Scenes of pure nerve

Cafe Society
41

On that note, all of Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, Last Man Standing, and Dashiell Hammett’s novel that started that sort of story, Red Harvest.

Also, all of 300.

But I’m more interested in particular scenes for the sake of this thread.

I’ve always loved the boss battle in Devil May Cry with the Phantom, a elephant sized spider made of rock and lava. He’s huge, fast, powerful, and introduces himself to you by dropping out of a stained glass window over the ceiling and taunting in a voice that could only come from an elephant sized molten lava spider.

Dante knocks on his rock shell and taunts the spider back. The cut scene ends, the game gives you control of the character, and not even a second passes before the Phantom is spitting a massive fireball at you and leaping all over the place.

The original Metal Gear Solid is total nerve. You’re playing as a character that has already been through several hells, back, and who knows the baddassery he’s capable of even when dropped alone into a terrorist run complex with NO weapons, but is also realistic about his situation being totally dire. I’ve always dug the boss battle with the tank and the Hind D.

42

Denzel Washington standing up to Gene Hackman in Crimson Tide.

43

I enjoyed the scene where Jason Bourne takes out the sniper with nothing but a shotgun.

44

the ending of the Farscape episode Infinite Possibilities Part 2 springs to mind…

a Scarran Dreadnought is bearing down on a planet where Crichton and Aeryn are stranded, as Crichton’s ship, Farscape One is partially disabled and being worked on by the less than honest mechanic, Furlow

Furlow steals the Displacement Engine (Wormhole Weapon), and is chased down by Aeryn and John, in the process of recovering the device, John is exposed to a lethal dose of ionizing radiation

a dying Crichton takes off in his damaged ship, with the hastily-rigged Wormhole Weapon device attached to his ship…

Did i happen to mention that the Scarran Dreadnought is HUGE, (dwarfing a Super Star Destroyer) bristling with weapons, and a full compliment of fighters, the Dreadnought is capable of destroying a planet, and Farscape One is about the size of a Smart ForFour, unarmed, and partially damaged…

Crichton takes off, a wormhole opens between the Dreadnought and the system’s Sun, Crichton uses the Displacement Engine to steer one end of the Wormhole to the surface of the star, pulling a huge amount of stellar material from the star and catapulting it towards the Dreadnought, at the same time, the Wormhole is pulling the Dreadnought into it’s event horizon, the combination of gravitational forces and stellar material decimate the ship, once the Dreadnought has been consumed, the wormhole collapses, taking the Dreadnought, the star, AND Furlow’s planet with it

after seeing the Scarran ship immolated in the stellar fire, John succums to Radiation Poisining aboard Talyn (a living ship) and dies

45

Those nihilists didn’t stand a chance.

The scene I liked, not quite as bloody as those mentioned is when the Dude goes to the Big Lebowski’s mansion to get compensation for his rug. He gets chewed out by BL for a while–Your revolution is over, Lebowski! The Bums lost! Deal with it!–and starts to leave:

[spoiler]Brandt: What did he say?
The Dude: He said I could have any rug in the house.

And he takes one.[/spoiler]

I don’t know if I’d be able to pull that off

46

A scene from John Boorman’s Excalibur:

Young Arthur had just pulled the sword from the stone and run off into the woods with Merlin. In his absence, several knights had declared their loyalty to him, while even more oposed him, laying seige upon his loyalists’ castle.

Upon his return from the forest, Arthur rallies some more supporters and goes to lift the seige* (The head loyalist, incidentally, is played by Patrick Steward, and if you’ve never seen Patrick Stewart, in full plate armor, shouting battle cries and knocking enemy warriors off a castle wall with an axe almost as big as he is, you haven’t lived). After scaling the walls and dispatching several enemies, he leaps down to the moat and grabs the leader of the attackers, putting Excalibur at his throat. He then demands that he yield.

“Yield? A noble knight, yield to a squire!? Never!” the knight sputters.

Arthur pauses.

“That is true,” he says. “You, sir, shall knight me.”

And at that, he removes his sword from the knight’s throat and drops to his knee before him in the brackish water.

The knight raises his own sword, hesitates, and then - almost against his will - knighs Arthur in the name of God and St. George. Then he breaks into tears and declares the boy to be the true king of Britain.

A fantastic scene.

  • This scene also includes the first recorded use of Orf’s *Carmina Burana * in key scene of a major motion picture. Yes, folks - the cliche was born here.
47

I love Danny DeVito’s last line in Heist almost as much as I love Gene Hackman’s reply:

“Don’t you want to hear my last words?”
“I just did.”

48

Sorry to change the tone a bit…

But this guy wins, hands down.

49

Hey, JC don’t bring reality into our fantasy. That guy would possibly win the Biggest Balls EvAR after Raoul Wallenberg or Oskar Schindler.

Back on Topic.

Proof of Life where Russell Crowe goes into the house where bad guys are holding up someone and bluffs his way past them with his charm and huge balls. Turning the bad guys attention away from the door, towards him allowing his men to get the drop on the bad guys. I.love.this.scene. This is not a chick flick. It is a guy film.
Any scene in any movie where Jackie Chan is doing one of his SuperStunts.

50

Sawyer vs. Ana-Lucia, early in the second season of Lost:

AL: You do what I tell you. When I say, “move” you move. When I say “stop” you stop. When I say “jump”, what do you say?
Sawyer: You first.

51

What are your legs?
Steel springs.
What are they going to do?
Hurl me down the track.
How fast can you run?
As fast as a leopard.
How fast are you going to run?
As fast as a leopard!

[whistle blows, he goes over the top]
Galipoli
Goeth: [shoots one of five people in a line] Now tell me who stole the chicken.
Little boy : [wails]
Goeth: [to little boy] Did you steal the chicken?
Little boy: [shakes his head, still crying]
Goeth: But you know who did steal the chicken?
little boy: [nods, still crying]
Goeth: Who stole the chicken, tell me.
Little boy: [points to dead guy] HE DID!

Schindler’s List

52

[I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. The dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udun! Go back to the shadow.

YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"](The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) - Quotes - IMDb)

Regards,
Shodan

53

Silly movie, but it still makes me tear up sometimes.

Cool Runnings, when Junior finally stands up to his father and tells him he will stay on the Jamaican bobsled team instead of taking that accounting job.

54

One of the characters in Dog Soldiers. Goes toe-to-toe with a werewolf with nothing but his fists and whatever he could find in the kitchen. The werewolf wins, but right before it kills him, he says something along the lines of “I hope I give you the shits, you bastard!”

Also, the finale of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. (Spoilered since it’s more detailed than the Dog Soldiers thing).

When Harry is hanging off the bridge and a guy is coming to shoot him. He tilts the object he’s hanging on so the gun that’s sitting on it slides down to him, he catches it and shoots his attacker. He then shoots at the car full of bad guys below him, killing the driver and causing the car to stop beneath him. He drops down on top of the car, and kills the passenger as soon as he gets out of the car. Harry looks around and says: “All done.”

55

If we can do books, there’s a scene I’ve always found moving even though we are only told about it and never see it ourselves.

In Gone with the Wind, the Yankee army marches through Georgia, stealing everything they can and destroying what they can’t. Most everyone around Tara has refugeed, but the O’Haras can’t because three of the women have typhoid and the move will kill them. They don’t have doctors or medicine because of the war. All they can do is wait for the soldiers to arrive.

The Yankees finally reach Tara. All the neighboring plantations have been destroyed. Gerald O’Hara, man of the house, with no weapons, stands on his front porch and faces down thousands of soldiers, refusing to move. The captain demands he stand aside or get the roof burnt over his head. O’Hara tells the captain not to burn Tara, as there is sickness inside. Tara survives because Gerald was as brave and proud, as Scarlett says, “as if there had been an army behind him instead of in front of him.”

56

It was only a History Channel show. Sitting Bull is having a treaty explained to him.

“This treaty means that the white men can come here any time and take the land for any reason they want.”

Sitting Bull, who has seen the enormous power of the white men, replies.

“Then we will have a fight.”

It is said evenly, without bravado, as a simple statement of fact.

Sailboat

57

The final scene in Breaker Morant.

58

Another one is the ending of the Shadow War in Babylon 5. Sheridan might be able to deliver a thermonuclear “wakeup call”, but he has no chance of actually beating the Shadows or the Vorlons – all he can do is convince them that the coalition of younger races is standing behind the position “you can kill us, but you can’t make us play your game any more”… and hope that neither of them really finds the former option to be acceptable.

59

Too many good ones in horror movies to name, but I’ll go with every scene Father Karras had after little Reagan started to heat up in The Exorcist. Shit, even in the armor of God I don’t know if I could continue to stare that thing down and then come back for more, to the point of asking for a demon transfer to his own turf. [ ::: shudder ::: ]

60

The scene in Ted Turner’s Gettysburg, when Jeff Daniels as Col. Joshua Chamberlain orders the remnants of his 20th Maine to fix bayonets and charge down the hill at the superior attacking Confederate force. The man didn’t have brass ones, he was carrying a pair of 12 lb. solid shot.