Put together a list of the best movie taxi chases of all time, and you’ll discover there’s a noticeable lack of material produced in the past 15 years or so. It’s all too easy to understand why, as the rise of Uber and other car-sharing services have done much to wipe the once-dominant taxi off the streets of many major cities, replaced by an endless wave of anonymous automotive appliances grinding out a side-gig buck. (They even made a car-chase movie about that in 2019.) Fortunately, there’s a veritable gold mine out there waiting to be discovered by any film fan willing to close the app, put down their phone, and remember what it was like to stand in the cold and rain at 2:00 am, frantically trying to flag down a ride before you got soaked to the bone…just before you got chased by the bad guys of course.

For a very long time, taxis were ubiquitous in any major city, which meant they could be easily snagged by filmmakers seeking a quick getaway for their protagonist—while also injecting a quick jolt of adrenaline midway through the plot. I put together my picks for the best taxi chases from this bygone era for Driving.ca