Do you know what I hate? Apart from injustice, horribleness and all of that stuff that FT does not have a blog on which we can rant about it. I hate movies which are solely designed to do one thing not actually doing them. Possibly the nadir of this ill-begotten genre is the car chase movie with no decent car chases in it. And at the very very bottom of this nadir is Shopping: Paul WS Anderson’s first movie. A British film starring Jude Law & Sadie Frost predicated on the, at the time, hot topic of ram-raiding and joyriding. But where was the actual riding. One petty sequence, no real adrenaline fueled chases. It was a dispiriting, and later seen to be asbsoultely typical effort by its director.
I was reminded this by accidentally stumbling across Taxi the other night. Not the French one which has very few redeeming features, but its car stunts are one. Instead this is the remake where Queen Latifah plays the daredevil cabbie speeding around New York. Making it from Manhattan to JFK in an “impossible by helicopter” nine minutes. A film which is designed to revolve around its stunts. And its stunts and driving are so incompetently filmed that you might as well be mocked up with matchbox cars.
It does not help that it is set in New York, predominantly Manhattan. Are there any good car chases set in Manhattan I wonder? It certainly does not hold a candle to Marseilles hills and alleyways as exploited in the French version. You often wonder what San Francisco did to star in so many films? Great for car chases.
Please feel free to suggest other car predicated movies with rubbish chases. As well as Taxi and Shopping can I also add Ronin. Po-faced Bob De Niro rubbish with really flat chases. Bah. Almost as bad as injustice.