I saw a post on my Facebook feed the other day, something like: “The Australian movie Son Of A Gun has good SUVs and Ewan McGregor.” Needing no further sales pitch, I found the movie and watched it. Don’t, it sucks, but the Land Cruiser/Nissan Patrol chase is awesome and you can watch that here.
This flick came out in 2015, and basically the story is that Obi Wan’s a hardened criminal who recruits this younger dude to break him out of prison and then help with a heist. Then their plan is to steal gold from one of the mines in Kalgoorlie, Australia. I’m not sure what the feasibility of such an operation would be in real life, but Kalgoorlie is a real place and it is indeed home to some mind-bogglingly large gold mines. These are the kind of places where those house-sized dump trucks get put to work.
Behold, the Super Pit!
If you couldn’t be bothered to watch that clip from Western Australia’s tourism channel, it’s mentioned that gold mine security includes gold-sniffing dogs among its theft countermeasures. These are not seen in the Son Of A Gun clip. What you do see are police vehicles with “GOLD DETECTION UNIT” emblazoned on the doors. That, too, is a real thing.
The Australian state of WA’s police force does indeed have a Gold Stealing Detection Unit and it’s tasked with, you guessed it, keeping gold from getting stolen.
I’ve already given you way more context about what makes this chase scene cool than the movie does. Son Of A Gun has a few interesting ideas but ultimately features very little actually happening for two hours.
As for the vehicles, the main getaway car is a 100-Series Land Cruiser with a few off-road mods (and a drift car e-brake setup, I suppose?) while the pursuing police come after McGregor and company in Nissan Patrols. None of these vehicles are really in the movie outside this scene, so if you enjoyed the clip, unfortunately what you see is all we get.
I’m always a fan of good car casting, though. And this scene nails that. Also, the Kalgoorlie pursuit was shot on-location!