The 10 All-Time Most Impressive Car Stunts In Movies
The cinematic car chase is one of Hollywood's greatest inventions, combining the inner child-serving display of big, shiny things that go "vroom" with the kind of white-knuckle spectacle that movie magic is so well-positioned to deliver. Throughout film history, countless directors have cranked out exciting moments of automotive action, often seemingly bending the laws of physics to find ways to push vehicular insanity to its limits.
Of course, in our modern era, CGI special effects have emerged and, in some cases, provided a bit of a cheat code, and sucked the danger and excitement out of the whole enterprise. After all, half the fun of watching any practical stunt in a film is wondering just how everyone involved, especially the stunt performers putting their necks on the line, managed to pull it off. Fortunately, a recent wave of action film artisans have embraced the importance of really doing the thing, resulting in epic scenes of four-wheeled mayhem to rival the best that old school movies had to offer.
So, buckle up as we dive into some of the best automotive action ever caught on film, all of it forged by real steel and stunt driver guts.
The Fast and the Furious train jump and rolling flip
In the latter days of this now-venerable action franchise, scenes have employed CGI to make cars do things no car could actually do, like fly to space or swing, Tarzan-like, from the remains of a rope bridge. In its earliest incarnation, however, it was something different: a pulse-pounding take on "Point Break" that replaced surfer vibes with gearhead intensity and skydiving fights with quarter-mile contests of speed. It all culminates in a final race between Vin Diesel's charismatic criminal Dominic Toretto and Paul Walker's undercover FBI agent Brian O'Conner.
The sequence features two key moments. First, the two drivers' cars have to jump train tracks ahead of an onrushing freight train. Once that's done, we also get to see Toretto's Dodge Charger get t-boned by a truck, executing a horizontal flip and roll that's made all the more awesome by the shot we get of it from inside his opponent's car. Stunt driver Tim Trella was behind the wheel for what remains one of the best-executed beats in the franchise's history.
Casino Royale breaks the world record for barrel rolls
Daniel Craig's first foray into the James Bond universe in 'Casino Royale" was widely hailed as a return to form for the franchise, giving fans a more in-your-face take on the legendary superspy than what they'd seen during Pierce Brosnan's tenure. The film's action scenes certainly fit the bill, kicking off with a massive parkour chase and consistently upping the ante as the reels rolled on. When it came time to execute one of the key car stunts, the filmmakers decided to really go for it, and ended up making history in the process.
At a key moment in the film, Craig's Bond pursues a kidnapped Vesper Lynne (Eva Green) in his shiny Aston Martin DBS. Unfortunately, the twisty chase takes a turn for the worse when Bond has to swerve to avoid his hogtied paramour, who has been left in the middle of the road, sending this high-performance car into an excruciatingly long series of barrel rolls. Accomplished using a McQ cannon, which punches a metal ram out of the base of the car, the effect sent the vehicle and an unidentified stunt person into what turned out to be a Guinness Book of World Records-worthy series of rolls. Lots of car stunts are impressive, but not every one can be said to belong in the history books.
Smokey and the Bandit and the 70-foot river jump
"Smokey and the Bandit' director Hal Needham started his professional career as a stunt performer, so it should come as no surprise that he would push the envelope as he did in this Burt Reynolds action-comedy classic. Essentially a feature-length chase scene, the movie features no shortage of car carnage, featuring as its hero vehicle a black 1977 Pontiac Trans Am that would become iconic as it drove full speed onto the silver screen. No matter how dusty the back roads on which Buford T. Justice chased the Bandit (Reynolds), the Trans Am always came out shiny in the next scene, which is why it's mildly ironic that a signature stunt actually destroyed the vehicle used.
Seemingly cornered by the police at the site of a defunct bridge over the Jonesboro River, Bandit risks it for the biscuit and decides to make the jump. The 70-foot launch was performed by stunt driver Alan Gibbs in what was a generally unmodified version of the Trans Am, although Needham did employ a booster to give the car the speed and lift it needed to clear the wide chasm. Again, the car used was ultimately wrecked, but it at least died in service to a thrilling moment in the pantheon of Hollywood car stunts.
John Wick 2 opening chase sideways car jump
"John Wick" was a breath of fresh air among action films when it premiered in 2014. With its emphasis on practical effects and stunt work, it bucked a trend toward CGI in the space and demonstrated that audiences still had a hunger to see real people do crazy things on camera. When the sequel premiered in 2017, it picked up right where the first film left off with an opening car chase couched around the eponymous hero's effort to reclaim his ride, a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1.
One of the sequence's signature moments is proof positive that, sometimes, the most difficult and impressive stunts, when done right, don't even seem all that mind-blowing until you stop to think about it. Mid-way through the chase, John Wick's Mustang executes a sliding, sideways jump through an open warehouse door. It's a quick beat in a big, explosive chase, but as broken down by the movie's stunt coordinator, it actually required an incredible amount of precision to pull off. That it's done so seamlessly is a testament to the legendary work done by the team behind the franchise's action.
Terminator 2 drives a big rig off a bridge
When James Cameron dropped "Terminator 2" on audiences, it got a ton of attention for the revolutionary computer-generated morphing technology that made Robert Patrick's T-1000 into a shape-shifting marvel. But it was still the early '90s, the days of full-on CGI effects were still a ways away, and so "T2" was also chock full of awesome practical effects and stunt efforts providing fuel for its explosive sci-fi action.
Exhibit A would be the chase scene that takes place early in the film, as a young John Connor (Edward Furlong) flees the T-1000 on his dirt bike after being nearly cornered at a mall. Ever resourceful, Patrick's robot assassin commandeers a massive big rig truck for the pursuit, and demonstrates its single-mindedness by plowing said vehicle off an overpass into the Los Angeles Drainage Canal system. The overpass wall is fake, but the drop is 100% real, and it makes for a spectacular demonstration of just how far Skynet's monstrous creation will go in pursuit of its prey.
Gator pickup truck roll and jump
Hey, it's Hal Needham, again. In this 1976 sequel to "White Lightning," the stunt legend once more teamed up with Burt Reynolds, who makes his directorial debut in another chase-fueled action comedy. "Gator" was pretty poorly received and made nowhere near the cultural impact of some of the duo's other collaborations, but it does feature stellar stunt work in that 1970s "someone really could have died trying to get this shot" sort of way.
Case in point is this quick-hit maneuver pulled off by Needham, himself. Hanging on to the side of a Ford pickup truck as it barrels over and through various obstacles, Reynolds' character reaches into the driver's side window and pulls the steering wheel hard, sending the truck into a roll while the protagonist leaps just clear. On-screen, it might not look that harrowing by modern standards, but it was a real touch-and-go moment, with Needham mentioning in later interviews that the trucks' fender missed his head by a mere 18 inches. Had the roll not gone as planned, it could have spelled disaster; instead, it's another great Hal Needham moment.
Gone in 60 Seconds sets the jump standard
When you think about what finely-tuned machines modern action movie productions are, it's nuts to think about how the original "Gone in 60 Seconds" came together. The film was written, directed, produced, and financed by Long Beach, California junkyard owner H.B. Halicki, with an incredibly bare-bones script and a cast made up of friends, family, and other non-Hollywood types. All of that, however, is just an excuse for an absolutely wild amount of automotive insanity, including a 40-minute chase sequence that wrecked 93 cars and still ranks as one of film history's longest. We're talking about skin-of-your-teeth filmmaking, here, but the end result is just absolute mayhem that blew up the box office by the standards of its time.
There are a lot of moments in Halicki's opus that live rent-free in the minds of fans of car-based stunts, but the one that most stands out is the jump at the end of the aforementioned epic chase. The film's feature car, a 1973 Ford Mustang named "Eleanor," executes a 128-foot jump that reaches an altitude of 30 feet, all without the use of pistons, boosters, and, of course, CGI. Halicki, who starred in and did a ton of driving for the movie in addition to everything behind the scenes, was behind the wheel for the jump, and reportedly compressed 10 vertebrae in performing it.
Police Story destroys a shantytown
Jackie Chan and his stunt team achieved legendary status over the course of a long career by constantly pushing the envelope and diving fearlessly into absolutely insane action sequences that leave viewers wondering how anyone survived filming them. "Police Story," released in 1985, is a prime example of the lengths to which Chan and company were willing to go in order to dazzle audiences, and it's chock-full of death-defying exploits. That a car chase this insane happens in the first act of the movie should be a pretty good indication of how things came out, overall.
When a sting by the Hong Kong Police Force to capture a local drug lord goes wrong, they're forced to pursue the criminal through a hillside shantytown. In most movies, this would all take place on foot, but "Police Story" takes things up a notch by making it vehicular, with both bad and good guys driving directly through buildings and absolutely wrecking the town in the process. There are random explosions, shanty after shanty gets destroyed, and we even get a driver's-eye view of one of the cars' windshields cracking just to drive home how intense the destruction is. Even by Jackie Chan standards, it's nuts.
The Dark Knight flips a tractor trailer
When Christopher Nolan made "Batman Begins," he was widely considered to have saved the Caped Crusader's film career, and he did it by grounding as much of the movie's action as possible in real-world physics and practical effects. The sequel upped the ante in every possible way, but Nolan's commitment to steering clear of CGI-aided stunts remained. As a result, we can point to the climax of one of the film's centerpiece action sequences and marvel at the magic it took to flip an entire tractor trailer vertically in the middle of downtown Chicago.
It sounds kind of simple: A TNT-powered piston was attached to the base of the truck rig and, when triggered, would hit the ground and catapult the truck's trailer into a vertical flip. But keep in mind this was being performed in the middle of Chicago's banking district, so one misalignment would mean sending wreckage flying through one of the city's financial institutions. Couple that with the fact that there would actually be a driver in the truck to fire the piston, and you have a very tricky proposition. Fortunately, the film's stunt and VFX teams pulled it off, providing an explosive exclamation point to an absolutely top-notch chase scene.
The Man With the Golden Gun gets screwy
Car chases and automotive action beats have always been a part of the James Bond franchise, and some have dazzled even as the movies don't quite deliver. Such was the case with this effort, seated as it is in "The Man with the Golden Gun," one of 007's more poorly-reviewed outings. Still, there's no denying the excellence of the stunt work, here, even as it's undercut by a truly bizarre soundtracking decision.
Needing to cross a river but short on the time it would take to reach an intact bridge, Bond (Roger Moore) instead makes use of a twisted one to execute a spiraling jump across the watery expanse in his 1974 AMC Hornet X. The trick was first plotted in a computer simulation at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, and then performed in one take by stunt driver Loren "Bumps" Willert. Portrayed in slow motion, it's a truly impressive feat, but composer John Barry's bizarre addition of a comedic slide whistle effect under the action kind of hurts the vibe. It's a decision both Barry and producer Albert Broccoli came to regret, and it shouldn't diminish the crack work done by Willert and the rest of the stunt crew in executing the world's first "astro spiral" jump caught on film.