From John Wick to Mad Max, these are the best 2010s car chase movies – British GQ

So to the final instalment and the decade we refuse to call the Teenies. Now that filmmakers have got over their obsession with CGI, the best car-chase movies of the past decade and its a bracingly good list are all about authenticity. Well, mostly. From Bond to Bourne, Baby Driver to the rousing return of Mad Max, the most memorable images are all created in the camera, rather than by some pimply post-production wizard. Of course, plenty of the stuff youll read about here could still only happen in the movies, but at least it was done for real. Even the flame-throwing guitar

Ryan Goslings star-making turn as the unnamed, morally conflicted Driver lies at the core of this magnificent film. Stuntman by day, getaway driver by night, he makes Clint Eastwoods Man With No Name come over like a motormouth and somehow manages to look as good in an awful silver quilted jacket as Clint did in that poncho. Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn shoots LA in a way thats simultaneously hyper-real the LA of the movies, in fact and also distressingly venal. Its set in the present day, but its fabulous synth-soaked score and neo-noir look are redolent of Walter Hills similar-ish The Driver, and the tone William Friedkin gunned for seven years later in To Live And Die In LA. It feels like a film of no fixed abode, lost amid the citys freeway flyovers and faded stucco buildings.

Its all there in the pre-credits sequence, as the Driver collects his wheels from his point man, auto repair shop owner Shannon (the eternally brilliant Bryan Cranston). Plain Jane boring, just like you asked for, but I dropped in 300 horses on the inside she is gonna fly! You look like a zombie, kid, you getting any sleep? Can I offer you some Benzedrine, Dexedrine, caffeine, nicotine? There she is. A Chevy Impala. The most popular car in the state of California. No one will be looking at you. The next six minutes are note-perfect, not least because this getaway driver knows when to hit the gas and when to be much smarter and do what so few movie getaway drivers do: park up, kill the lights and hide.

Theres old-school chase action later on and Gosling himself learned how to handle a car sufficiently well to look like he knows what hes doing when he pulls a handbrake turn. (Stunt driver Robert Nagle trained him and also developed the biscuit rig used in the chase scenes.) Gosling also personally selected the 73 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu his character owns (the last car John DeLorean developed before he quit General Motors). Its finished in ultra-stealthy primer-grey, but the mag wheels and aftermarket dials inside suggest something special lurks within. In fact, Gosling found the car in an LA junkyard and rebuilt it himself as another way into his characters motivation: not so much method acting as method mechanic-ing. A lot of action movies, these days theyre more action and a little less character. Theres a strong character at the centre of this one, Gosling observed. Cars werent something I knew much about. Nicolas said I could pick any car I wanted for the film and I would do the work on it Nicolas had this kind of fantasy, to make the film more dream-like. A dream that turns into a nightmare.

But brilliantly so.

Whats not damaged?

Air conditioning is fully operational.

When Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) is attacked by Hydra operatives disguised as cops, he has to lean pretty hard on his Chevrolet Tahoe. This includes entering into a dialogue with the car that results in some of the snappiest one-liners in the film (Jackson is always fun to watch, forever channelling Pulp Fictions Jules Winnfield). Trapped in the vehicle, the villains use a battering ram to compromise its SHIELD-spec otherworldly armoured body and glazing, before Fury responds in a manner befitting of his name.

The ninth film in the MCU, Winter Soldiers chase sequence is much less bombastic than others in the series and more panel-crunchingly real. Cleveland doubled for Washington DC and director of cinematography Trent Opaloch deliberately maintained a naturalistic colour palette. Seventies conspiracy thrillers like The Parallax View and Three Days Of The Condor were an inspiration and the result is a less cartoonish feel overall. As daft as it sounds, that pays off in the key car chase, which strikes a note of realism even Popeye Doyle would have recognised.

Theres a certain pleasure in being able to film things that are very, very kinetic, Mad Max director George Miller noted. Its a mantra relentlessly deployed across the Mad Max quadrilogy, but one can only imagine just how much he must have enjoyed himself shooting Fury Road this is possibly the most kinetic film ever made. Its pretty much all chase and takes the vision he and his producing partner, Byron Kennedy, fleshed out for peanuts in the 1979 original and bolts a rocket to it. Many, many rockets.

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Its also bouncing off the rev limiter at 10,000rpm when it comes to its nightmarishly contorted automotive cast. Mad Max was always about cars. The cars were a metaphor for power, says Fury Roads production designer, Colin Gibson. Just because its a wasteland, it doesnt mean people cant make beautiful things, Miller says. The vehicles were almost like an extension of the wardrobe of the characters. These monsters were overseen by Peter Pound, who turned them into barely recognisable reconfigurations of their originals. The films primary villain, Immortan Joe, drives, if thats the word, a 59 Cadillac Coupe De Ville called the Gigahorse; its a vehicle that appears to be gorging upon itself. Because this is a movie on the run, the Gigahorse is virtually his throne, Miller noted. Its powered by two 502 cu in V8s locked onto one driveshaft, the giant dual exhaust emblazoned with the characters screaming skull motif.

The original Mad Max car, the 1973 Ford XB Interceptor, is here, but now reimagined as an off-road bastardisation and renamed The Razor Cola Caltrop. Then theres Elvis, Cranky Frank, the Peacemaker (a rebodied tank that also incorporates a Plymouth Valiant and a Cessna light aircraft) and perhaps most memorably the Doof Wagon, whose drummers and guitarist soundtrack the whole armadas insane charge. No ones going to hear a bugle or bagpipe, Miller said. So we went for the flame-throwing guitar and then we needed massive speakers. (The donor vehicle was an eight-wheel-drive rocket-launching truck.)

GQs favourite is the People Eater fuel truck, whose front part is an extended, widened Mercedes W123 limo, mounted on an ex-US military Kaiser six-wheel-drive truck chassis. The dual tanks its hauling are actually making fuel as theyre moving along, allowing the pursuing mob to refuel. This whole carnival of insanity is hunting down Furiosa (Charlize Theron) in her War Rig: The heart and soul of our film, Colin Gibson noted. It is truck, transportation, hot rod, tank, warrior and, for George, chapel. The chassis is a Czech Tatra 815 off-road truck, with a 1947 Chevy Fleetmaster body grafted on top; the production built three complete units, to ease the pressure on a character thats on screen pretty much throughout.

A western on wheels, according to Miller, almost all of Fury Roads effects were practical, the 150-strong stunt crew including Olympic gymnasts and members of Cirque De Soleil. Miller shot 480 hours of footage, which took three months to view, and he tinkered with the films frame rate in order to maximise its cartoon feel. No wonder Tom Hardy, replacing Mel Gibson in the title role, had trouble figuring out what the hell Miller was up to during principal photography; this one came together in the edit suite. Nominated for ten Academy Awards, Fury Road won six, including sound editing, film editing, sound mixing and production design. As nuts as the whole thing is, its also an ode to the power of cinema itself.

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Screenwriters talk of the inciting incident. In the first John Wick film, a Russian mobsters son steals the main mans car and kills his dog. Thatll do it. Keanu Reeves doesnt have a great deal of dialogue to learn, but a lot of shooting to do and retribution to enact. Director Chad Stahelski, a former stunt co-ordinator, marshals the ensuing madness with robust self-belief. Yes, John fights. Yes, he shoots guns and he drives a car very fast, but the focus was always trying to do something cinematically different, he says in the films production notes.

Its a superior B-movie, basically, albeit one that nods to Sergio Leones spaghetti westerns and Kurosawa, and Keanu does his Keanu thing as only Keanu can, although there arent a whole lot of laughs. The guy knows how to drive and ride, though. In JW2 he reclaims his Boss Mustang 429 (actually a Mach 1), although, for all Reeves driving chops, thats probably not him leaping the car sideways out of the garage. But hes clearly visible behind the wheel for some of the sequence the drivers door has been ripped off by this point not least while T-boning another car. The reverse J-turn that flicks one of the bad guys into a pillar is another neatly nasty piece of improv. (NB: check out the bike chase in John Wick: Chapter 3 Parabellum, a part-real, part-CGI sequence so well done you simply cant see the join.)

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Not the peak Daniel Craig-era Bond we were hoping for, but a film studded with great moments nonetheless. The car chase is certainly one for the ages. Bond flees the Spectre gathering (actually filmed at Blenheim Palace) only to be pursued by Mr Hinx (Dave Bautista) into the Eternal City. Cue a chase that invokes memories of the more tongue-in-cheek aspects of a Roger Moore-era action sequence, while elevating the driving to a level rarely seen in any film.

Then theres the location: power-sliding past the Popes front door at 100mph-plus is the sort of thing only a James Bond production can pull off. The sequence continues through some tiny side streets, beheads an Alfa Romeo, and Bond nudges an elderly, opera-loving Italian gentleman in a Fiat 500 into a barrier. Then we descend the steps of the Scalo de Pinedo for a blast along the banks of the River Tiber, for a flame-throwing climax.

Says stunt driver Mark Higgins, I remember going through St Peters Square, fully sideways at 80 or 90mph, but had to drop it down to 2,000rpm in third gear and the road narrowed as I was on the lock stops. If it had gone from narrow to wide it would have been straightforward. But we had to do it the hard way.

As well as its location, the Spectre chase is notable for its star cars. Aston Martin built the DB10 especially for 007 following a visit to the companys HQ by director Sam Mendes, while Hinxs Jaguar C-X75 was a still-born hybrid hypercar granted a cinematic afterlife. Everyone in the movie business wants to work on or be involved with a Bond film. You can see why.

The film culminates in Las Vegas with our best car chase, Paul Greengrass said. And I like to think weve done some pretty good ones. All four Bourne films have comprehensively rewired the very essence of a movie chase. But in this final instalment Greengrass and his second unit director, Simon Crane, destroy a line of traffic, park Bournes pursuing Dodge Charger onto the roof of a Swat vehicle at speed, then drive that same truck into a Vegas casino gambling floor. And the location is key: Bourne has wreaked havoc in Paris, Moscow, New York and Manila, but the rampage along Vegas Strip here truly is something else.

Im standing in the middle of Vegas Boulevard and I cant even wrap my brain around the scale of what were doing, Matt Damon observed mid-shoot. The internet commentariat seems to have a problem with the realism and Bournes Charger is certainly better screwed together than any mainstream American car Ive ever driven. Or indeed any car full-stop. OK, so maybe the filmmakers pushed a bit too hard. Yet just as much of the fun here is in the film and sound editing. Turn up the volume and enjoy.

Like George Miller, Edgar Wright is a filmmaker who understands and revels in the kinetic possibilities of cinema. Never mind his brilliant Cornetto trilogy with Simon Pegg, check out underrated late-1990s C4 comedy Spaced. Baby Driver, though, is his masterpiece, born aloft by his love of music as much as his worship of film. He references genre classics such as Vanishing Point, Crazy Larry, Dirty Mary and The Driver, while Point Break and Reservoir Dogs are in there, too. The soundtrack takes in tunes as diverse as Neat Neat Neat by The Damned, Hocus Pocus by Focus and Know How by Young MC.

Second unit director Darrin Prescott worked with lead stunt driver Jeremy Fry on the films driving sequences, the star car a Subaru WRX whose boxy, four-door form hides a chassis capable of serving up the extreme angles the film called for (as anyone whos ever driven one will confirm). Although all-wheel drive, the stunt drivers also had a rear-drive car for maximum sideways-ness, with a fly-off handbrake and shorter gearing. The drivings for real: what CGI there is was used to clean up or enhance the images. We pulled off gags in this film Ive never seen before, Prescott said. Were thinking the 180-in, 180-out shot when Baby somehow misses a truck in an alleyway. I wanted people to watch the movie and feel the car chases like theyre living vicariously through Ansels character, Wright noted. Mission accomplished.

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Tom Cruise will never be able to play James Bond, but youve got to hand it to the guy: six Mission: Impossible films in, and his character, Ethan Hunt, is some kind of alt-007. Despite being a film producer himself, Cruise is a film producers nightmare, such is his insistence on doing his own stunt work. But the results are frequently extraordinary. Brad Birds 2011 MI: Ghost Protocol uses Dubais Burj Khalifa to breathtaking effect and staging a car chase in a sandstorm is pretty punchy too. Christopher McQuarrie better known for writing 1995s The Usual Suspects proved a gifted action film director when he helmed 2015s MI: Rogue Nation, during which a BMW M3 does some things no M3 should ever have to tolerate.

But lets go with the Paris-set chase in 2018s MI: Fallout, whose European context even runs to the use of a green 1986 BMW 528i (E28, in BMW code-speak). This is straight out of the John Frankenheimer playbook: understated, fast but, more importantly, rear-wheel drive and fitted with a proper handbrake for maximum getaway potential, often on full opposite lock. Six BMWs were used during filming, Cruise and McQuarrie noting that this was a car without ego (retirement green, the films production designer, Peter Wenham, noted). McQuarrie added, Its timeless and, more importantly, because of all the safety equipment in the newer cars, the way theyre designed, the windshields are sloping, theyre smaller, its actually harder to see, and I wanted the car with the biggest possible engine and the biggest possible windshield, and thats how we ended up with that car.

The result is a sequence that, in combining all the classic elements, becomes the archetypal car chase itself. Cruise is equally adept on a bike, and flings a BMW R9T scrambler along Paris boulevards and round the Arc De Triomphe with impressive commitment. Stunt co-ordinator Wade Eastwood orchestrated 40 cars, each driven by pro racing drivers: Its a busy city the different surface changes on the roads was a challenge and Cruise was riding a motorbike with no helmet. (NB: Rebecca Fergusons stunt double for her bike scenes was Jenny Tinmouth, the female lap record holder on the Isle Of Man TT.)

My focus was to develop the script to the point where it would attract great actors, director James Mangold told me last year, so that people who arent into motorsports get it. Motor racing is difficult to translate onto television, the speed, majesty and power of the cars is somehow undermined. Every time a camera pans with a car its reducing its movement.

Were also divorced from the drivers experience. In boxing, the fighters emotions are visible to us. My challenge staging the action in this film was to break that barrier and allow the audience to experience what the driver and crew are experiencing.

The racing sequences in Le Mans 66 nominated for a Best Film Academy Award in 2020 and a bona fide box-office hit are well handled, if a little cliched in places. But GQs favourite scene sees Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) introduce Henry Ford II (Tracey Letts) to the car hes paying such big bucks for, the GT40. Damon talked me through how the scene was shot.

Tracy Letts is a great actor. It is a funny moment at first and then it turns. Hes overcome, not because hes afraid of the car, but because he says, If my grandfather could have seen this The understanding that this family passion that started generations ago had built to this moment. This much power in something that came from his family.

We did two takes of that scene and Tracy just totally brought it on the first take. We were in a rig the biscuit rig, as its called, we had something similar on Bourne and it means you can play a scene while one of the best drivers in the world is ripping you around [the driver is positioned above, behind or to the side in a pod on a frame]. We took off round the track, skidding around, spinning and then stopped. Jim [Mangold, the director] had said unless the cameras move, the scene starts the moment the car stops. And Tracey had it on the first take. I thought about the discomfort a man of that era, how a man like Shelby would feel with another man expressing himself that openly that close to him, so thats the humour in it. But sitting there beside Tracy, watching him do it, it was an emotional moment. One I hadnt seen coming.

Le Mans 66 didnt always hit the spot with racing fans. But it worked just fine for people who wouldnt know a Ford GT40 from a Transit van.

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From John Wick to Mad Max, these are the best 2010s car chase movies - British GQ

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero