How stupid was the RC Car Chase?
I thought the whole sequence where they were chased by the Remote Control Car was about as dumb as any in the five movies.
shareThat was the best ever.
shareThat was the highlight of the movie.
All business.
MovieChat Forums > The Dead Pool (1988) Discussion > How stupid was the RC Car Chase?
Ya, I'll agree it was a little lame, at how well he handled the car while he was driving. Did not understand how, when Harry drove directly over the car, it just blew the front end up. Kind of weak.
shareWatch more closely: after the RC car faceoff, as the bomb runs under Harry's car Harry reverses rapidly. As a result, the blast is into the engine compartment, not into the passenger compartment, and they are partly screened by the engine block and the bulkhead. Hence the frontal chest injury to Harry's partner, rather than massive lower-body injuries and burns to both. Credible? Well, if you believed the RC car chase... ;-)
shareI thought it was cool. How often do you see that? It was a *different* car chase. An RC car full of C4. Chased and menaced by a toy. I thought it was original and clever. And entertaining.
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"Do you know what a lawman is, Crowe? He is a killer of men" Jared Maddox in "Lawman"
It was entertaining, but it was unfortunately done at the cost of a big loophole. I am talking about the moments just before the explosion when Harry and his partner were boxed into that dead end, and the RC car was approaching them slowly. Why didn't they shoot the RC car? Of course it would have spoiled the fun of the scene, but does anyone see any other feasible reason I might have missed?
It was ridiculously far fetched, but a really fun and exciting action scene.
shareFunny isn't it?
We all (I include myself) find the RC Car chase far fetched.
But then we swallow so much implausibility in action movies without batting an eyelid!
Maybe we need to remember to put our brains in "Park" (neutral for those with manual gear change) mode before watching an action movie.
Well it was better than the remote-controlled car bits in Striking Distance, that's for sure.
"Fu*k! Why can't I ever say what I really mean?"
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I find it hard to believe a toy car could match a real car for speed over that distance. Also, the villain is driving his own car at speed while at the same time controlling the toy car over terrain he can't see. And when the toy car takes the pavement, it never hits anyone or anything and people just jump out of the way, rather than stopping it.
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How'd they wind up in the alley? I forgot. Was it Harry's intent to dead-end themselves and force the killer's hand? Seems odd that an experienced cop would let himself get boxed in by accident in his own city.
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Yes, that's what exactly I thought - surely one of them would have been able to shoot the car. Or else run down the alley. Ridiculous, but entertaining.
shareAre you kidding? It was the most original car chase scene ever filmed at that time. Very creative.
shareYou're all wrong. It was obvious that the Lilliputians had harry's name on their Dead Pool list and wanted him out. They were gonna get him kamikaze style.
Harry's partners
Dirty Harry - latino and white
Magnum Force - black
The Enforcer - white and woman
Sudden Impact - none
The Dead Pool - asian
Sorry, Harry's partners misses out white male (Enforcer) and Black male - and maybe dog (Sudden Impact)
shareHarry does have a partner in Sudden Impact -- Horace (played by Albert Popwell, who appeared in every DH film before this one, as Mustapha, Bradford Dilman's "black militant" in the Enforcer, as the pimp with the Drano can in Magnum Force, and as the first "do you feel lucky, punk" bank robber in Dirty Harry). But in Sudden Impact Harry is suspended from the SFPD and goes to Carmel on vacation where he runs into Sondra Locke's revenge play. So he has Horace meet him at a gun range there (I can't remember if he's there testing the .45 auto or if Horace brings it to him). The scene is played for suspense with Horace being made to look like a bad guy sneaking up on Harry until Harry wheels and draws down on him before realizing who he is. Soon after, the evil rape-gang murders Horace, which upsets Harry . . . until he sees that they have also injured his bulldog, and then he really gets peesed.
In America, nothing is lower than a dog killer.
I don't see why they didn't just get out of the car when they turned that last corner and were blocked by the semi-trailer. They could've just got out and ran away. What difference would it have made? They still wouldn't have known who was after them.
Really, the most ridiculous thing was that the bad guy could drive the car AND the RC car at the same time, avoiding accidents for both vehicles. I mean, when the RC car was on the sidewalk and all the people were jumping out of the way, I was laughing my ass off. Why were they scared of an RC car?!? They didn't know it was full of explosives! All it had to do was run into a table leg or a lamp post or a person's foot who wasn't paying attention and the chase was over. Sort of ridiculous to me... and utterly forgettable.
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I don't know that Ebert's comments were meant to be complimentary. It did wind up laughable, if not intentionally funny.
shareI recall thinking it was pretty dumb at the time I saw it in the theater, and I think I even knew that it was a direct parody of the chase in Bullitt, long hailed as the greatest chase on film.
Of course, I also thought that the Jim-Carrey-as-Axl-Rose opening was pretty stupid. I quickly wrote the film off as a clumsy self-parody of the earlier Dirty Harry movies.
I thought it was a "Bullitt" parody as well. Frankly, scenes of San Francisco car chases have gotten very old after all the imitations, but this film puts a fresh, inventive and humorous spin on it. I loved those sequences.
shareIt was the best scene in the movie! Memorable, funny. Unique. It's the Dirty Harry's "Crop Duster scene- North By Northwest."
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Totally hilarious! A 4-door Oldsmobile chased by a little black Corvette chased by a Monte Carlo...you gotta love it. Especially when the little Corvette spins out and hits a curb, then gets back up and pops a wheelie down the road. Classic.
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are you serious- i thought that was just Awesome, As i built an exact replica of that black stingray vette team associated rc10- except i did not blow it up just put up in a display case - heck even my wife thinks its hot!! i mean come on - while i will grant the story line may not have been excellent it was not bad not too mention you get a legend in movies such as Clint Eastwood, lots of guns blazin, some cool lines, a bit of romance, and one of the greatest car scenes in history that involves a remote control car - talk about Fun!
shareInterestingly, there's an identical gimmick involving remote-controlled cars filled with explosives in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Grey Ghost".
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I thought that was some funny ass sht.....I only wish the batteries my rc cars had when I was a kid would last that long.
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Throughout the chase, and then especially when they all stop in the alley, I kept wondering why they didn't just step out of the car and walk away.
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