Billy Friedkin is the master of insane riveting car chases. The French Connection, and this film here have two of the top 5 car chase scenes. The way that he puts you in the moment with POV shots, the dash cams, the mounted cameras on the quarter panels and those panning shots all give this frantic energy that is impossible to replicate using CGI or closed track sequences prevalent in today's action cinema.
William Friedkin once said in an interview he would never do another car chase in a movie unless he could top the one in The French Connection. This one does. It has some of the best tracking shots ever put on film thanks to gyro-camera technology. Unfortunately there are some shots out of sequence. As the car is speeding next to the train at 3:33 it is near the front of the locomotive and about to pass it, but later at 3:42 it is well back of the locomotive, then at 3:56 it is at the front and cuts across the tracks. Later at 8:11 a brown van with stripes is visible stuck in a massive traffic jam, but at 8:21 the same van can be seen moving on the freeway. Then it is seen again at 8:23 still stuck in the traffic jam. These errors could all be corrected with some minor re-editing. I don't know that there has ever been a "director's cut" made of this film or if William Friedkin plans one. M. Scott Smith is credited as film editor, but I have little doubt that Friedkin had final say on the editing.
Fucking incredible. I love the use of non diegetic sound at the end with the radio scoring the relief mixed with euphoria of escape and the rasta music highlighting the absurdity of what they've just gone through together.
It was this movie and in particular this very chase szene that inspired all the visuals and vehicle dynamics in "Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas" by Rockstar Games. Everybody who had ever played GTA - SA can feel the similarities in every detail.
Fun fact: if you stop the video at 7:58, you can see that the green pickup is actually PULLING the semi trailer sideways! I know because by the bumpers for both the semi trailer and the puckup, a wire can be seen!
In my top 5 of most intense movie scenes. The locker room shooting near the end was shocking. I really wanted that bust to work after watching all the shit they went through to get to that point. Great movie.
The characters in this movie are so fucking real and believable, as opposed to the Schwarzenegger-Stallone action heroes of the '80s (even in good movies)
The cardboard boxes, the truck blocking the road, the guy with the huge beat box on his shoulder grooving on down. A car chase just isn’t a car chase without them all.
When I first saw this I thought it could have been a screw-up in post production where the film was printed wrong causing a left-right image reversal, but all the cars shown have the steering wheel on the left so it had to be filmed with the vehicles driving on the left side of the freeway.
This is an awesome car chase, but what i don't understand is that when he's on the highway, everyone is driving on the wrong side of the road, so basically he's driving on the correct side of the road.
When filming they apparently purposely flipped the direction of the North and Southbound lanes to create even more confusion and disorientation for the viewer...
My parents still live in the same house in Northridge I grew up in from 1979 until I moved out of L.A., and while they were several miles from where the towtruck jumped into the river system at Hayvenhurst, the Northridge Mall was much closer. I had no idea it was even being filmed except one day I saw a couple motorcycle cops escorting a small motorcycle at an intersection with a film trailer in front (being towed by a pickup) on Balboa St. and Nordhoff (near where they jumped the truck). That scene didn't appear in the film.
@@culcune You seem to have a phenomenal memory my good friend 👍👍 Great days 👌 Great moments 👌 Great memories 👌 Where are you right now & what projects are you working on currently 🤔🤔🤔
@@MaxSharma1989 Unfortunately, never got into showbusiness, and am living in Arizona. But, I have a few friends in the L.A. area who do FX (none worked on Terminator) including a couple who worked with Rick Baker until he closed his shop. In fact, one of them won the Oscar for Makeup effects for Darkest Hour, and 2 years later for Bombshell. It is nice going back to visit a few times a year to see my family and friends. I get to live vicariously through my FX friends, lol.
@@culcune Gr8 👍👍👍👍 It really is a pleasure talking to you. You really love the movies just like I do. Rare to find movie lovers in this day & age of Netflix & RU-vid 🙏🙏🙏🙏
I know I'm two years late. That was the case with the most action movies from the earlier years. All of the dangerous sequences and stunts were done after the majority of the movie was filmed, in case of a fatality.
@@Michael_Shoemaker you forget something else, if the lead actor gets injured or has a broken arm, their out of action for like 6 months, and the whole production has to stop, so it makes sense from a production standpoint to hold back on that till the end, and their actors and stuntmen not daredevils, they wouldnt attempt the stunt if they couldnt make it through more than once, as danger is part of the life, fatalaities are not, and it is very rare for anyone to come off permantly hurt or badly injured, let alone dead and evidently as both of you mentioned the F word, they did a very good job convincing you that this wasnt planned and part of a big film production
At first I thought this scene had accidentally gotten reversed left to right in post production like when a negative gets printed with the wrong side up, but I noticed that the steering wheels in the vehicles are on the left side where they are supposed to be. So this is how it was actually filmed with everyone driving in the left lanes of the freeway. Don't know why.
we thought not many people would notice. we had a short piece of freeway under construction that could be entirely closed and filmed, and to retain the refineries in the background determined the choreography of the traffic pattern...
the waterchannel and train..... and yes the red federal car is in san andreas. But the camerawork in this scene is amazingly wellthought and executed. You won't see this often. You can see the actors drive for real, bot internal and external shot
