If the worst nitpick is just that the sequence of streets is not geographically accurate then it would seem to me that car chases must be one of the most accurate, realistic parts of modern movies.
It depends on who’s watching. I have no clue about the relative horsepower of a Charger and a Mustang, but I damn well know the roads I commuted over five days a week for half my life.
As a person who doesn’t know SF well, I had no problem with the chase geography. It seems right. It has a “truthiness”.
I’m much more bugged by the VW and the LeMans that just can’t seem to get out of the way, and the regenerating hubcaps, and the needless double cluching upshifts, and the fact I can’t figure out what Bullitt thinks is going to happen when the shooter points the shotgun at him and he continues to drive in the line of fire. What he did get was a shotgun blast to the window.
As for Bullitt catching the Charger in the straights, the killers thought he was out of it, so they could slow down. But Bullitt knew, because of the accident, that there were pretty much no cars between him and the Charger, so he could run flat out.
What I mean is that ISTM to be a minor nitpick. It wouldn’t bother me at all if I saw a car chase jump around through a city I knew well; I can just fanwank that they are cutting parts of the chase.
Of course the OP specifically says “nitpicks” so I am not saying that it’s not a valid response in this thread. I’m just saying that I’m surprised that there are not more egregious examples yet.
So, you’re nitpicking my nitpick? ISTM, that makes your post even more trivial than mine.
That’s a weird response. Read my whole post, I’m not nitpicking anything, and I made that very clear.
But to double-clarify: I think your example of the streets not being relatively geographically accurate is the best example of an error in this thread so far. And what I am saying is that I am surprised that that’s the case.
Got it.
I think the cars going the wrong way while going the wrong way in To Live And Die in LA is worse. It’s really silly once you notice it. It doesn’t look stylish, it looks wrong.
There’s a car chase scene in The Zero Effect that’s an absolute howler if you know anything about Left Coast Portland. The city is divided by the Willamette River, which runs north/south and has like ten bridges that cross it going east/west. So one second they’re heading east on the Burnside Bridge then a minute later hey presto they’re going west on the St John’s Bridge that’s miles away and it just keeps on going. I might have the specific bridges wrong (cuz it’s been yonks since I saw it and it was kind of a dumb movie anyway) but the whole thing is like that, just one bridge crossing after another that, if you tried to follow the route, your GPS trail would look like half a zipper.