Movies about transportation gone wild

This is perhaps the quintessential example of this type of film. Thanks to a bomb rigged to it, a bus in Los Angeles cannot go slower than 50 miles per hour. The bulk of the movie is dedicated to a bus hurtling through L.A., piloted by the pair of Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. It helped make both of them bigger stars. We really would have liked to include “Speed 2: Cruise Control” to bolster our water-based entries, but couldn’t really justify it.

Tony Scott could be an overly bombastic filmmaker, but “Unstoppable” rides the line perfectly. An unmanned train gets lose and becomes, ahem, unstoppable. It’s gripping and intense, and Denzel Washington is great as a wizened veteran of the tracks who helps save the day.

Yes, this is a comedy. An absurd one at that. Maybe we should have gone with “Zero Hour!,” the 1957 film that “Airplane!” heavily parodies, right down to the exclamation mark in the title. However, which of those two movies is a classic about avoiding an airplane disaster? If you say “Zero Hour!” well, surely you can’t be serious.

Two adventurous rabble rousers take on a bet to get a truckful of (illegal) beer across the south. To keep the police off the truck’s tail, Burt Reynolds, aka “The Bandit,” has to keep them occupied with his slick, speedy car. We have trucks, sports cars, and police cars all involved in vehicular madness. No wonder they made so many sequels.

This is not just an iconic silent film. Buster Keaton’s movie is also one of the godfathers of transportation run amok. The titular General is a train that has been hijacked, and Keaton’s character is trying to recover it. Is it a little weird that the hijacker is a Union soldier who does it to thwart the Confederacy, and Keaton is trying to stop him? Sure, but it’s perhaps the quintessential action comedy of the silent era.

“Fury Road” has never been a more fitting subtitle. This movie is full of vehicles racing across the desert. It’s some of the most gripping filmmaking you will ever see, and its mostly built around souped-up cars and trucks chasing each other down. This is probably the best movie for car chases ever made.

Of the “airplane disaster” films that “Airplane!” parodies, “Airport” is probably the best of the bunch. It’s one of those classic disaster films of the era laden with stars. Among the cast was Helen Hayes, who actually won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for this movie.

You know the story of Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger. He averted disaster by landing a damaged plane on the Hudson River, saving every soul on board. Naturally, this event received a movie adaptation. Also naturally, Tom Hanks stars as Sully.

How could we not include a movie literally called “Runaway Train.” The transportation gone wild is right in the title! The film is about two convicts and an assistant train driver stuck on, well, a runaway train in Alaska. Critics liked it, and both Jon Voight and Eric Roberts got Oscar nominations.

A movie about a cross-country car race would be a sensible choice for a list like this to begin with. However, this is also an action comedy. It’s extra chaotic, and that made it a must-have for this list.

Frankly, any of the movies from the “Fast & Furious” series would be an option for this list. That being said, we wanted to choose one to represent them all. We went with “Fast Five,” because many consider it the best of the series, and also it’s when the series really ramped the action up to the next level.

A plane being hijacked is one thing. But the President’s plane? That’s what happens in classic ‘90s action film “Air Force One.” The strength of this film is in the cast. Harrison Ford plays the president, and Gary Oldman plays the lead terrorist.

Liam Neeson has made so many action films at this point. Many of them involve transportation. That includes “Non-Stop,” which got plenty of love from “Key & Peele.” This is another plane film, with Neeson playing an air marshal tracking down a killer.

It seems like in every submarine movie something is amiss. That’s definitely the case in “Crimson Tide,” another Tony Scott movie starring Denzel Washington. A lot of the film is about a clash between Washington and Hackman on whether or not to fire on a Russian submarine. In the interim, though, there are mutinies and a sub that is going full steam ahead toward chaos.

At no time are the bikes running amok or out of control in “Premium Rush.” That being said, this is a movie that is mostly Joseph Gordon-Levitt speeding through travel in New York on his bike. Also, it’s legitimately a good, exciting thriller. You should definitely give it a watch if you haven’t. There’s non-stop transportation in action.

This is a classic ‘70s drama. Some criminals hijack a subway train and hold it, and its passengers, for ransom. Now, the train is stationary for a chunk of the film, but then it’s set racing down the tracks. This movie is subway-heavy enough for this list.

Granted, most of us will never be transported by a spacecraft, but a spacecraft is still a type of transportation. It also sometimes doesn’t work perfectly. “Gravity” is built on that, and it throws you in headfirst. Sandra Bullock’s acting and Alfonso Cuaron’s direction drive this fantastic thriller that really popped on the big screen.

A lot of movies have great car chases, but they aren’t about transportation. Take “Bullitt,” for example, or “The French Connection.” “The Italian Job” has some great car chases. It’s also all about the cars, and there are a lot of them. The remake from the 2000s is decent as well.

What if you couldn’t speed around in your vehicle? Could it still be exciting? “The Wages of Fear” decidedly says, “Yes.” This French film is about four men hired to drive two trucks on treacherous mountain roads to help deal with an oil well fire. What are they carrying to help with that fire? A bunch of nitroglycerin, which is of course highly unstable. “The Wages of Fear” won the highest honor at both the Berlin Film Festival and Cannes.

A lot of these transportation films were basically pitched as “’Die Hard’ on a…” films. “Speed” is “’Die Hard’ on a bus” and so on. “Die Hard 2” deserved to get in on that action. It takes the “Die Hard” ethos, and also John McClane, and brings it into the world of planes. Sure, it’s not as good as the original, but half these movies may not be here if not for “Die Hard.”