Best Movie Car Chases

Ten reasons your insurance premium is higher than it needs to be.

Entries
10
Category
Film
Updated
  1. A dented boxy taxi wrecked against a concrete tunnel divider under sodium lights, snow on the road.

    10. The Bourne Supremacy

    Paul Greengrass · 2004

    Bourne, shot and limping, steals a battered Moscow taxi and outruns a police SUV through a tunnel, the camera shaking as if it is also running late. The chase ends with a head-on concrete stop. Proof that a beige sedan can be an action hero.

  2. A red sports sedan drifting around a city corner, a pair of earbuds and an old music player on the dashboard.

    09. Baby Driver

    Edgar Wright · 2017

    The opening getaway in a red Subaru WRX is cut to the beat of Bellbottoms by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Wright had tested the idea in a 2003 Mint Royale video made for £25,000. The studio rejected his first pick, a Toyota Corolla, as not sexy enough. Fair.

  3. A canvas-covered military truck speeding on a desert road, a bullwhip coiled on the hood.

    08. Raiders of the Lost Ark

    Steven Spielberg · 1981

    Indy chases a Nazi truck on horseback, takes it over, is thrown through the windshield and climbs back along the underside. Stunt man Terry Leonard did the drag, a tribute to Yakima Canutt's stunt in Stagecoach. The ark rides in the back, unbothered.

  4. Three small cars on a rooftop test track, gold bars stacked in their back seats, a bus balanced on a cliff edge behind.

    07. The Italian Job

    Peter Collinson · 1969

    Three Minis carry stolen gold over Turin's rooftops, down stairways and through a sewer that was actually in Coventry. Every one of the 16 Minis was wrecked or left unroadworthy. The film ends with the bus balanced on a cliff, by design, which is one way to plan a sequel.

  5. A battered black-and-white police sedan smashing through an empty shopping mall, storefront glass flying.

    06. The Blues Brothers

    John Landis · 1980

    The Bluesmobile, played by thirteen different Dodge Monacos, drives through a real shuttered mall in Harvey, Illinois, then leads most of Chicago's police on a tour of the city. The production bought 60 police cars at $400 each and set a record for cars destroyed in one film.

  6. A sedan driving the wrong way on a crowded freeway, headlights of oncoming traffic stretching to the horizon.

    05. To Live and Die in L.A.

    William Friedkin · 1985

    Friedkin told stunt man Buddy Joe Hooker to top The French Connection or the chase would be cut. Result: a wrong-way run up the Terminal Island Freeway, six weeks to shoot and about $1 million over budget. Friedkin got the idea from nearly doing it himself in 1963.

  7. Two sedans racing through a narrow Paris tunnel, sparks along the wall and a briefcase on a back seat.

    04. Ronin

    John Frankenheimer · 1998

    Formula One driver Jean-Pierre Jarier helped run chases through Nice and Paris at up to 100 mph. The finale used right-hand-drive cars with a dummy wheel on the left, so the actor who looks like he's driving is a passenger. About 300 stunt drivers. Nobody remembers the plot.

  8. A spiked war rig tanker kicking up dust in an orange desert, a flamethrowing guitar rig mounted on a speaker tower.

    03. Mad Max: Fury Road

    George Miller · 2015

    A two-hour chase with brief pauses for water. About 150 working vehicles were built, 88 survived, and the guitarist's flamethrower actually shoots fire. Rain made the Australian desert bloom, so they moved to Namibia. Won six Oscars, a record for an Australian film.

  9. An elevated train track over a Brooklyn street, a crumpled sedan stopped beneath the steel pillars.

    02. The French Connection

    William Friedkin · 1971

    Popeye Doyle commandeers a civilian Pontiac and chases an elevated train through Bensonhurst. Some near-misses turned into real collisions from bad timing, and they stayed in the film. It won Best Picture and Best Editing. The car's owner is still owed an apology.

  10. A steep San Francisco hill street seen from the crest, a single hubcap rolling down past cable car tracks.

    01. Bullitt

    Peter Yates · 1968

    A green Mustang GT hunts a black Charger over San Francisco for ten minutes cut from nearly five weeks of footage. It won the editing Oscar despite the Charger shedding five hubcaps and passing the same green Beetle repeatedly. The Mustang sold for $3.7 million in 2020.

Honorable mentions

  • A rusty tanker truck filling the rear-view mirror of a small car on an empty desert highway.

    Duel

    Steven Spielberg · 1971

    A TV movie in which a commuter is chased across the California desert by a tanker truck whose driver you never really see. Spielberg made it at 24 on a tight television schedule, and it got him theatrical work. The truck is the best villain of his career, Jaws included.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A huge steel bank vault on chains swinging through a city street, two muscle cars straining ahead of it.

    Fast Five

    Justin Lin · 2011

    Two Dodge Chargers drag a bank vault through Rio, swinging it like a wrecking ball. The prop was a self-driving four-ton rig on 30-foot cables, and more than 200 vehicles were destroyed by it. Thrilling, and an insult to Newton that he would have taken personally.

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