It's known for the car chase (watch it here). Sometimes known as the best car chase ever, it involves a car trying to race an elevated train to the next station. The car is driven through intersections without regard to traffic laws or safety. I think it's overrated. One detail that impress me though, according to Wikipedia:
Many of the shots in the scene were "real", in that Hackman actually drove the car at high speeds through uncontrolled traffic and red lights (legendary stunt driver Bill Hickman, who also had a small role in the film as FBI agent Mulderig, handled many others and outlined the entire chase with Friedkin and D'antoni), with Friedkin running a camera from the backseat while wrapped in a carpet for protection. The production team received no prior permission from the city for such a dangerous stunt, but they had the creative consulting and clout provided to them by Eddie EganSonny Grosso, (which allowed normal protocol for location shooting like permits and scheduling to be circumvented) and the only precaution taken was to place a "gumdrop" police siren on the car's roof and blare the horn. Other shots involved stunt drivers who were supposed to barely miss hitting the speeding car, but due to errors in timing accidental collisions occurred and were left in the final film.Holy cats! Can you imagine how much trouble a film crew would get in if they just ran crazy through traffic today? (Insert Lindsay Lohan joke here.)
This movie really put Gene Hackman on the map. (Roy Scheider, too, but he hasn't quite enjoyed the career trajectory that Hackman has.) It's hard (for me at least) to think of Hackman as a hard drinking, womanizing, tough guy cop.
A good movie for it's type but not a great one.
No comments:
Post a Comment