Greatest Classic Chase (or Rescue) Scenes in Film History
(chronological, by film title) - Part 4
Introduction | Part
1 | Part 2 | Part
3 | Part 4
|
| Film Title and Description
of Chase (or Rescue) Scene |
Example
|
| Thelma & Louise
(1991)
The car chase in this girl-buddy road film was not fast and furious,
but still memorable. Two feminist-empowered fugitive outlaws, Thelma
(Geena Davis) - an Arkansas housewife married to a cheating, abusive
husband, and Louise (Susan Sarandon) - an overworked coffee-shop waitress,
were pursued after killing a rapist, as they drove a 1966 Ford Thunderbird
convertible around in the southwestern US desert (on their way to Mexico)
and then into oblivion in the film's final image, as they grasped hands
and went sailing into the Grand Canyon. |
|
| Army of Darkness (1993)
With the film's exciting finale and rescue - after Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) finished relating his incredulous tale about his adventures in Medieval England to a bored co-worker (Ted Raimi) and to a sexy S-Mart worker (Angela Featherstone), suddenly a She-Demon (Patricia Tallman) attacked him in the Housewares Department - he threatened with his shotgun ("Name's Ash. Housewares....Come get some!") as she countered ("I'll swallow your soul!") before he killed her; the impressed girl embraced Ash, as he mused in voiceover: "Sure, I could have stayed in the past. I could have even been king. But in my own way, I am king." He then told the girl before he passionately kissed her: "Hail to the king, baby!" |
|
Last Action Hero (1993)
The many over-the-top chase scenes and car crashes, including a surreal
sequence shot inside the vehicle, when action hero Sgt. Jack Slater's
(Arnold Schwarzenegger) speeding sports car plowed off the side of an
LA fly-over and glided back down to the ground gently. The film also featured
a parody of Hans Gruber's (Alan Rickman) Die Hard (1988) slow-motion,
close-up plunge from a high-rise building - although he was saved by a
crane in this version. |
|
| The Nightmare Before
Christmas (1993)
Jack Skellington's (voice of Chris Sarandon) rescue
of Santa Claus (voice of Ed Ivory) and Sally (voice of Catherine O'Hara)
from Oogie Boogie (voice of Ken Page), by navigating through Oogie Boogie's
gauntlet of casino-themed deathtraps (knife-twirling playing cards,
gun-toting slot machines (literally one-armed bandits), and a circular
saw Wheel of Fortune.) |
|
Speed (1994)
The clever premise of this tense action film was that a Los Angeles city
bus was booby-trapped (by a madman terrorist) and ready to explode if
it went under 50 mph; it had two amazing sequences - the improbable long
jump the bus made over a missing section of freeway, and the finale in
which the bombed bus drove on its own and crashed into an airplane. |
|
Face/Off (1997)
This film climaxed with a speed boat chase (filmed with stunt stand-ins
for both Travolta and Cage) - with each of them being flung sky-high at
its conclusion. Also, the scene in which a helicopter pursued the villains'
executive jet, causing it to crash into an empty hanger. |
|
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Handcuffed together, Bond (Pierce Brosnan) and Chinese agent Wai Lin (Michelle
Yeoh) stole a motorcycle and attempted to escape from captors across the
rooftop and through the streets of Saigon, as they were pursued by cars
and a helicopter. There was a spectacularly-stunning, high-speed roof-top
motorcycle jump - using a bulky 1600cc BMW bike, across the hovering helicopter. |
|
| Antz (1998)
With a thrilling "sneaker" scene in which
Z (voice of Woody Allen) tried to rescue Princess Bala (voice of Sharon
Stone), when she was stuck in a wad of chewing gum under a kid's sneaker
that was comparatively the size of a battleship. |
|
| Ronin (1998)
This heist thriller contained two of the best white-knuckle, hair-raising,
most realistic car chase sequences ever filmed, including a thrilling
high-speed one with a blue Peugeot 406 driven by Sam (Robert De Niro) chasing a black BMW M5, driven by Deirdre (Natascha McElhone) in a high-speed,
wrong-way race through Parisian streets and a metro tunnel under the Seine River and continuing
into heavy freeway traffic. The car chase ended when the tires on Deirdre's car were shot at, causing it to roll and crash, careen off the end of an uncompleted highway, and burst into flames.
The second earlier sequence involved an Audi S8 and a Citroen on
twisting and steep streets in Nice in which a car plowed through the
waterfront where diners were eating on the street. |
|
| Charlie's Angels (2000)
In this chase, ditzy blonde Angel Natalie Cook (Cameron Diaz), in a
white Formula One-styled racecar, chased the Creepy Thin Man (Crispin
Glover) in his black racecar around the banked California Speedway (with
high-speed 180 degree spins and some racing that went the wrong way).
Angel Alex (Lucy Liu) reassured Natalie: "Nat, it's a round track
he's not going anywhere". But then they left the track in
the stadium and proceeded out onto the streets of Los Angeles (where
people and cars scattered - including an airborne surfboard) - leading
to a spectacular wreck of a red car and a game of chicken between the
race cars on a suspension bridge. |
|
| Chicken Run (2000)
With its exciting escape scene by Rocky (voice of Mel Gibson)
and Ginger (voice of Julie Sawalha) from a pie machine, highlighted
by the scene inside the lit gas oven - this paid homage to the Indiana
Jones films; also, the repeated unsuccessful escape attempt sequence by
Ginger and the chickens in the opening montage. |
|
Driven (2001)
Renny Harlan's mindless action drama about international CART auto racing
with a script by star Sylvester Stallone, who served as a former racing
star and driving mentor for rookie Jimmy Bly (Kip Pardue) before the competition,
and the memorable night-time race through city streets -- including the
famous shot of the racers driving past a hotel and blowing a sexy blonde
passerby's dress up - a semi-referential nod to The
Seven Year Itch (1955). |
|
| The Fast and the Furious
(2001)
A young, blonde and blue-eyed LA undercover FBI agent, rookie Brian
(Paul Walker), investigated a series of diesel hijackings (and a gang's
fencing of stolen goods) within a street gang, led by Dominic ("Dom")
Toretto (Vin Diesel) with a '69 Charger. Street racers used souped up,
nitrous oxide-injected vehicles. The film, directed by Rob Cohen, opened
with a violent, high-speed, western-style robbery on an interstate highway
of a semi-truck by smaller, black supercharged vehicles. And the finale
featured three classic car chases.
[The original film, The Fast and the Furious (1955),
was made in the mid-50s. A sequel made in 2003 by director John Singleton,
2 Fast 2 Furious, had Walker as the only returning cast member
from the original, in a new setting - Southern Florida, with more high-speed
street-racing sequences.] |
|
| The Bourne Identity
(2002)
In this exciting action-thriller set in Paris, amnesiac CIA assassin
Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) maneuvered away from the CIA and Parisian gendarmes
in a red, battered-old vintage Austin Mini Cooper as they closed in on him; before the chase began, he cautioned his vagabond girlfriend Marie Kreutz (Franka Potente) passenger, the car's owner, next to him that she should leave: "Last chance, Marie," but she remained with him; he negotiated the tiny vehicle through heavy traffic in Paris, through narrow alleyways, down stone steps (before which he warned: "So, we got a bump comin' up"), along sidewalk pavements, and up one-way thoroughfares, causing multiple pile-ups around their car; the extended chase sequence ended when one of the
last pursuing police motorcyclists crashed into a Peugeot 405, and they pulled
into an underground parking garage. |
|
Die Another Day (2002)
This Bond film had a spectacularly-inventive and slick car chase/battle scene, in which
two cars (Bond's Aston Martin V12 Vanquish and a Jaguar XKR convertible)
dueled on the ice face of a frozen lake (at Vatnajökull glacier,
in southeast Iceland). The Jaguar was equipped with a Gatling gun centered
behind the driver and passenger seats, missiles emerging from the front
grille, concealed door-mounted rocket launchers and a trunk full of mortar
bombs. It was pitted against the Vanquish, that was manufactured with
9mm machine guns that emerged fom the hood vents, five heat-seeking missiles,
two shotguns that operated from the front radiator grille, and an ejector
seat. There's also a great hovercraft chase sequence in the film. |
|
| 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)
Buddies Brian and Roman (Paul Walker and Tyrese Gibson) were pursued
by cops in a race across Miami, resulting in damage to 16 police cars,
2 Jeeps, two classic cars, and one yacht.
[The second sequel was titled The Fast and the Furious:
Tokyo Drift (2006) and was set in Japan; it featured the most complex
race/chase scenes of the series, incorporating the perilous practice
of "drifting" (sliding sideways on all four car tires as a
way of negotiating turns).] |
|
Bad Boys II (2003)
Jamaican gangsters tossed cars (15 Mercedes Benz) from a transporter at
detectives Will Smith and Martin Lawrence driving high-speed on the freeway,
resulting in carnage/damage to dozens of cars on the freeway, the transporter,
and a boat. The film also featured the disturbing and controversial fascistic
characters of the two detectives, including aiming a gun and threatening
a 10 year old boy, making wisecracks while tossing corpses out of a morgue
transport vehicle onto a freeway, and the demolition of a Cuban tent city
with tanks. |
|
| The Italian Job (2003)
This remake of the 1969 original starredEdward Norton (as the mastermind
criminal), Charlize Theron (as a "vault and safe technician"),
Donald Sutherland (as a veteran safecracker) and Mark Wahlberg (as the
young leader), included a heist of $35 million (in gold bars) and featured
an escape of three Mini Coopers (red, white, and blue) through an orchestrated
Los Angeles traffic jam - they evaded a helicopter as they careened down
Hollywood's Walk of Fame on the sidewalk and entered an LA subway station
via the stairs.
|
|
Terminator 3: Rise of
the Machines (2003)
A thrilling crane-truck-motorbike (and other vehicles) chase occurred on downtown Los Angeles streets between the Terminator T-850's (Arnold
Schwarzenegger) police motorcycle, the Terminatrix T-X's (Kristanna Loken) giant wide-load truck (with a mounted crane), and John Connor
(Nick Stahl) who was driving Kate Brewster's (Claire Danes) Toyota Tundra animal hospital pickup truck (with her 'kidnapped' in the back). Driverless multiple vehicles (remotely-controlled) and other parked vehicles were destroyed, including multiple cop cars and dozens of other cars, fire vehicles, and other emergency-response vehicles. During part of the sequence, the Terminator clung from the end of a massive construction crane
mounted on a truck that smashed him through buildings. |
|
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
An incredible 12-minute, 100 mph, with- and against-traffic freeway chase sequence
between the evil, white-suited albino Twins (Neil and Adrian Rayment)
(driving a black Cadillac Escalade EXT), firing at driver Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) in a silver coupe carrying freedom-fighting Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and The Key Maker (Randall Duk Kim), resulting in numerous overturned and damaged cars; one of the Agents jumped and then leapfrogged from one moving car to the next, smashing them down in this spectacular sequence, to get to the hood of their silver vehicle; when their tires were shot flat, Trinity stole a black Ducati
996 motorbike from a transport truck and grabbed the Key Maker as her passenger, ending up traveling toward the traffic on the busy freeway; soon after, Morpheus found himself atop a freight truck fighting in mid-air against one of the Agents after grabbing the Key Maker from the accelerating bike; the sequence ended with the surprise
appearance of Niobe (Jada Pinkett-Smith) in a dark blue '67 Firebird, who caught Morpheus ("Gotcha") as he somersaulted backwards off the top of the truck and landed on her hood; Morpheus then leaped back onto the top of the truck from there to try and save the Key Maker; the sequence ended with a head-on collision of two 18-wheelers, resulting in severe damage as the two freight trucks crushed into each other like an accordian, exploded and produced black smoke and flames - while Neo (Keanu Reeves) miraculously flew like a superman to snatch both Morpheus and the Key Maker who were sailing through the air from the impact, saving them from certain death.
|
|
The Bourne Supremacy
(2004)
As in the first film of the series, this sequel also featured an extended high-speed car chase through the crowded streets of Moscow between injured CIA agent Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) who was driving a hijacked yellow taxi, hired Russian assassin Kirill (Karl Urban) in a stolen black Mercedes SUV, and multiple police cars. There were multiple collisions and spin-outs, and the chase (including an exchange of gunshots while driving) ended in a spectacular tunnel crash when Kirill's vehicle hit a concrete exit abutment. Bourne satisfied that Kirill was about to die from his injuries, walked away from the scene. |
|
| I, Robot (2004)
- A highway tunnel attack by dozens of robots on Det.
Spooner's (Will Smith) moving car
- A robot attack that demolished a house with Spooner
inside
- Thousands of robots chasing Spooner and Sonny (voice
of Alan Tudyk) under a malicious AI's control
|
|
| Happy Feet (2006)
The two exciting chase sequences by lethal predators
who are in pursuit of young dancing Emperor Penguin Mumble (voice of
Elijah Wood): first by a hungry leopard seal, who is thwarted when both
end up on the surface of the ice, and the breathtaking attack by two
killer whales who fling Mumble and penguin holy man-charlatan Lovelace
(voice of Robin Williams) into the air several times. |
|
Pirates of the Caribbean:
Dead Man's Chest (2006)
This blockbuster sequel featured some of the most kinetic, elaborate stunts/chases
ever filmed, including the action-packed scene in which Captain Jack Sparrow
(Johnny Depp), while tied on a spit by cannibals, turned into a "fruit
shish kebob" - then toppled off a cliff and was hung upside down
as the fruit caused weight shifts, and plummeted down through many rope
bridges to hit the ground and flee; then, in homage to Raiders
of the Lost Ark (1981), Sparrow was chased by angry natives through
the shallow shore water and grabbed onto his departing ship Black Pearl
at the last minute to escape - and mockingly waved at his pursuers. |
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