Car Chase Movies

The car chase has been a staple of cinema since the days of the silent comedians. The real breakthrough occured in 1968 in "Bullitt" when Steve McQueen, as detective Frank Bullitt, in pursuit of the bad guys, drove his Ford Mustang at high speeds around the streets of San Francisco in a sequence still regarded as the pinnacle of this often maligned genre. What's more, McQueen did his own driving and somehow managed to make turtlenecks look cool! Suddenly the car chase took on a life of its own and many imitations and variations followed, some good, some not so good. Other highly regarded chase sequences can be found in William Friedkin's "The French Connection" and John Frankenheimer's "Ronin". Pictured: A view from inside Steve McQueen's Ford Mustang while in pursuit in "Bullitt".