There’s no thrill in cinema quite as purely visceral as a great car chase. Tires screeching, crunching metal, imminent disaster—you know the drill.
Comics had been staging chases for laughs since the days of the Keystone Kops, but the movies’ modern-day car chase as we know it didn’t really come about until 1968’s Bullitt, when director Peter Yates strapped a camera to Steve McQueen’s Mustang and tore through the hills of San Francisco. Every picture on this list owes it a debt, whether paid in reverence or in defiance. Buckle up.
10. One Battle After Another (2025, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
9. The Matrix Reloaded (2003, dir. Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski)
8. The Driver (1978, dir. Walter Hill)
7. Duel (1971, dir. Steven Spielberg)
6. To Live and Die in L.A. (1985, dir. William Friedkin)
5. Bullitt (1968, dir. Peter Yates)
4. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991, dir. James Cameron)
3. Ronin (1998, dir. John Frankenheimer)
2. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015, dir. George Miller)
1. The French Connection (1971, dir. William Friedkin)
Honorable mention: Baby Driver (2017, dir. Edgar Wright), The Blues Brothers (1980, dir. John Landis), The Bourne Supremacy (2004, dir. Paul Greengrass), Death Proof (2007, dir. Quentin Tarantino), Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974, dir. John Hough), Diva (1981, dir. Jean-Jacques Beineix), Drive (2011, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn), Gone in 60 Seconds (1974, dir. H.B. Halicki), The Italian Job (1969, dir. Peter Collinson), Vanishing Point (1971, dir. Richard C. Sarafian)
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 