A NIGHT spent watching Liam Neeson shooting his way through the Parisian underworld has just proved one of my favourite pet theories.
All good car chases follow a formula.
It’s like knowing that Nicholas Cage has starred in lots of good movies but never a truly great one, or that the best Bond was actually Timothy Dalton (but you’re not prepared to admit it). All the best car chases are in continental thrillers.
Take, er, Taken. It’s a gritty movie which sees Neeson play a quietly-spoken American who spends most of his time shooting criminals, cheesing off the Gendarmes and generally destroying Paris at the helm of an Audi A8. Just like Robert de Niro did ten years earlier in Ronin, arguably the best car chase film of all time.
Almost any film I can think with a truly brilliant car chase involves egging some executive express through the narrow streets of a continental city, preferably Paris in an Audi. I’m beginning to think A8 sales in France are almost exclusively led by film directors.
The legendary C'était un rendez-vous puts you behind the wheel of a Ferrari charging its way through – you guessed it – Paris, but the actual car doing the driving is the director’s Mercedes. It goes with the theory perfectly.
British car chases have the action but not the exotic locations, as the A59 towards Preston is hardly the prowling ground of quietly spoken assassins with names like Jean-Claude or Jacques. Cold War thriller The Fourth Protocol looked promising with several good chases, including this great sequence with St Pancras station and a Rover Vitesse, but unfortunately using a Ford Transit as the main motorised star lets it down.
Bullitt and The French Connection fly the flag for Hollywood, but it doesn’t detract from the movies themselves never quite matching up to the hype. And having a car chase as the entire movie (that’s you, Vanishing Point and the original Gone In Sixty Seconds) doesn’t make up for it.
Nope, the best car movies are still the gritty ones placed in Paris, as long as you forget Roger Moore, Renault and Grace May in A View To A Kill.
Forget It’s a Wonderful Life. Forget Miracle on 34th Street, and even forget The Great Escape.
Rent Ronin instead and bore your loved ones this Christmas with the greatest car chase movie ever made. You won’t regret it. Much.
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