With Fast 9 coming out this week, I was reminded of all the incredible car chases in film history (The Fast franchise isn’t about cars anymore, it’s about Family™). So, I went down a YouTube rabbit hole rewatching some of my favourite chase sequences. While there are a ton of cool, technically impressive car sequences in cinema history, these are some of the ones that come to mind as my favourites.

Mini Coopers

I’ve been obsessed with Minis ever since I saw The Bourne Identity and The Italian Job (Both the 2003 and 1969 ones). There’s something about the fantasy of driving tiny fast cars in cities that’s just pure unadulterated fun!

What made the 2003 Italian Job even more fun to watch was knowing all the actors were driving the cars themselves; they had to take specialized driving classes for the film.

Another fun fact: the soundtracks for both The Bourne Identity and the 2003 Italian Job were composed by John Powell. (Powell scored the rest of the Bourne series too)

The Love Bug

Funny enough, The Love Bug came out as the same time as the original Italian Job, in 1969. I remember watching this as a kid and just having my imagination going wild in this scene. The practical and creative filmmaking techniques of the time are still quite difficult to live up to these days.

Tom Cruise

Say what you will about the man, but his dedication to practical stunts has created some of the best action sequences in history. I mean, driving a motorcycle head on against actual traffic in Paris?

🎶 Bellbottoms

As far as car chases go, this one was just pure fun with the crazy stunts.

Wait, how many cars did they blow up?

Despite The Matrix Reloaded being a very CGI heavy movie, the highway chase involved rigging actual cars to be crushed, flipped, exploded, you name it.

The OG

Ronin’s famous Paris car chase is on this list not only because it was the scene that inspired so many countless chase scenes to come, but also because of how much it really does grab your attention. There’s no music, no CGI. The rigging, the coordination, everything about this scene is a masterclass.

Another fun fact: some of the same team that worked on this scene also worked on the Bourne Identity Mini chase scene.

Scramble

There are lots of fun and impressive car scenes in the Fast movies (one would hope), but this one stands out to me as probably my favourite. There’s no particular reason behind it, I just remember enjoying it a lot when I first saw it.