Least epic one-on-one movie fights?

[Tarrsk]

You really can’t talk about “least epic but in a good way” without mentioning Indiana Jones versus the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[Laughing_Lagomorph]

@Tarrsk

You really can’t talk about “least epic but in a good way” without mentioning Indiana Jones versus the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Damn, I should have thought of that one.

[Baldwin]

The climatic duel in Dangerous Liasons.

One guy falls down periodically,and the other one goes off to rest his face on a wall. Then the first guy gets up and they fight some more until it happens again. All interspersed with scenes of a woman dying in childbirth.

I kept saying, “Would somebody hurry up and die?”

1. “Liaisons”. I’ve got a little mnemonic for remembering how to spell that, if you’d like. (As I grow closer to death, I become less sure of my spelling.)

2. Nobody was in childbirth.

3. I’ve got to disqualify your entry, because you apparently didn’t follow the movie well enough to understand the significance of the duel in context. What was going on emotionally was more important than the physical action.

One vote for Mad Dog & Glory. The film is deliberately miscast and throughout the entire movie, even the final fight scene, everybody involved seems to be wondering what they’re doing. If Bill Murray’s a method actor, he must have used this experience during Lost in Translation.

I have to disagree; DeNiro and Murray weren’t miscast; they’re two good actors cast against type. I think this movie is underrated.

My own nomination is the fight between Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones’s Diary. I heard Firth in a radio interview say something like “Hugh and I felt that, sadly, that’s probably how we’d fight in real life.”

[widdershins]

Again in the “intensional un-epic” category:

Sean Connery and Robert Shaw in Robin and Marian. Two fierce warriors and bitter rivals, who were past their prime and their bodies were giving out on them as they fought under lots of armor and chain mail.

Ray Liotta and the “lifeguard” early in No Escape. A variation on “Indy vs. the Swordsman”

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Ah-nold vs. James Caan at the end of Eraser, with Vanessa Williams holding onto a chain and whimpering.

A fistfight between Ahnold and anyone fails to suspend one’s disbelief every time because you know he’s going to win. The only exceptions are T2 and T3, and Commando because I didn’t know who he was then.

“Let off some steam, Bennett”

[Sassafras_Kid]

I have to give a second vote to the silly final fight of MI:2. I got a headache from 10 minutes of rolling my eyes in disbelief.

John Woo: Never cross the Pacific again!

[Mac_Guffin]

All these posts, and no mention of “They Live”?
A lousy 20-something minute fight just so one guy will put on sunglasses?

geh.

[Evil_Death]

@Mac Guffin

All these posts, and no mention of “They Live”?

No. We’re looking for fights that aren’t epic. Not only is that fight fairly epic, but a lot of it was actually real - Piper and David were black and blue by the end.