Anyone can film a car chase on pavement, but have you ever tried even backing out of a basic parking space after winter weather has dumped two feet of snow on the ground? Perhaps unsurprisingly, few directors have felt the need to tangle with frozen precipitation when filming their own vehicle-to-vehicle action. But the ones that did make it from the script to the screen are well worth the bad memories of spinning tires and black ice that all Canadians carry with them from birth.
Here are our picks for the best winter movie chases of all time.
The Living Daylights (1987)
The car(s): 1985 Aston Martin V8, police-spec Ladas, an East German Sno-Cat The driver(s): Timothy Dalton as James Bond, the elite of the ’80s extra crop.
Why it’s awesome: There are three memorable gadget cars in James Bond history: the original DB5, which introduced machine guns, ejector seats, and all the rest; the Lotus Elise submarine; and the Aston Martin V8 from The Living Daylights. The latter features not just steel-cutting lasers, but somehow a set of ice-skis that allow 007 to escape across a frigid lake.
The chase is also notable for balancing tongue-in-cheek humour (tin-can Lada cut in half by a smirking Bond, using a tire-free wheel to cut a hole in the ice to sink the surviving example of Soviet Bloc engineering) with legitimate cool (blowing up roadblocks with missiles that for some reason need an elaborate targeting sequence to hit a truck located directly in front of them).
Four Brothers (2005)
The car(s): 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, 1977 Chevrolet El Camino
The driver(s): Marky Mark as Bobby, Richard Chevolleau as ‘El Camino Guy’ (no kidding)
Why it’s awesome:Four Brothers is an overlooked John Singleton film that gives us the only chase on this list to take place during a violent snowstorm. In pursuit of their mother’s killers, Marky Mark and his crew of adopted siblings blast through the streets of Detroit behind the wheel of Wahlberg’s beater Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.
Eventually, the assassins are forced into a spin, PIT-maneuver style, before the Olds T-bones the El Camino and sends it flipping to its doom. So what it if most of the maelstrom looks a little too digitally-added? It’s a rare race between two vehicles seldom seen on camera, let alone in the depths of winter.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
The car(s): 1969 Mercury Cougar XR7 convertible, 1963 Mercedes-Benz 220 S
The driver(s): Diana Rigg as Countess Tracy di Vicenzo, Ilse Steppat as Irma Bunt
Why it’s awesome: Let’s be clear — Ilse Steppat isn’t actually driving in this chase so much as she is barking out commands to her henchmen from the rear seat, but that doesn’t make the scene any less thrilling. The Cougar is an underappreciated member of ’60s muscle-car royalty, and the novelty of seeing one in a Bond film — especially one set in Switzerland — adds extra spice to a sequence that sees the two Mercs battle it out on a frozen race track amidst a posse of Minis, Alfa Romeos, and other assorted Euro sports machines. Somehow, both cars keep their ski racks intact right up until the final fireball.
Read The Rest Here: The 6 best winter movie car chases ever filmed.
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