Yeah, I agree about The Bourne Supremacy. Not only were the fight scenes tough to follow, but the movie in general has a jittery thinks-it’s-edgy-but-really-it’s-just-disorienting feel.
What, no love for Rowdy Roddy & Kieth David in They Live?
Imdb says that everything but the face punches was real.
Anything choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping, except for Matrix 2 & 3 because they start to get too wire-fu. My favorite being Fist of Legend
I have the same problem as the OP. We have all this Hong Kong talent, but no one is trying to learn from them.
An 8 minute fight about putting on sunglasses… I love it.
I came in hee to mention OLD BOY… but its been done already.
Ah, you’re probably right. I can’t remember which is which, really.
I seem to remember several sword fights in Princess Bride, so it would depend on which you’re talking about. (Me - minimal sabre fencing background, Russian instructor) The fights in Princess Bride weren’t fencing. It shouldn’t sound like <click> <click> <click>, it’s more <clickshhclickshhshh thwap!gruntdisengagepantpant>
It was well choreographed and I love the show, but fencing it was not. That’s not to say it wasn’t realistic… Realism and formalized sport don’t have a lot in common.
I didn’t fight foil or épée and I haven’t watched the show lately, so YRMV.
He was probably talking about the one between Inigo and the Man in Black.
Jet Li’s fight sequences in Danny the Dog. I refuse to call it by its PC’d, Americanized release name.
True Romance James Gandolfini and Patricia Arquette.
The two girl scouts in the background in Airplane.
If you watch the ending fight in Scaramouche, you will see that Princess Bride’s sword fight was pretty much a parady. Very well done, but a parody.
That’s the one I came in to mention. I especially like how the bad guy shows up and they immediately start fighting. None of that talking, dragging it out, giving everyone a chance to get ready before the fight starts bullshit. They see each other, they go at it in a split second. Sure, they take a lot of punishment, but it’s still way more realistic than 99% of movie fights.
I believe the foley artist punches cuts of meat.
The shoot-outs (all of them) in The Wild Bunch are incredibly well done, IMO especially since it’s not often you see a Browning M1917 or a Winchester M1897 pump-action shotgun in films.
Ironically, I’ve always felt that a film about the end of the West is probably the greatest Western of all time… Now, if only someone would put it out on a single-sided, dual-layer DVD with some extras on it…
Sone fun fights in The Rundown. Not bar-brawls by any means (mostly) but still entertaining as hell to watch.
Robert DeNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio mix it up pretty good in This Boy’s Life.
Well now, pardner, if it’s shootouts you wanna see, try Open Range with Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall. Beautifully filmed stylized violence. A fitting end to a great movie, and I’m not even all that into westerns.
That first one wasn’t a fight scene, it was a beating scene. It shocked the hell out of me the first time I saw it, because I’d never seen a woman get beat up like that in a movie before.
Twilight Samurai is not at all about the fighting, but the final fight scene is very good, I thought, very realistic and believable as a close quarters fight.
I remember a recent version of the Three Musketeers with a swordfight apparently choreographed by someone from Hong Kong, with the two opponents on ladders in a barn. It was very balletic. Does anyone remember this?
The sword fight in “Rob Roy” is awesome as well.
Yeah. Somehow, we’re just not used to seeing acts of violence against women in movies. When I saw Mr and Mrs Smith I was amazed by the fight between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie; that a light entertainment film showed a fight between a man and a woman where the man does not pull his punches. Even there, though, they couldn’t have the bit where he kicks the lying-down Jolie in the stomach repeatedly. She had to be off-screen for that.
IIRC, that’s “The Musketeer” – which was all well and good with the ladders, but really showed off its ‘stylized kung fu with rapiers’ bit when the swordsmen found themselves atop a couple of barrels.