When you think about Soviet cinema, I’m guessing you tend to picture ponderous WWII epics or maybe Solaris. What you probably aren’t imagining are wild car chases, but you’d be wrong! There were some pretty good car chases in Soviet movies, but the one I want to show you is this one from a cop movie called Petrovka 38, because it has a chase scene that may be the Eastern Bloc’s closest rival to the famous scene in Bullitt.
Here’s the scene; for your reference, the taxi in the chase is a 1980s GAZ 24 Volga, which does a lot of arse-hauling and getting the crap beaten out of it, and the black cop car is, um, also a GAZ 24 Volga. These cars were sort of hard to get for most Soviet citizens, and were mostly used by official agencies. Think of them as a Soviet Crown Vic, sorta.
Anyway, here’s the scene:
Pretty good, right?
By the way, that blueish van that sort of looks like a microbus that almost tips over is a RAF 977 Latvia. Look how awesome these things looked:
I’d love one of those.