Haven't seen The Seven-Ups (1973) in years, I forgot how awesome the 10+ min car chase scene through Manhattan was. If we tried this stuff with our modern cars- the scene would only run 60 seconds of so before the airbags went off or the car fell apart! It's amazing what they did to these vehicles. Enjoy.....
It was a good car chase. And I must say, I really liked the lack of music telling me that I should be excited, like you get in most modern car chases. I wouldn't have fancied trying to drive either of those cars at speed, though. I think my favourite car chase is the one from Ronin. It helps that they were using more agile cars.
^ Ronin insane chase scene! When you look at the comments on IMDB- The Seven-Ups, Ronin and Bullitt (1968) are the three movies that seem to jockey for position as greatest car chase scene ever.
And isn't it much more exciting? Even though you know they're stunt men (or French taxi drivers?) and probably wrote off more cars than was good for them, the final edit is exciting. Now think of the same with cgi: car flies through the air with driver hanging out of window shooting at his followers with pinpoint accuracy. He then leaps from the car whilst it's still in the air landing on the wing of a passing jet fighter. Yawwwn. CGI in a car chase isn't exciting, it 's just bollox. It has a place like in Avatar but used to excess to add excitement just makes a boring movie. Unfortuntely many directors seem to use it to excess. A gripping car chase is either Ronin or Bullit. Love the crazyness of Ronin and the big block V8's on Bullit.
Supposedly in the Bullitt chase the Charger (440 Magnum) driver had to back off the gas several times in order to let the Mustang (GT390) catch up. Sorry Ford..... I much prefer the real stuff vs CGI too as you get a real sense of danger seeing how they throw these cars around without much regard. FWIW- the same driver Bill Hickman, drove the getaway cars in Bullitt, The French Connection and the Seven-Up's.
