Remember when they ‘blew up’ this Keys bridge? Hollywood loves the Overseas Highway

The Florida Keys have long provided a backdrop of sand, sun and blue waters for movies, TV and commercials.

And the Overseas Highway has played a role in many box office hits, most famously when Hollywood film director James Cameron and crew decided to “blow up” the old Seven Mile Bridge in the 1994 Arnold Schwarzenegger action classic “True Lies.”

The James Bond film “Licence to Kill” also made use of the old bridge.

But despite the title, one movie not on the list: the 1948 film noir Key Largo, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. That’s because it was filmed entirely in California at Hollywood studios, according to Keys historians Jerry Wilkinson and Brad Bertelli, although director John Huston found inspiration at the local Caribbean Club during a trip while working on the screenplay.

“The highway scenes were a combination of models and the Pacific Coast Highway along the Pacific Ocean,” Wilkinson wrote in 2011.

Here’s a look at some of the movies that looked to U.S. 1 in the Keys for inspiration.

‘True Lies’

Pretty much the king of all movies shot in the Keys, this Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster made such a realistic spectacle of blowing up the old Seven Mile Bridge that news outlets wrote stories to reassure the public it was only special effects.

The twin-span Seven Mile Bridge that replaced the old one, built in the early 1900s and put out of service by 1982, makes appearances in the explosive chase scene. But it is the old bridge along which the bad guys are driving when they are being tracked by Harry Tasker (Arnold) and company.

“The highway sequence was a logistical horror,” the film’s director of photography, Russell Carpenter, told American Cinematographer magazine in 2020. “The authorities closed off a three-mile section of the bridge. Luckily, we found an old stretch of highway that paralleled the new stretch, and we did all of our major stunt work there. There was also a section of bridge that had been removed so that boats could get through. Jim saw it and said, ‘Hey, let’s just build our own bridge and explode it!’ ”

In the end, Cameron decided to make a miniature of the bridge to detonate.

‘Licence to Kill’

This 1989 entry in the James Bond film series is a mini-tour of Key West. Timothy Dalton is 007, and he starts things off by arriving by parachute to the St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church, which in 2012 was designated a basilica.

But one of the movie’s most memorable action scenes takes place on the old Seven Mile Bridge.

That’s where the villain, the drug lord Franz Sanchez, makes an escape from police custody. The escape involves a van plunging into the ocean while the bridge becomes a staging area for the police response and as Bond seeks revenge.

‘2 Fast 2 Furious’

The Fast and the Furious franchise chose South Florida as the setting for the first sequel of the stylized car-chase saga.

While the 2003 film’s famous big bridge jump didn’t take place in the Keys, one scene features the Seven Mile Bridge, and a remarkable sunset, as a backdrop for the bromance between the characters Roman and Brian.

The pair work out their differences in a rather soft scene.

But did the sunset scene behind actors Tyrese Gibson and Paul Walker really come from a local film shoot or could it have been computer-generated imagery?

The crew did film in the Keys, said Rita Troxel, who was then the film commissioner for the Monroe County Tourist Development Council. She was on set for some of it, but says she doesn’t remember every location.

“But most probably if they were here, they would not have CGI’d the Seven Mile [Bridge] scene,” Troxel said. “They would have shot it while here.”

‘Bloodline’

The Upper Keys played a starring role in “Bloodline,” the Netflix series that details the haunted past of one extremely shady family, the Rayburns.

As the Rayburn siblings learn one nightmarish secret after another, they move about the Keys through the drama’s three seasons.

Islamorada’s The Moorings Village and Resort doubled as the family’s hotel.

Other Keys locations included Anne’s Beach, Robbie’s Marina, the Oceanview Inn and Pub, the Green Turtle Inn, Alabama Jack’s restaurant on Card Sound Road, the Caribbean Club in Key Largo and Long Key State Park near mile marker 67.5.

“It’s an iconic location,” Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. “The one thing that’s cool about Netflix shows is that those locations are characters.”

This story was originally published October 24, 2021 at 6:00 AM.

Gwen Filosa

Miami Herald

Gwen Filosa covers Key West and the Lower Florida Keys for FLKeysNews.com and the Miami Herald and lives in Key West. She was part of the staff at the New Orleans Times-Picayune that in 2005 won two Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of Hurricane Katrina. She graduated from Indiana University.