topside of the Silver Streak.
It was a running gag. Gene Wilder would get chased onto the top of the train and at some point he would fall off, then run after the train to catch up and just miss, at which point he would yell “son of a BITCH!” I think they did this three times in the movie.
Of some significance is one scene where Wilder has managed to get the bad guys to fall off the train and as he stands there, safe and alone, he gets tagged across the chest by a lamp-post of some kind. The shot was repeated during the opening theme of the Lee Majors TV series The Fall Guy as an example of a movie stunt.
I watched Spy who loved me last weekend, and boy was it a poor film. I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid, and man did it not hold up well. Slow, slow, slow! The first half was pointless wandering around Egypt, with no real connection to the plot.
That’s very close, Bryan. Gene Wilder’s character ("George,’ or, if you prefer, “Steve” :)) only leaves the train from the top of it once, and that is in the scene you nearly describe later in your post: After he has shot Richard Keil’s character (named “Reese”) with a speargun, he turns to walk back down the train to the safety of the interior when he is hit quite unexpectedly by the bar. This is his second time off the train.
The first time George leaves is when Reese throws him off. The third time is when he and Grover jump. The fourth time is at the end, and it’s the only one he’s happy about.
I’m doing all of this from memory, so grade me on about a 95% curve.
I should say that I do think the first Mission: Impossible was better than the second. The second one had a different director, and that made a big difference.
John Woo has a particular style which is not to everyone’s taste. All of his trademarks were there: lots of doves, lots of slow-motion, a lot of reliance on gun battles for the action scenes.
MI-2 is still an enjoyable movie, but I would have to say that the first movie was better overall.
Now I’m confused. Samarm, did you mistakenly attribute the train chase in MI to MI2? Or are there train chases in both movies? Because that seems excessive.
Oh, and the train sequence in Back to the Future part 3 is pretty good, though strictly speaking it’s not a chase.
