Car chase movies occupy a time and place in film-dom, so a choice for the best movie car chase of all time is a highly subjective process typically based upon a decision with deep roots in youthful exuberance at its finest.
The rule book is pretty thin when you are a brash young kid armed with a hormonal overdose and a sad delusion that you have all the answers while clashing with parents who set the rules in your life.
Jim Sutherland
Movies have always been directed at a young audience because adolescents desperately wanted to get out of the house and spend time watching a movie with a very thin rule book. A movie was a few hours of escape from a home where the rule book was much bigger than a bread box in the world of a teenager.
Consequently, movies become a cinematic escape room from adolescent reality for a couple of hours in teenager world. Car chase movies were designed to add an element of seat-of-your-pants entertainment to a plotline, particularly if the plotline was very forgettable after the opening credits. Two good examples are ‘Bullitt’ and ‘The French Connection’ because both movies are most notable for their car chase scenes.
Pop quiz here: who among us can recite chapter and verse about the plot in either movie? It was all about the chase and not about the storyline-despite the best efforts of the movie people who wrote and directed them.
Great car chases have always sold tickets and these days computer magic can smooth out the bumps in the fast-paced but cartoonish movie action.
However, there is one movie that outran every other car chase movie past and present in our humble opinion here at MyStarCollectorCar:’Vanishing Point’. We fit the bill for the movie because we were young and impressionable teenagers who foolishly believed we had all the answers when the movie debuted in 1971.
Part of the charm was ‘Vanishing Point’ never pretended to be anything other than a car chase with a very simple storyline throughout the movie. Late 1960s and early 1970s movies were famous for anti-heroes who railed against the rules and lived their lives on their terms, so ‘Vanishing Point’ main character Kowalski more than fit the bill in this regard.
Kowalski was a decorated Viet Nam vet, a police officer, and a race driver before he became an amphetamine-addicted junkie with spectacular driving skills who made really bad decisions about driving under the influence.
He made a friendly wager with his drug dealer to deliver a 1970 Challenger RT from Denver to San Francisco by 3 pm Sunday, even though it was already late Friday night in Denver.
The rest of the movie is Kowalski tearing up the pavement in his muscled-up (and possibly supercharged) Challey. Sadly, none of the small herd of 1970 Challenger RTs used in the movie were saved from the crusher after they finished filming, but the movie-long chase scene was fantastic.
Throw in the distraction of a nude chick riding a motorbike during a brief break in the chase and you have a runaway winner in car chase movies in our humble opinion here at MyStarCollectorCar.
Jim Sutherland
BY: Jim Sutherland
Jim Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer whose work has been published by many major print and online publications. The list includes Calgary Herald, The Truth About Cars, Red Deer Advocate, RPM Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province, and Post Media Wheels Section.
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