The 10 Best Car Chases in Movie History

Cinematic Speed

The car chase has many uses in film. It can function as the in medias res, dropping us into the middle of the action and introducing us to the main characters. It can function as the inciting incident that gives the plot its form. Or it can be the movie’s big set piece or climatic scene. Regardless of how they are used, the best car chases usually feature really cool cars driven to their limit in very exciting and unsafe ways through exotic locales.

It wasn’t easy to trim down the dozens of great movie car chases to find those worthy of comprising a definitive top 10. But the ones we chose are exhilarating in the moment, feature awesome cars, and stood the test of time to become influential for generations of filmmakers. Here’s our picks for the 10 best car chases in movie history.

Bullitt

We’ll start out with the oldest movie on the list, Steve McQueen’s Bullitt. Released in 1968, the chase scene through the streets of San Francisco pits McQueen’s green fastback Mustang against the bad guy’s black Charger R/T. The thrilling high-speed cat and mouse became the benchmark by which all subsequent car chase scenes have been judged.

Ronin

John Frankenheimer’s Ronin is a decent action thriller made great thanks to its two classic car chase scenes. Together, they’re widely considered second only to Bullitt’s. The first chase involves a Citroën XM pursued by an Audi S8 (principally) and races along mountain roads and through the urban streets of Nice, France. The second and perhaps more iconic chase involves a BMW E34 trying to outrun a Peugeot 406 and features the whole gamut of great car chase elements including thick traffic, narrow streets, explosions, and some insane stunt driving.

Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)

The internet is as evenly divided as our office over which is the better choice, the original 1974 version or the 2000 remake. The original movie features a 34-minute chase scene that culminates in a 128-ft. jump that resulted in a great shot for the movie and a compressed spine for actor/director H.B. Halicki. The 2000 Nicolas Cage remake again features a Mustang named “Eleanor,” adds in its own wild and improbable stunts, and tops things off with Nic Cage at his Cagiest.

The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight is the Empire Strikes Back of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, a high point in storytelling, directing, and acting. The movie’s two most memorable components were Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning turn as the Joker and the film’s set piece car chase. The latter kicks off with Havey Dent (not yet Two Face) in transit in a police van. The Joker and his goons then divert the convoy into a tunnel and start shooting. Batman’s Tumbler, one of our favorite Batmobiles of all time, swoops in at the critical moment. Hit by an RPG, the damaged Tumbler converts into a Batcycle and the pursuit continues. The chase culminates with the flipping of a semi-truck; arguably the most spectacular practical effects shot ever executed by Nolan, in a career filled with them.

The Bourne Identity

For frenetic car chases, you can’t do much better than the one in The Bourne Identity in which Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is pursued by Parisian police in a shabby looking yet admirably capable Mini Cooper. The scene begins with a pivotal choice for Maire (Franka Potente). As the police approach the car Bourne gives her a last chance to bail on the situation. Her answer: fastening her safety belt. From there she and the audience are along for a wild ride as Bourne weaves the Mini through narrow gaps in thick traffic, even at one point driving down a flight of stone stairs, a clear homage to our next entry on the list.

The Italian Job

Like Gone in 60 Seconds, we had a tough time deciding whether the original or remake had the better chase. The 1969 version of The Italian Job gets props as one of the most influential car chase scenes in movie history with all sorts of frantic urban driving from a trio of Mini Coopers. The traffic jams in Turin, Italy in the movie were real as the producers failed to get permits for the shoot and had to block off roads themselves. The remake saw the principal actors doing most of the stunt driving themselves. The traffic jams in this version take place in LA and had Angelenos dreaming of buying their own Minis just to evade gridlock by driving on the sidewalk.

Mad Max: Fury Road

All the Mad Max movies feature epic car chases. There’s the first film’s intense chase of Toe Cutter. In Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, the climatic chase is a perfect distillation of all that is great about the film series: hair-raising stunts, crazy vehicles, and even crazier villains. But George Miller’s magnum opus, Mad Max: Fury Road, tops them all. The movie is basically one long chase scene as Furiosa (Charlize Theron), and Max (Tom Hardy) help four of Immortan Joe’s captive “wives” escape to safety. The production design, stunt work, and cinematography put Fury Road in conversation for the best movie car chase of the 21st century.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Terminator is another film franchise with a lot of great car chases. The first movie’s chase originates a motif later Terminator films would recreate/riff on/rip off. In Terminator, the titular killer robot chases down Sarah Connor both on a motorcycle and later a semi. The third film’s big chase scene sees half of Los Angeles destroyed by a terminator driving a construction crane. But clearly the best Terminator chase scene comes from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Where a dirt bike riding John Connor is being chased down by a semi-driving T-1000 with Arnold’s T-100 coming to the rescue on his “borrowed” Harley.

The Blues Brothers

In The Blues Brothers, Jake and Elwood Blues were on a mission from God while perpetually fleeing the police across seemingly all of Illinois. Luckily, Elwood had purchased a retired Dodge Monaco police cruiser as the new Bluesmobile complete with “a cop motor…cop tires, cop suspension, [and] cop shocks.” Though it was only “106 miles to Chicago” there sure are a lot of chase scenes in the movie. If we must pick, we’d put the chase through the mall as a close second to the final police car pile-up. The movie long held the record for the number of stunt cars wrecked in a film at 103. That number was eventually eclipsed, appropriately, by the 2000 sequel with 104.

The French Connection

The car chase scene from The French Connection often runs neck-and-neck with Bullitt for the most iconic in film history. The story behind the filming is arguably more epic than the Best Picture winning thriller itself. First, there’s the fact that it was shot without a permit (the accompanying shots on the Brooklynn El-Train were the only permits the filmmakers secured). That means all that traffic stunt driver Bill Hickman is weaving through at 90 mph is the general public. The minor collision wasn’t planned, that happened by accident. In fact, the only staged part is the car narrowly missing the mother and baby. The sequence was shot by director William Friedkin from the back seat of the Pontiac LeMans. Friedkin said he shot it himself because the other two camera men were married with kids while he was single.

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