This was inspired by the thread discussing the recent movie Kick Ass. It seems that fight scenes in movies are getting more and more exaggerated these days, when even an “ordinary” person can withstand things that would kill IRL (example: the latest Sherlock Holmes movie directed by Guy Ritchie).
With that being said, what action movies can you name where the fight scenes are 100% realistic? Since I’ve never taken martial arts or trained in the military I’m not an expert on the subject, but one that seemed believable to me was the 1995 Rob Roy directed by Michael Caton-Jones, with Liam Neeson as Rob Roy and Tim Roth as his nemesis Archibald.
Besides that, I’m drawing a blank. Maybe the 1984 Karate Kid?
I was going to mention Deadwood. Since that’s already come up, the swordfight at the end of Twilight Samurai is fantastic. Very realistic. (Great movie, too.)
I like the high school hallway fight scene in History of Violence. It plays out like a fight would - two quick hits, then pasting a guy on the ground. Nothing fancy.
i was in a butt-load of fights in my younger days and everyone ended as a wrestling match. films tend to miss that. it’s throw and few punches or kicks and then it’s grab and start wrestling.
BTW: be the first to get a choke hold. that’s the only way to win a real fight
I’m going to have to wait until I get home to visit youtube, especially because this link starts off with a fat half-naked man covering himself with grease and I just had lunch. I’ll have to remember that if I’m ever in a bar fight: step 1, ask for a timeout so that I can cover mysef with olive oil.
That’s a scene from a movie; “Never Back Down,” or something like that, that was circulated over Youtube as viral advertising. Don’t bother watching the movie.
You’ve been watching different fights than I have. Most fights I’ve seen have ended due to exhaustion on both sides, or getting broken up after everyone has gotten bored of watching. I would say the one-punch KO ending is extremely rare unless one person is very outmatched.
The fight scene in Raging Bull where Joe Pesci attacks Frank Vincent, with both of them spilling out into the street is pretty realistic. So is the half-anger/half-fear fight in the bar in Mean Streets as Richard Romanus and his crew of low-grade mafiosos (with De Niro tagging along and causing no end of trouble).
Movie knife fights bug me. Nobody ever seems afraid of getting sliced open, and the wounds usually end up being stabbing, which is completely unrealistic. The two knife fight scenes that stick in my head as accurately depicting the reality of edged weapon combat is the bloody bathhouse scene from Eastern Promises (not for the faint of heart) and the hotel room fight from Quantum of Solace, with Bond and a henchman going at it with knives, shoes, picture frames, anything at hand for about thirty seconds, just trying to stay alive, until Bond gets in on the inside and stabs the guy in the neck and then the femoral artery. Bond gets carved up pretty well despite clearly being more skilled and better trained, which is realistic.
The fight between Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones’s Diary. Just a couple of regular guys that have no special moves or training, fighting it out, being stupid.
Rickson Gracie was an advisor on one of the Lethal Weapon movies-- I think the first one-- and during the final fight scene, Mel Gibson triangle chokes the bad guy.
As I remember it, one of the fights in Rashomon is distinctly different from the others. In the first three tellings, the fight is very cinematic; lots of bravado and samurai fu. When we see it from the woodcutter’s point of view, it’s desperate; grappling, rolling on the ground, and the bandit and samurai both gasping for breath.
The fight scenes in The Three Musketeers (the 1973 version) were good. They were fighting with their swords but they would also throw things and kick at each other - which is probably a more accurate reflection of how an actual swordfight worked.
If you’re looking for a battle scene, one of the best ones I ever saw was in The Four Feathers (the 1977 version). There’s a scene were a British army camp is attacked by a native army. The British form a line, then a square, and then get picked off one by one. A very believable depictation of a unit being overwhelmed.
I have no evidence of this, of course, because I wasn’t around hundreds of years ago, but I’m fairly certain that in a real sword fight there’d only be one or two parries at most before the fight is over, not this endless fencing that you see in most sword movies.
In Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the fight in the bar with Dobbs and Curtin against McCormick. No fancy moves or expertly-thrown punches, but a lot of grappling and stumbling around.
