Hey. I'm on vacation. I know. But I deserve it.
So I'm thinking car chases. Which are the best? Well, there's easily a top twenty but I'm going to go straight for the top 6. Why six? Because it just has to be these six for these six reasons, but I'm not going to number them because they are all great in my mind for different reasons.
We start with Ronin.
There are so many car chases in this movie to choose from, and yet it
is still a highly intelligent film. You've got to hand it to Robert
DeNiro for driving like he's actually scared, which is unusual for car
chase drivers. But what is great about Ronin is the sheer number of
angles from which the car chases are filmed. First person, at the
driver through the windshield, at bumper level from a car in front, in
profile from outside the passenger door, low angle third person, first
person from the back seat. Just amazing.
Next is a classic favorite of mine from To Live and Die in LA. What's great about this car chase is that it was done with big hunking ugly sedans that really couldn't go that fast. That's what made it so dramatic. It has a classic tribute to the old movies in which a car challenges a train and wins. Then, I'm fairly sure it was innovative in that it was the first LA River car chase, to be replicated again and again, but also the first wrong way on the freeway car chase. But my favorite part of this is right at minute 8 where you can really see how squirrelly and out of control this old Chevy Caprice Classic is.
No top list would be complete without The Matrix Reloaded. From the moment that Trinity smashes through the chain link fence until Neo rescues Morpheus and the Keymaker, this is non-stop action. Of course the Agent who leaps from car to car and rips the roof off and Trinity's wrong-way motorcycle action are classics likely never to be repeated. Not to mention just having a samurai sword. Truly great.
Now I'm saying that the coolest car chase ever was from Against All Odds. No crashes, no scratches. No guns, just a pure ego driven race. On Sunset Boulevard in LA. Between two convertibles. A Ferarri and a Porsche. It doesn't get much cooler than that.
In terms of pure awesome radical destruction, I'm going to have to give it up to Michael Bay. The problem is that it's hard to know whether to give it to Bad Boys 2 or to The Island. On the one hand, Bad Boys 2 has a car on a chain, upside down and on fire dragged behind a truck at 70 mph, and then a boat spinning in the middle of the freeway. But The Island has train axles pitched off a truck that just demolishes cars and trucks speeding behind. It's really annoying to suspend disbelief as you must in The Island, so I'll give it to Bad Boys.
'Three men. 254 kilos. That was the deal.' The opening scene of The Transporter is all about the car. You know what's coming, a great car chase. With a nice tribute to the Keystone Cops,this chase has got humor and thrills.
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