Everyone says "to give chase," but what exactly are you giving chase? Anyway...What is your favorite chase scene?
Panelist: T-Rav
My favorite would be the opening bus chase in Speed, when Keanu Reeves is trying to catch up to the bus in question in a guy’s commandeered car. Who says a chase can’t be heart-pounding and funny?
Panelist: AndrewPrice
Hands down, The Blues Brothers. Which one? Both, the chase through the mall and the final chase to the Cook County Assessor's office. That's how you build an ending to a movie!
Panelist: Tennessee Jed
I have to go with the original and probably still the best. Everything else owes it's existence to this one. Yes folks, Bullitt. Admittedly, The French Connection chase scene was also fantastic, but when that film was released, it was defined by how the chase scene compared to Bullitt. That should tell you all you need to know in and of itself.
Panelist: ScottDS
It's a toss-up between the mall chase in The Blues Brothers, the big chase at the end of The Blues Brothers ("Well, this is definitely Lower Wacker Drive!"), and the chase across the Thames in The World is Not Enough. Say what you want about the film, but the opening chase with Bond and the hot assassin (a.k.a. "Cigar Girl") is extremely well-done and probably set the bar too high for the rest of the movie!
Comments? Thoughts?
40 comments:
There's an extended chase scene in "Ronin" that is awesome. Also several chases (isn't the whole movie a chase?) in "Taken".
Outlaw, The chase scene in Ronin is awesome. And yeah, Taken is just one long chase scene. So is Taken II.
The horse/truck chase from Raiders is one of the best. It's so good, you don't even need to complete the movie's title; we all just know.
I'm not sure if it qualifies as a "chase" per se, but the Death Star trench run in Star Wars made quite an impression on me at the tender age of six.
Bullitt had such a good chase scene that it set the standard for almost everything that was to follow. 45 years on and it still looks great. And it sounds great too, with two uncatalyzed V-8 engines spewing decibels and hydrocarbons into the air willy nilly, as God intended.
And for comic relief, there's always Life of Brian in which our hero flees through Judea while dealing with religious zealots, Roman legionnaires, and spaceships. "How shall we F**k off, O Lord?" Sheer poetry.
Your comment on Bullit is spot on, Dave!
Beep beep!
I do like a good chase scene, but nothing comes to mind as the best. To contextualize that, I've never seen Bullit, The French Connection or Ronin, so maybe that's what's missing in my life.
I was surprised that no Panelist picked Ronin and came to do that, thankfully Outlaw13 corrected their over site! Amazingly filmed scene.
I was also agree that the ending of The Blues Brothers has to be up there.
I would also add the opening chase scene from Police Story when Jackie Chan chases some criminals in cars through a shanty town then chases then down on foot when they hijack a bus and it finished with a scene that Stallone ripped off in Tango and Cash. In fact I'd say you could add quite a few different Jackie Chans chase scenes to the lists, he was doing Parkour in his chase scenes before it had a name.
Scott.
Lots of great ones already mentioned, especially BULLITT, THE BLUES BROTHERS, RONIN, RAIDERS and THE FRENCH CONNECTION.
I've seen too many movies to have a single top favorite, though I'll submit these, for starters:
Steven McQueen's motorcycle chase in THE GREAT ESCAPE; the comic car chase at the climax of THE BANK DICK; the two ski chases and the demolition derby car chase in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE; the climactic car chases in THE ITALIAN JOB (1969) and THE SEVEN-UPS; the big multi-vehicle chase that ends THE ROAD WARRIOR; several portions of MAD MAX; the epic foot-chases of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, THE NAKED PREY and APOCALYPTO; the truck vs. motorcycle chase in TERMINATOR 2; the chariot race chases in both the silent and 1959 versions of BEN-HUR, as well as in THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE; the free-running chase at the beginning of CASINO ROYALE; Buster Keaton chased by literally hundreds of angry would-be brides over all sorts of terrain in SEVEN CHANCES, and his train chase in THE GENERAL; H.B. Halicki's nearly movie-length car chase in the original GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS; the cycle/train/helicopter chase in POLICE STORY 3: SUPERCOP; Kurt Russell vs. the girls at the end of DEATH PROOF; Ash being pursued by evil on the back road and through the house in EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN; Dash being chased by hovercraft goons in THE INCREDIBLES...
Oh, and this. ;)
Dam, how could I forget The Great Escape and Mad Max?
Good call Backthrow.
Scott.
Bullit is so iconic that Ford tuned the exhaust of their new Mustangs to sound like Steve McQueen's in the film.
Backthrow already hit Mad Max and The Road Warrior, so how about a classic:
The Naked Prey with Cornel Wilde
It just occurred to me that after mentioning movies from 1979 and 1981 that I called a movie from 1966 a classic.
I guess that tells you how old I am.
Always liked the motorcycle/ski chase scene in "For Your Eyes Only."
Also, the chase at the end of "The Untouchables," although brief, was intense.
The Dark Knight boasted a really awesome chase scene (the one in which the Joker and his gang are trying to kill Harvey Dent by taking out the armored van he is in).
Jackie Chan's Supercop ends with a really insane chase sequence that is Chan at his Channiest (a train is involved).
Face/off ended with a spectacular chase sequence (which involved among other things a speedboat slicing through a bigger boat).
Also, the freeway chase in the Matrix 2 was really fun, and the only good thing about either of those craptastic sequels.
I really loved the highway chase sequence that opened up Lethal Weapon 2 (the epitome of hitting the ground running).
Dave, That chase in Raiders is an amazing chase. And now that I think about it, the Star Wars trench scene is a chase scene as well. Good call!
K, LOL! Good call!
tryanmax, You need to see Ronin. That's an awesome film... great writing, great acting.
Scott, I love Chan's chase scenes. They are easily some of the most creative the way he uses everything he runs across to help him escape. It both comedic and yet just downright cool. I enjoy those a lot.
Yeah, Ronin should have made the list! LOL!
Backthrow, That chase in The Great Escape is fantastic. It's made even better knowing that he did the stunts himself.
The opening of Casino Royale is fantastic too. I only wish they had done more long shots of the action rather than all the close ups because they do some amazing stunts.
Mycroft, Films from the 1960s are classics. When you start calling films from the 1990s classics, that would be telling.
Kenn, You know what's interesting is that the more I think about it, Bond doesn't have a lot of great of chase scenes. Each film has a chase, but they aren't very memorable.
Anthony, The freeway chase scene is easily the best thing in Matrix II. I enjoyed that a lot. The rest of the film... not so much.
Tryanmax - technically the chase scene was French Connection II rather than the original. Onvolved a car under the "el"> Those are great old films. They may not have had the special effects available that they hve now, but these scenes prove how effective a scene can be without trickery.
Jed, In truth, I never cared for French Connection II. I do like I, but not II. Though I don't see why I is worshiped as it is.
Am I alone here in thinking that the end chase scene of "The Blues Brothers" is boring, pointless and stupid and just an excuse to wreck 200 plus police cars in a piece of cinematic overkill? Sorry never liked it, but loved the mall chase though.
Pike,
The joke is the pointless, cartoonish overkill of the end chase, which carries over to the SWAT team being called in, and the ridiculous number of guns cocked and trained on our heroes in that final scene in the tax assessor's office. It's like a live action Tex Avery cartoon.
Dispatcher: "The use of excessive violence in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers... has been approved."
But I'm sure you're well aware of this and just don't find it funny. C'est la vie.
Personally, I think the best part is when Jake and Elwood nimbly (impossible car flip) evade the American Nazis, and the goose-stepping jerks plunge over the edge of the uncompleted overpass, which apparently is higher than the Sears tower--
"I've always loved you."
--and the deep hole they make in the pavement also dooms the other pursuing Nazi car. LOL
Andrew - The French Connection 2, like most sequels, is not nearly as good as the original ..... except for the chase scene which is one of the top two or three ever. Personally, I don't so much recall people getting reverential about it, the way they did for, say, Godfather 2. I think people liked Hackman, the French villain, and the Popeye Doyle character so much they probably "over" rated it. Having said that, I would never imply FC2 sucked or that I didn't enjoy it. I just think it is was not quite "all that" the way some people claimed. And, then there is that incredible chase scene. What a lot of younger viewers have a hard time with (including myself relative to my parents' generation) is that thee scenes were really kind of groundbreaking when they came out. I have to tell you, I got to see Bullit in HD a couple years ago so I knew how well that scene came off. I haven't seen FC2 in decades, so there is the possibility that if I viewed it today, I would possibly be disappointed (though I doubt it.)
Pike - you are not alone :)
BTW - I am such an idiot. The car chase and the elevated train is from the original French Connection, not the sequel. It is amazing how once you hit 65, you begin to lose your memory for things unless you refresh it. Of course, that is why Al Gore invented the internet. ;) Oh, and Andrew. I just looked at Rotten Tomatoes for FC2. Critics scored it about 10 points higher than general audience. Gee, never seen that before (l.o.l.) I wonder if the critics would have "hearted" it even more if it had only starred Matt Damon and Zooey Deschanel.
Jed, That makes more sense to me. I was going to say that I honestly didn't remember the chase scene in II you were talking about. LOL! I do like the chase scene in I a lot.
You might be right about the "being there" aspect of French Connection. I enjoy it, but to me it isn't all that much better than other good 1970s films like Taking of Pelham. I think the reason is it doesn't seem all that original to me. In fact, by the time I saw it, I'd seen everything it does a dozen times in later films. Popeye Doyle, for example, really becomes the model for every "tough cop" after him. And the tension between him and his chief is now a cliche. So by the time I saw French Connection, it didn't have a real surprise factor for me because I'd seen it all done so many times already.
PikeBishop and Backthrow, That is the gag really, that this chase is about as far over the top as humanly imaginable. They even get the water division and the national guard involved for a car chase! I'm honestly not sure of another way that film could have ended.
The chase scene in "The Man Who knew too Little" with Bill Murray in a mini cooper running from the cops.
I was gonna say The Dark Knight but Anthony beat me to it. How about Smokey And The Bandit,which
A) was itself one long chase and
B) contained within it the individual chase scene where Burt flew the transam across the creek where the bridge was washed out.One of the channels,I can't remember which one,has been playing Point Break all month. Point Break has the foot chase where Keanu Reeves tries to run down Patrick Swayze. They run through backyards,living rooms,and Swayze throws the pitbull on Reeves. That was original.The Terminator had two big chase scenes. The first one,that started with Michael Biehn shooting Schwarzenegger in the bar and ended with Reeces arrest,and the second one,that ended with Reece sticking the dynamite in the tailpipe of the tanker and jumping in the dumpster.
The Warriors,which Andrew just reviewed,was one big chase.
GypsyTyger
I always do this! A short but very intense chase, more of a stalk, I guess, was when Michael Myers attacked Jamie Lee Curtis and then followed her to the house where she was babysitting. He moved like Death its own self,he never sped up,he never slowed down. He just came like the monster he was, determined on gutting Laurie Strode. It was short but it was terrifying,and even when I watch it today I can't look away.And to tie Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis together,we have the helicopter - limousine chase from True Lies. That one was unique in that every chase we've mentioned so far was adversarial - the chaser wanted to catch the runner to kill them or arrest them or take the Ark of the Covenent away from them. Schwarzenegger in the helicopter was chasing Jamie Lee in the limo to save her after the bridge blew up. Just some thoughts.
GypsyTyger
It wasn't really a chase,but Harry Callahan racing through San Francisco from payphone to payphone with the gym bag wile trying to beat Scorpio's time limit is a classic.And let's not forget Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy's running gun battle/car chase between Nolte and Murphy in the cadillac against James Remar and Sonny Landham in the bus,which ends with Nick's caddy being run through the plate glass window of the car dealership. That sets up the epic ass chewing by the captain - "F_ck You Convict!"
GypsyTyger
Shawn, Sadly, I don't remember that one.
GypsyTyger, I love the opening to Halloween. It's more of a stalk than a chase, but it's really tense and it's so well shot. There are so many little moments where anything could happen, but somehow it never does. Well done!
Smokey and the Bandit is hilarious.
I'm kinda surprized these haven't come up:
DUEL (1971) - Dennis Weaver as an average joe being pursued by some unseen driver of a semi rig.
WHATS UP DOC (1972) - Yeah, it's got Barbara Streisand, but it's serously funny.
IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963)- We might quibble about whether the whole movie is a chase scene or a race, but for a presentation of awesomely stupid people in motion, there is none better - and the cast, Holy Cow...
KRS, I like Duel a lot. That's an interesting film.
Any of the chase scenes from the Bourne movies...lots of quick cuts I know which can detract...but intense chases nonetheless...
Ronin has great chase scenes...
Someone finally mentioned It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World...
I love the opening chase from Quantum of Solace...the way it opens with just the sound of the Aston Martin going full throttle.
Also, I just watched Die Hard With a Vengeance with the commentary on and the race through central park in the taxi...actually filmed in Central Park NY...with the taxi actually jumping the wall and landing in the street...no green screens or faking it.
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