The worst action movie chases......

Since we did the best movie chases people also are interested in the worst ones. I've touched on these a couple years ago, but it's worth re-visiting. You wonder what the directors are thinking. Don't they look at "Dailys" and go wait a minute-"That looks like shit, and it's totally impossible".  "Maybe we ought to re-think it." Apparently not. Anyhow here's my opinion of the worst. # 1. "Wanted" Even a briefly naked Angelina Jolie couldn't save this this stinker. Jolie and Morgan Freeman telling James Macavoy to "Curve the bullet"? Shooting bullets around corners? Everyone knows a bullet goes in a straight line until it hit's something or eventually runs out of energy and drops to earth! Ugh!  Worse than that, early on there's a chase scene where Jolie and James Macavoy are in a DODGE VIPER!! and their being pursued by a guy in a UPS type step van!! Really??  The Viper would leave the van by 30 car lengths in a block and be out of sight leaving the van driver scratching his head as to which way they went!!  But no, the van stays with the Viper for several minutes. Gag, retch, puke. And then it goes downhill from there. Really. At the end Jolie kills herself and several other people by shooting a bullet that goes in a complete circle and through several people's head, including hers. 1st off-again-you don't have to be a firearms expert to know bullets only travel in a straight line. Secondly-A hollow-point bullet mushrooms on impact, so it probably wouldn't have left the first guys skull, it would have just turned his brains to mush. If it was a full metal jacket bullet, It might have over-penetrated and went through the first guys head, but after plowing in and out of a hard human skull and through three lbs of brain tissue, it's trajectory would have been crazily skewed-there's no way to predict where it would have went next, and it certainly would have been slowed enough that it wouldn't have enough energy to penetrate and exit 3 or 4 more skulls!!!  The only thing stupider that I ever saw in a movie was in Rambo: First Blood Part II, where Stallone shoots down the Russian fighter plane from inside a Huey helicopter with a Law's Rocket. A Law's rocket has a backblast of 55 feet-so he just blew the ass end off his own helicopter and killed his crew!!  But not in the movies. I've said before-I'll give a certain amount of suspension of disbelief-like for James Bond's gadgets-but when something is absolutely impossible-why put it on screen?  Like I said, even Angie's bare ass couldn't salvage this one.  # 2. "Marked for Death". This Steven Seagal stinker really irritated me. Seagal plays a DEA agent who's suspended after a sting in Mexico goes sideways. He goes home to visit his sister in Chicago. Except the old neighborhood has been taken over by Jamaican drug dealers. He's driving a sinister black 1973 Mach 1 Mustang with American Racing wheels on it, so I'm figuring at some point there might be a chase. The Mustang gets wrecked between two big trucks-a total rip-off of John Wayne's "McQ" where his T/A gets totaled. The chase is later and Seagal and his buddy are driving a Dodge Ramcharger SUV-an underpowered, ill handling 4wd truck. There chasing drug dealers in a BMW 633CSI-a fast, great handling sports car. The BMW would leave that truck in a heart beat. And even if the RamCharger had a 440 in it-a 4wd Dodge truck is no match for a BMW around corners!!  The Bimmer would dust it and be gone in two blocks!!  Why they didn't have him chasing the Bimmer in the Mustang, and then wreck it later, I don't know. Anyhow the chase and the whole movie sucked.  # 3. "Cobra".  Riding high after releasing "Rocky" and "Rambo" sequels that were blockbusters in 1985-Sylvester Stallone stepped on his dick with this stinker. He plays Marion Cobretti a badass detective who's a member of the "Zombie Squad"- the guys called out as a last resort-sort of a badder than SWAT team. Stallone swaggers through the film wearing mirrored sunglasses and leather gloves-even when eating pizza and watching TV at home-and carries a pearl-handled, cocked and locked Colt .45 automatic with a Cobra snake emblazoned on the grips, stuffed down his pants by his dick. We never see it in a holster. Another totally implausible scene is where he bumps a custom '64 Impala low-rider out of a parking space and then rips the t-shirt of the driver. Not only do the 6 gang-bangers in the car NOT kick the shit out of him, or stab or shoot him,they don't trash his car after he swagger's away. Because he's such a badass, right? Anyhow, A group of crazies are ax-murdering people trying to create a "New World". This is never explained. Brigitte Nielsen plays a woman who is the only witness to these heinous crimes and Stallone and Reni Santoni ( who was Clint Eastwood's partner in the 1st "Dirty Harry" ) are charged with protecting her. The awful chase features Stallone driving a souped-up '50 Ford hot rod with nitrous, that apparently can't out run a 318 4-door Plymouth Volare!!!  Seriously. Ugh. Stallone single-handedly takes out about 50 guys including the ringleader, and then rides away with Nielsen on a Harley taken from one of the dead bad guys, after slugging another cop he doesn't like. Okay.  # 4. "Get Carter" I'm really not picking on Sly, people. I loved "Rocky", I thought "Nighthawks" was under-rated, "Demolition Man" was hilarious, and the "Expendables" flicks were entertaining. I'm actually looking forward to the new "Rambo" flick.  But I was really disappointed in this 2000 remake of the 1971 classic starring Michael Caine. In the original Carter kills 3 people and has phone-sex with Britt Eklund in the first 15 minutes. Now that's a start to an action flick!  Carter is a hitman who returns to London to investigate the death of his brother, who was an upstanding citizen. He finds out his baby bro was killed because he found out other gangsters had forced his daughter-Carter's niece-who's really HIS daughter we find out-into doing a porn movie, and threatened to go to the police. Carter and his brother's wife had a thing before his brother married her. The wife and Carter never told the brother the kid wasn't his, and they never told the girl either. Carter kicks the hell out of the London underworld and dies in a blaze of glory at the end. I was actually thinking the remake might be good. I was wrong. Instead of a hitman, Sly is a "Collector" for a Vegas loan-shark / casino owner. He finds out his brother has been killed in Seattle and goes to investigate, against his mobster boss's wishes. And he's having an affair with the boss's girlfriend. Smart. His sister-in-law hates him, and they never explain or even imply that the "niece" is really Carter's kid, which I felt was important. Also the brother was cheating on his wife with the smokin' hot Rhona Mitra who's totally wasted in her few scenes and later murdered. Stallone again swaggers through this film wearing mirrored sunglasses and an Armani suit, and threatening people by telling them he's going to take things to another level. However he never takes things to the next level.  Anyway there's not one, but two awful chases. One between a bad guy driving a 1980 Volvo and Carter, driving a stolen '80's Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham D' Elegance-you know the rear wheel drive model that looked like a '79, but unlike the '79 that had 425 cubes under the hood, had an anemic 4.1 liter V8-that slug?  Anyhow this one ends with the Volvo crashing and the airbag triggering. On a 1980 Volvo???  The other one is between Sly driving a rental 2000 Seville STS and John C. McGinley-Sly's co-worker who ratted him out to the boss and is supposed to bring him back to Vegas to face the music. He's driving an '70's Jaguar XJ6 or maybe it's an XJ12-it's hard to tell. But the 320 hp Northstar Caddy with 235/60R16 ZR rated tires would have easily left the underpowered Jag that's riding on S-rated 205 / 70R15 Dunlops!!  Anyhow they run around and finally play "Chicken" and the Jag crashes. There's a totally unrealistic fight between him and Mickey Rourke, and of course he doesn't die at the end and has a cutesy good-bye with his niece at his brother's grave. Not even close to the original. Only Jason Statham's bastardization of the Charles Bronson classic "The Mechanic" was worse. Like I said, I usually like Stallone, but in these two flicks he bombed. # 5. The "Driver" This 1978 action flick starred Ryan O'Neal as a professional getaway driver that gangsters hired to drive them away from bank robberies, etc. Bruce Dern was a cop obsessed with catching him. Good automotive action early on in a '78 LTD and a great scene where he destroys a Mercedes in a parking garage while the gangsters in the backseat scream like schoolgirls. It goes off the rails in the finale. O' Neal is driving a '78 Chevy Stepside pickup with a granny-gear 4-speed. He's chasing a guy in a '76 Trans-Am. Really??  If the truck was a 454 / automatic it might have been close in a drag race, but around corners?  The T/A would leave him in two blocks. The sad thing is-earlier in the film O'Neal was driving a '77 Firebird. If he was chasing the T/A in that it would have been believable. But the granny-geared ( have you ever tried to shift one of those quickly? ) truck??  Puhleeeze.  Of course the guy in the T/A crashes, and O' Neal doesn't. Right.  Let me know if I missed any other stinkers. Mastermind