More implausible movie chases.....

Maybe we should just title these  "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly".  But that wouldn't be fair to Sergio Leone's masterpiece. I guess the target audience is 12 year old boys that only play video games, and have never seen a car race or a crash of any kind. Anyhow, here's some more with impossible things put on the screen. # 1. "Salt." This spy thriller was supposed to star Tom Cruise as Edwin Salt-who in the book may or may not have been a Russian sleeper spy. When he pulled out they changed the name to Evelyn Salt and cast Angelina Jolie, who after "Tomb Raider", "Wanted", and "Mr and Mrs Smith", apparently has given up serious acting and thinks she's an action hero. It starts out cool enough with Angie, barefoot in her bra and panties, chained up in North Korean dungeon and being brutally beaten, tortured and waterboarded. ( Doubtless Billy Bob Thornton and Jennifer Aniston applauded this scene ) Anyway,that's the high point of the film. Everything from then on is totally implausible. She runs away from about 50 supposedly trained CIA agents who are firing automatic weapons at her and apparently, in spite of all their combat training, can't hit the side of a barn from across the street, except for the black guy who shoots her in the ass as she jumps off a high freeway overpass and lands on top of a semi,not once, but twice, without breaking any bones or sliding off the slick top of the trucks to her death in freeway traffic. Then she steals a motorcycle and eludes about twenty cop cars. She plugs her bullet wound with a tampon in a ladies room, and it's never addressed again. Later, she wrecks a Police Tahoe off an overpass by tazering the driver and even though she's handcuffed in the back seat and not in a seat belt, and the truck fell like 50 feet,   she again doesn't get a scratch. I've had car wrecks on and off the racetrack, and all of these stunts are impossible without you sustaining serious injury and / or totalling the vehicle. Sad, because the book was alright, and the movie might have been cool with the right director.  # 2 "Marked for Death". Steven Seagal martial arts thriller, in which the sinister black 1973 Mach 1 Mustang he's driving gets wrecked between two bulldozers. Then there's a chase where Seagal and Keith David,driving a 1990 Dodge Ramcharger ( the most under-powered, ill-handling vehicle on the planet except for possibly a Suzuki Samurai ) somehow manage to stay up with a BMW 633 CSI.!!!  ( One of the fastest, best handling vehicles on the planet!! ) Of course, the bad guys crash the Bimmer, and Seagal DOESN'T wreck the Ramcharger. Riiight.  # 3. "The Last Stand"  Arnold Schwarzenegger's new action flick. Tongue-in-cheek humor and decent action, until the finale. Drug dealer is making a run for the Mexican border in a stolen ZR1 Corvette. Arnie is the sheriff of the last Arizona town before the border. The wise-ass car dealer just happens to leave Arnie a ZL1 Camaro for the weekend. The gunfight with the dealer's "advance team" is a little over the top, but then comes the chase. A ZL1 Camaro chasing a ZR1 Corvette through a Corn field? I know they grow corn in Iowa and Nebraska, and the midwest, but I didn't know they did in the arid desert of Arizona. Amazingly they don't destroy the undercarriage of these low slung cars in a cornfield, and when the dealer drives the 'Vette UNDER the Camaro and pushes it sideways for a hudred yards, the 'Vette's fiberglass front end doesn't get a scratch, and the Camaro doesn't flip. Then when the dealer and Arnie both hit a tractor at high speed, and the 'Vette is totalled and the top ripped off the Camaro, the airbags don't trigger on either car. Then there's the fight to the finish. When Arnie slams the dealer down on a steel bridge rail with all his might, right on the guys neck at about the C3 vertabrae, he isn't killed or paralyzed from the neck down, he's only stunned. Then when the guy wakes up, and pulls a knife and cuts Arnie's thighs all to hell, ( looked to me light he hit the femoral arteries ) Arnie not only doesn't bleed to death, he doesn't even fall down. The chase and the fight kind of soured it for me. You can make a movie with believable action. Remember the original "Mechanic" with Charles Bronson and Jan-Micheal Vincent? Or "Magnum Force" with Clint Eastwood, or even "Bloodsport" with Jean-Claude Van Damme? Those are reality shows compared to this new dreck. # 4. "Gone in 60 Seconds." Not the H. B. Halicki classic, I mean the awful remake with Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie. First off, the plot stinks. Cage is a retired legendary car thief whose moron brother played by Giovanni Ribisi crosses this badass gangster who exports stolen expensive cars. He demands Cage steal 50 premium cars for him or he's going to kill the stupid brother. Why Cage doesn't call the FBI on this asshole, or since he's also a legendary badass, just put a bullet in the prick's head and mercifully end the movie after about 15 minutes into it. Instead we have two more hours of how quirky and cool Cage and his crew are as they steal the first 49 cars. Then he tries to deliver the 50th, a 1967 Shelby GT500 that's obviously a fake. Then he uses the Mustang to jump about 100 cars across what looks like the Golden Gate bridge. When he lands, instead of the shock towers coming through the hood, the wheels folding under, the engine driving the steering column back and killing the driver with blunt force chest trauma, and the rear end breaking and the leaf springs coming through the trunk and the backseat, ( Which is what would really happen ) he lands like he hit a speed bump at 35 and keeps going. Puhleezze. # 5. "The Transporter." I personally like Jason Statham, but when he crashes a BMW 733i through a concrete overpass wall and doesn't even dent the hood, and lands perfectly on a truck, doesn't slide off and crash or jacknife the truck, I signed off. Come on, guys. Just like the martial-arts movies where Jet Li jumps six feet in the air, rotates his body clockwise, kicks three guys in the face, does a backflip and lands on his feet. It can't be done, we know it can't be done, we know the actor or the stuntman isn't doing it, so why put it on screen? I don't want a video game designed for 8th graders, I want at least believable action. Listen up, Hollywood, people aren't going to stand for this sub-par crap anymore.  Mastermind                     _