#CarChase

Very few people enjoy Canadian films, and there’s damn good reason for it. Public funding is heavily bureaucratized, giving birth to movies essentially “filmed by committee.” Artsy, yes. Depressing? Very often so. But Scandinavia already has that covered!

This wasn’t the case in the glorious, sleazy 1970s. For a brief era, Canada was a free-wheeling, balls-out orgy of low-grade filmmaking, all thanks to insane tax write-offs. Slasher flicks and soft-core porn, lewd sex comedies and gritty crime dramas, this era had it all — and most of it was awful.

One film crew, who probably saw Bullitt way too many times, knew what audiences — American audiences especially — wanted to see, and set about filming one of the most un-Canadian films ever shot north of the border.

They also produced one of the greatest and least-known car chases ever filmed.

Of all the Bond movies, there’s no doubt Goldfinger is the most iconic. Glamorous women, exotic locales, evil (and expendable) henchmen, nifty gadgets galore, and cars, cars, cars.

The 1964 film created the template for the movie franchise, and provided us with timeless images of vehicles we’ll probably never own in places we’ll probably never drive.

The man behind the movie, director Guy Hamilton, shuffled off this mortal coil yesterday at the age of 93. Though his career includes such classics as The Third Man, we can’t remember that film containing an ejection seat-equipped Aston Martin.

To those of us in the United States the idea of a police checkpoint is repugnant, but for much of the world it’s an everyday event. During my time in Japan, I experienced the process several times and the procedure was always the same. A police taskforce rolled in, set up a blockade and traffic slowed to a crawl while officers on foot spoke with each driver. Once in a while, a driver was directed to pull into a special area off to the side and most people did just what they were told. Non compliance would bring the wrath of a dozen baton-wielding cops and anyone who tried to run would be chased down by one of the police bikes that sat waiting and ready at the far side of the blockade.

The Korean police checkpoint in the video above seems to work in much the same way. The only thing lacking, it appears, are the chase vehicles. Of course, when you have a civilian in a Porsche GT3RS willing to run down your suspect, maybe you don’t need to make the investment.