The car chase

First, my hat is off to the cinematic expertise in the above chase scene. The cutting and splicing are superb, and the drivers, whoever they were, are highly skilled. If you start watching this (10:19) I will wager you finish it. The acting, what little is called for, is of three men who are calm as steel as they travel the hills of San Francisco and then end up on the outskirts, where finally, Lt. Frank Bullitt prevails. He avoids shotgun blasts and finally forces the two bad guys off the road and to flaming deaths.

Earlier in the movie, Lt. Bullitt is confronted by Walter Chalmers, played by Robert Vaughn, and Lt. Bullitt utters the word “Bullshit!” I was 18 at the time, and had never before heard a swear word uttered in a movie.

I love this kind of stuff. Car chases take real skill to produce, and even though it is a movie, there is still danger involved for the stuntmen and camera operators. (These days Tom Cruise would claim to be doing the driving himself.) I’ve see many car chases, and this is one of the better ones. Another good one worth looking up is the one from The French Connection where they wind underneath an elevated highway in New York City.*

But I wonder, what’s the point of a car chase? They happen, I know. We had one here in Denver last year where a bank robber took off in a car and was pursued by multiple police cars. In the end, they caused multiple accidents (no injuries), and I-70 East was closed. I remember it well, as I had volunteered to pick up our son at DIA, and got off on the ramp from 470 to 70, and was stuck there for for two hours. Interesting fact: I did not have to pee the entire time.

The Rockford Files, with James Garner, had lots of car chases too, as I recall. Also, when Jim was going from point A to point B, they would show his car going down various streets, and not speeding at all. They did that to fill time. No one would have the patience to sit though it now versus then. The script was too short to fill a one-hour show.

But I think in ordinary everyday life, cars don’t chase one another, especially in crowded hilly downtown areas. Just get the license plate, call in the copter, plant a tracking device, legal or not. Car chases really make no sense. The one in Denver I mentioned – the poor schmuck never had a chance, but note too that there was to be an investigation into the police response and public endangerment. I never heard the outcome, but I would bet a few heads rolled and there was a demotion or two. Denver Police do have helicopters, so hot pursuit on wheels was completely unnecessary.

Anyway, my small point here is that car chases are fun to watch in movies and on TV, but generally make no sense.

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*At the end of The French Connection, Detective Popeye Doyle sets a trap and Alain “Frog One” Charnier drives right into it. Do you remember what Charnier does then? He puts it in reverse and goes the other way. Popeye and his men did not cover that possible response, thinking the guy had no reverse gear in his car? It was a great movie, and I enjoyed it, but that scene always stuck with me as nonsensical.

12 thoughts on “The car chase”

  1. I think that it is The Matrix Reloaded (#2 of 4) that has the lengthy and entertaining “car chase”. The “Bourne” movies have some good stuff. Then there’s good old Smokey and the Bandit. As a relatively new driver, I liked the “precision” of The Driver (Ryan O’Neal). Live and Let Die has a great one involving cars AND boats – with my quotable buddy Sheriff J.W. Pepper.

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  3. The cars bouncing on the hills of San Francisco make me jealous. I wish I had a car I don’t care about to do things like that. This reminded me of a trip with Dave. I think he mentioned in his writings how he and we travel to the highest points of each state. We were on our way back home from the high point of Ohio and a long weekend near Hocking Hills. We were also going to hit the Indiana high point. The high point of Indiana is surrounded by farmland, tucked into a grove of trees.

    After getting off the main road, we were traveling on two-laners; we approached a rural train crossing and didn’t realize how high it would take us as we sped over it. All four tires left the road and we came crashing down. It was like a rollercoaster ride. We were awestruck. We were exhilarated! Thank goodness we were in the pick-up truck! We found the high spot, signed our name, turned around and went back towards the big road. As we approached that same railroad crossing, we noticed all the black skid marks. This time, we were much more cautious.

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  4. Bullitt’s car chase was choreographed by the bad guy in horn rimmed glasses that is chasing McQueen in the other car. He looks like a car salesman rather than a mob button man but somehow seems even more menacing by not fitting the profile. Meanwhile, this chase has become a source of bemusement for us Friscoans as the streets don’t match as the cars turn each corner. There are maps online detailing the “route” which easily cuts from locations in the north to the south.
    Here’s a promo film-(making of)- from ’68. https://youtu.be/AVcjkN_vpuE?si=rx-zW42l3am6JlWo

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      1. Reminds me of an old joke, a woman calls her aging forgetful husband as he drives to work and says “Honey, be careful. The news says there’s a man going the wrong way down the freeway.”

        “It’s not just one of them – it’s ALL of them!” he replied.

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    2. That is fascinating! From appearances it seems as though McQueen did his own stunt work. Maybe so. When I heard that about Cruise my first reaction was that no insurance company would allow a leading man in a multi-million project to be at risk of death or injury. I am still suspicious.

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      1. I once sat next to a guy at a ballgame who maintained McQueen’s motorcycles. The way this guy talked, McQueen wouldn’t dare let anyone do his stunts for him. My sense was that Steve lived his art as much as possible. Though he died young, you can’t say that life passed him by.

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  5. Well, I was the instigator of a real life car chase when I was in my 20s. I was already an advanced alcoholic (have now been sober a long time) and was driving drunk, as alkies often do. When I saw the police lights flash behind me, I panicked. I already had one DUI conviction and another conviction for “Driving While Impaired” (a less serious charge that I lucked into only because the arresting officers made a procedural mistake that my public defender caught). Though mistaken, I was convinced that a third arrest for driving drunk would result in mandatory prison time. Since I was extremely drunk, I decided to see if I could race away from the policeman, and proceeded to zoom through my sleepy little suburban neighborhood at over 100 miles an hour. The policeman called for back up. When I realized two cop cars were chasing me, I realized this wasn’t the Dukes of Hazzard and I wasn’t going to win, so I stopped the car in someone’s driveway. My memory is hazy, but I doubt the chase lasted more than 5 minutes.

    Side note: My attempt to evade arrest didn’t stop there. One of the officers cuffed my hands behind my back and threw me in the backseat of his cruiser, then walked over to the other cruiser to talk with his colleague. Sitting alone, drunk, and scared in the backseat, I realized the officer had not locked the car’s door. So I jumped out of the car and took off running, blissfully unaware that I was committing a felony. The officer gave chase and tackled me to the ground, breaking a bone in his hand in the process.

    When I read the police report that was published in the newspaper, the officers claimed I rolled down the window to climb out of the car because they didn’t want to admit they’d left it unlocked. A perfectly understandable lie, but also absurd if you thought about it too much, because how could a guy with his hands cuffed behind him roll down a window and crawl out? This may have been my first experience with reading something in the news that I knew for a fact was a lie. lol.

    So glad I don’t drink anymore.

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