THE ART OF THE CHASE
The two things that make me most excited for Edgar Wright's Baby Driver are its commitment to realism and the so-crazy-it-just-might-work conceit of the protagonist scoring his getaways to the songs playing in his earbuds.
I've thought a lot about what makes a great movie car chase. For me, the most important criteria are Tension, Verisimilitude, and Originality.
Without tension, the scene is just a technical exercise.
Without verisimilitude, there are no stakes.
And without originality, the movie risks giving the greatest possible offense to its audience: being boring.
Many people think the cinematic car chase begins and ends with Bullitt from 1968. It is hard to disagree. It practically invented the form. And most importantly, it introduced a levels of tension, verisimilitude, and originality that are unmatched.
Here are my choices for the eighteen best car chases in cinematic history since 1968, presented chronologically.
For educational purposes only.
A PROPOSAL
How different would The Martian be if we never left Mars? What if we, the audience, were stranded with Mark Watney on that desolate planet for the entire movie?
I invite you to enjoy Mark Watney of Mars: The Martian v2.0.
In many ways, it is a very different story. For one thing, the running time of Mark's endeavor has been reduced from 141 minutes to just over 59. The movie also loses all sense of teamwork. We don't fully understand the scale of NASA's mammoth rescue operation. We don't share in the risks or sacrifices being made on his behalf. We don't hear any voices other than that of Mark Watney.
The story is now almost entirely about isolation and self-determination and optimism in the face of overwhelming odds. When Watney says “I’m the first person to be alone on an entire planet,” I think we feel it more. Because we have been alone with him.
EASIER SAID THAN DONE
This project is actually harder than it sounds. It wasn't just a matter of lopping off any scene that doesn't take place on the red planet...
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Recovering the Mindset intercuts the three different interpretations of Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon: Manhunter by Michael Mann, Red Dragon by Brett Ratner, and Hannibal by Bryan Fuller.
I've focussed on the scene where FBI profiler Will Graham visits the cannibal psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter ostensibly to ask for advice on a serial murder case but really to "recover the mindset" of a killer so he can catch this new one.
Most of the dialogue from the three adaptations comes directly from the source novel so it was possible to seamlessly recreate the scene using the three productions.
I think it is a very interesting way to compare and contrast the different methods used by the filmmakers. Also, other than filmed works of Shakespeare, I can't think of another pop culture creation that has been interpreted so faithfully three separate times.
This video was linked to by dozens of sites and hundreds of Twitter users and has been seen by more than 114K viewers.
Did it ever bother you that during High Noon's climactic buildup, the picture was 4 frames ahead of the music? Me too! Well, I fixed it. Behold this all-time classic in all its metronomic glory.
Hat tip to Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere for reminding me that I have always been bothered by this.
And here's something else to chew on. The great Elmo Williams won an Academy Award for editing HIGH NOON and this is the sequence most people point to when showcasing his work. But here's the thing: this is more of an example of good directing than editing. I know, I'm an editor. This sequence didn't happen by accident. Williams didn't find it in the editing room. It was designed from the beginning to work this way. They way the scenes were filmed and the way the music was composed all came from the director, Fred Zinnemann. In fact, I bet if you asked Williams, he would tell you this was the easiest part of the movie to cut. And that's because he was operating under strict instructions to make each shot exactly three seconds, cut to the beat of the music. And all that came from Zinnemann.
The reason the editing feels so powerful is because the director intentionally created a sequence that highlighted the editing. Most of the time, editing is invisible. (If it is not, it usually means something is off.) In this case, when tied so closely to the music, the editing is right out front. The tensions build and builds until we get release with the train whistle. It is a perfect sequence.
In 2006, I wondered what it would look like to edit together the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock and Gus Van Sant's classic/notorious versions of Psycho. Psycho Re-Imagined was the result. Over 400,000 people have viewed the experiment.
Steven Soderbergh did his own version in 2014, blending the movies into a piece of feature-length pop art he named Psychos.