Almost 30 Years Later, The Greatest Car Chase In Movie History Has Never Been Overtaken

Published Aug 29, 2026, 12:20 PM EDT

Padraig is a Senior Features Writer and has been part of Screen Rant since 2017. Padraig is a writer, editor and retired Game of Thrones extra who has been writing about movies and TV online for over a decade. He has also written for The Irish Times, Den Of Geek, Little White Lies and many more. It's pronounced Paw-rick, BTW.

Nearly 30 years after this Robert De Niro action thriller debuted, its incredible car chases have yet to be topped. Any list discussing the best movie car chases is often easy to predict, since the likes of Bullitt, The French Connection and To Live and Die in L.A. will always arrive on top. It's interesting to note that the greatest chases often happened before the arrival of CG too.

The Fast & Furious movies or the Extraction series still feature some crunchy chase scenes, but there's an unmistakable air of computer-generated assistance to many of them. Before the advent of CGI, filmmakers had to work with real-world physics and talented stunt drivers when it came to filming these setpieces, which includes one of the last of that era, 1998's Ronin.

Helmed by the late, great John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate), this moody thriller cast Robert De Niro and Jean Reno as mercenaries hired to steal a briefcase with myterious contents. The movie is the best of both worlds, feeling like a gritty 1970s-style thriller that also felt very modern. It also contained two of the best car chases of the past 30 years.

Ronin Raised The Bar For Car Chases After Bullitt & The French Connection

Frankenheimer was very much an old-school filmmaker, and brought that sensibility to Ronin. It's a slickly made actioners, but it's not flashy either. It has no slow-motion action, no quick-cut edits and if there is any CGI in the entire film employed, it's nearly invisible. For these chases, Frankenheimer wanted to avoid CG at all costs, and storyboarded everything extensively.

Ronin has three James Bond villains amongst its cast: Sean Bean (GoldenEye), Michael Lonsdale (Moonraker) and Jonathan Pryce (Tomorrow Never Dies).

Much of the actual driving was handled by stunt people, who were really driving at the high speeds shown in the movie. In many shots, the drivers were hidden inside the vehicles, while it was made to appear the actors were driving. That's one reason the chases are so exhilarating in Ronin, as there is very little cheating happening. Audiences are watching real cars going real fast, while the mildly terrified actors try to look cool.

In keeping with Frankenheimer wanting to keep things simple, the Nice or Paris chases have little in the way of music either. It's the mix of editing and sound effects that makes these setpieces so thrilling, and they really do evoke the classic sequences seen in the likes of The French Connection.

There've Been Great Car Chases Since, But Nothing Beats Ronin's

Despite being one of Robert De Niro's best movies of the '90s, Ronin did tepid business, netting around $70 million on a $55 million budget (via Box Office Mojo). That said, it became a beloved film in the decades that followed thanks to the advent of DVD and Blu-ray. It was one of the last truly practical action movies, and it stands head and shoulders above most modern-day blockbusters for that reason.

That's not to say there haven't been some superb chases since the 2000s began. Mad Max: Fury Road is pretty much a two-hour chase, and it's never less than incredible. The Matrix Reloaded might be highly flawed, but its freeway chase is undeniable, while the Batmobile sequence from 2022's The Batman was expertly staged. Still, none of them come close to outracing Ronin.

It should be stated that, even without these action scenes, the movie would rock. It's got a killer cast - including Sean Bean and Stellan Skarsgård - a great screenplay penned by David Mamet (under a pseudonym, for some reason), and an engrossing story. The car chases are the cherry on top, where Frankenheimer flexed his muscles for staging heart-racing setpieces without a frame of CG included.

The only real flaw of Ronin's car chases is that when De Niro's character Sam leans out to fire a rocket launcher, he's replaced by one of the most obvious stunt doubles in screen history. That aside, these sequences are textbook examples of how these kinds of scenes should be shot and edited.

Source: Ronin's Director's Commentary, Box Office Mojo