The five best movie car chases of all time

OK, settle in. This is gonna be a long post, especially if you watch all the movies.

After running across a YouTube clip from The Driver, I decided it was time to do a post that touches the heart of almost every car guy or girl: car chases. I have no idea why movies today don’t have good car chase scenes. I think a lot of the problem is that modern CGI technology gives moviemakers an easy way to fake the incredible stunts that helped make older movies with car chases so great. Call it The Matrix Effect.

Anyway, here are my top five best car chases of all time, in reverse order:

5.) The Seven-Ups

Summary:
This is one of the coolest car chases in a movie that not a lot of folks have seen. The ending was especially good on this one, and car chase endings are a sticky point for me.

Memories:
Does anyone else my age (mid 30s) have memories of riding around in those giant land yachts from the early 70s with gobs of torque and big cubic inch engines? Those things practically floated on air, and the door handles nearly scraped when going around a curve because the suspension was so soft. I think those cars were purposefully engineered to put kids asleep in the back seat.

Notes:
An interesting thing to keep an eye on here is the driver of the land yacht. You’ll be seeing him again in this list. The bad guy in the passenger seat of the land yacht is obviously a rookie at getting chased. He pretty much wigs out the whole time, flailing his arms, holding on to the grab handle, and generally looking like a big wuss. Come on, bad guy. In the words of Tom Landry, act like you’ve been there before!



4.) The Blues Brothers

Summary:
One of the most classic catastrophic car chases in movie history. I think this movie wiped out every mid 70s Dodge Monaco in Illinois. It touches a pet peeve of mine for realism for the Bluesmobile being a “magic car”, but in the end it makes up for it by dropping a Ford Pinto station wagon (containing Illinois Nazis) from a height so tall the filmmakers had to get FAA certification. Looking back, it was the only humane thing to do to the Pinto.

Memories:
“It’s got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it’s got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. It’s a model made before catalytic converters so it’ll run good on regular gas. What do you say, is it the new Bluesmobile or what?”

Notes:
At the time of its release, this movie held the world record for number of cars crashed. In a 1998 interview for Universal, John Landis credited mob help for getting permission from the Cook County Board of Commissioners for this (alluding to the Board being mob-controlled at that time). The political outrage for the damage caused by this car chase actually caused the mayor of Chicago to lose a bid for re-election.

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3.) The French Connection

Summary:
The car chase in this movie is groundbreaking for a couple different reasons. First off, the car isn’t chasing another car, but rather a train. Second, the car chase doesn’t take place on deserted city streets. This chase is set in a populated area with lots of traffic and pedestrians. This makes the chase a bit more real.

Memories:
Gene Hackman is an incredible actor, and The French Connection was an outstanding role for him. The groundbreaking nature of this chase bumps it up the list a notch or two.

Notes:
Anyone who’s ever played Grand Theft Auto III will recognize the overhead train track. Matter of fact, if you were to turn left at the place where Popeye sideswipes the first car and spins out, you’d be in Triad territory.



2.) Gone in Sixty Seconds

Summary:
This was an incredibly hard decision for me. I have seen this movie over 200 times, and I love the car chase. The final reason I couldn’t put this one #1 is because they used the friggin’ CGI for the very end of the chase. Short of that one thing, this car chase has everything you could want: a badass main car (1967 Mustang Shelby GT500), a swarm of cops and cop crashes (police Crown Vic meets front end loader), an incredible amount of ancillary action (keep an eye on the right side of the street when the first black and white pulls alongside Memphis in the alley), a chase through the LA aqueducts (a computer game staple), outrunning a helicopter, and a friggin’ demolition ball knocking a rent-a-cop through a building. All of a sudden my heart’s beating really fast and I’m not getting enough oxygen and I think I might pass out.

Memories:
When the wife and I saw this movie in the theater, we got into a fight on the way home because I made a comment about wanting nitrous on my Chevelle (it’s plenty fast enough to get me in trouble now). She also loves this chase scene and never fails to jump when Memphis is backing up and the passenger side mirror gets knocked off. The little kid smiling at Memphis (who flashes a smile right back) never fails to put a stupid grin on my face. Good times all around.

Notes:
This is such a monumental movie for car guys that it inspired a whole aftermarket movement for people to not only buy parts to make their Mustangs look like Eleanor, but for a while there you could actually get an Eleanor replica built specifically for you. The original car design was done by the now-famous TV car life-changer Chip Foose. There are two big uses of CGI in the final chase scene. The first was the out of control pressurized tank that flies around at the shipyard. The tank it self was real, as were the movements. The smoke was drawn in during post-production. Not a real big deal in my book. The second big use of CGI was, of course, Eleanor jumping over the accident on the Vincent Thomas Bridge. In the end, this is what keeps this from being the best car chase of all time.

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1.) Bullitt

Memories:
Ford produced Bullitt edition Mustangs with the same color and wheels as this one in 2001. I remember seeing a promo clip of Chad McQueen, Steve’s son, abusing one around the streets of San Francisco. Lots of history here. It’s impossible to count how many video games I’m played that had the same San Franscisco streets race course where you jumped down the big hills that flattened out only for the cross streets. In one of my games I have for XBox, you can even drive a dark Dodge Charger. That’s a seriously influential car chase. The hitmen in the Charger kill me every time I watch this clip. These are not the hitmen of today’s movies. These are nattily dressed, crew cut-sporting, cool-headed hitmen who don’t get upset at anything. They don’t talk. Nobody’s yelling, and the gunman in the passenger seat never reaches for a grab handle. It’s a day at work for these two; and when the driver of the Charger put on his seat belt, that’s when you know something’s about to go down!

Notes:
Keep an eye on the rear wheels of the Mustang right when Steve McQueen misses a turn and has to back it up. Check out the wheelhop in reverse, and I think I see an open differential (only one wheel spinning) when he takes off back up the hill. I have absolutely no idea why this one’s not a posi. A posi would leave much cooler black marks when you spin your tires all the way up a hill. Remember that guy from #5, the driver of the land yacht? The same actor is driving the Dodge Charger in this chase scene. That guy, Bill Hickman, was James Dean’s driver in 1955 when the latter was killed after a roadside accident. Hickman, driving the Ford station-wagon and trailer that hauled Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder, was the first on the scene when he came upon the accident.



Honorable mention:
Ronin, Diamonds are Forever, The Driver, Smokey and the Bandit, To Live and Die in LA, Vanishing Point, Matrix:Reloaded, Hooper