Can a car chase go on too long?

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Remember this one?

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fairly certain this movie gave me my first erection

The one in The Hitman's Bodyguard was a little long .... and it even transitioned to boats in a canal.

The most famous car chase is probably the one in The French Connection or either The Seven-Ups ... both sort of established the necessary inclusion of car chases in action films.

The Getaway with Steve McQueen carried on the tradition by then. He had already done Bullett a few years earlier .... that one was ground breaking as well.

There was another one ... Vanishing Point, around the same time, that started an entire genre of car chase centric films.

All of these were very long car chases.

There was another that came out about that time, a bright yellow Boss Mustang, that did the same in terms of making an entire movie about pretty much nothing but car chases. I believe it was redone by Nicholas Cage and Angelina Jolie .... Gone in 60 Seconds. For that matter Mr and Mrs Smith had a really long car chase scene that involved a dang soccer mom van.

But it really all started with The French Connection and The Seven-Ups. There was this scene where Roy Scheider slammed into the back of an 18 wheeler .... I think this is it from The Seven Ups. (ETA: Yep, this is the scene)

LINK: https://youtu.be/9vACWV5sRcY

I quit the show in the middle of that chase, so yes

Yes, most do. However, the one with Tom Cruise, ex military, driving a 1970 SS454 didn't go on long enough.

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The most famous car chase is probably the one in The French Connection or either The Seven-Ups ... both sort of established the necessary inclusion of car chases in action films.

The Getaway with Steve McQueen carried on the tradition by then. He had already done Bullett a few years earlier .... that one was ground breaking as well.

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But it really all started with The French Connection and The Seven-Ups. There was this scene where Roy Scheider slammed into the back of an 18 wheeler .... I think this is it from The Seven Ups. (ETA: Yep, this is the scene)

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Bullitt set the standard for car chase scenes in 1968.

French Connection came out in 1971. Its car chase scene is also top notch.

The Seven Ups didn’t come out until 1973.

And don’t forget Duel, which was also 1971. The entire movie was a car chase scene.

I think the biggest difference between a good cheesy action flick and a bad cheesy action flick is how long they will spend on each action scenes without any break. Eventually it just gets tiresome.


The only exception being John Wick. Wouldn’t categorize that as cheesy tho

The car chase was the most interesting part of that movie. Ryan Reynolds playing up his Deadpool gimmick couldn’t save the remaining hour and 40 minutes or however long the movie was after the 20 minute car chase scene

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Good call ... forgot about that one because if I am not mistaken it was a made for TV movie staring Dennis Weaver. Great movie .... his car kept overheating and that Peterbilt just kept on coming. Big hit at the time.

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It was one of Spielberg’s first movies and according to him paved the way for him to do Jaws.

Thanks for the find. I’ll be viewing it again soon.

Maybe it’s just me, but typically I check out during car chase scenes. I’ll tee gage when they are ending to see the result.l, then finish the movie. The car chase scenes are not when the good guy wins or bad guy loses. It’s mostly filler. I dunno. I’m just old I guess.