# What movies have you found to be the most "gripping"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [June 3, 2014, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881 "2014-06-03T00:21:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/21 "2014-06-03T13:51:47Z")
White Heat, 1949, with James Cagney. An oldie which I am compelled to watch every time it’s on TCM. Not only does James Cagney kill it with his performance, but it shows early technology, namely, an early GPS system stuck on the bottom of the bad guys’ car, being tracked by the police. The first time I saw this, my palms were sweating! Not to mention the Oedipus complex, Virginia Mayo as a grasping floozy, and dear old Mom supporting her sonny boy.
Also, Sunset Boulevard, William Holden and Gloria Swanson. So much to take in, so much to look at! You watch it, mesmerized, wondering how this relationship is going to come to its sorry end.
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### Author:  [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/22 "2014-06-03T16:24:08Z")
I was exhausted after watching Black Hawk Down.
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### Author:  [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/23 "2014-06-03T16:41:42Z")
_Captain Phillips_ fits this description.
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### Author:  [@chicagowhitesox1173](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chicagowhitesox1173)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/24 "2014-06-03T17:58:49Z")
Some recently watched movies.
The Pianist
The Girl…Nobody’s probably heard of it. It had it’s sorrowful moments while making you feel good.
The Warrior…I never thought I would enjoy a movie about MMA fighting but this was just as good as Rocky I. Nick Nolte was pretty good in this too.
I’m just going off what I’ve seen on Netflix recently.
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### Author:  [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/25 "2014-06-03T18:05:51Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> Post #14
Ah, I thought it was M_o_mento, and using CTRL-F didn’t find it for me.
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### Author:  [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/26 "2014-06-03T18:39:07Z")
> [@GrandWino](#):
>
> _Captain Phillips_ fits this description.
That’s what I was coming in to post. I didn’t know anything about the story, other than that Capt. Phillips survived the ordeal, and I think they did an excellent job of portraying a story where things could have gone any way at all at any moment.
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### Author:  [@Moonchild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonchild)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/27 "2014-06-03T19:28:48Z")
The _ending_ action sequence of **Saving Private Ryan** I found off-the-charts gripping. I remember noticing that I had my hands clasped together as tight as I could. Ergo, literally, _gripping_. But yeah, middle of it, not so much.
For a comedic “grip,” if you’ve seen **Quick Change** with Bill Murray, the ending I found pretty gripping.
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### Author:  [@Gordon\_Urquhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gordon_Urquhart)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/28 "2014-06-03T19:53:40Z")
Movies based on a submarine seem to have this quality in their DNA: in addition to the ones mentioned above, [Crimson Tide](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112740/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1) was effectively gripping.
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### Author:  [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/29 "2014-06-03T20:46:56Z")
> [@Infovore](#):
>
> Okay, so we’ve got Davey, Peter, Mike, and Micky…who are the other eight?
>
> 😃
Well, there’s [Jared, Dino, Marty, and Larry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Monkees), but that still leaves us four short.
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### Author:  [@Labdad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labdad)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/30 "2014-06-04T00:32:47Z")
“Charley Varrick” is one of my all-time favorites, but Matthau was already a “star.” He won an Oscar in '66 for “The Fortune Cookie” (with Jack Lemmon), and then was paired again with Lemmon in '68 in “The Odd Couple.” So he was a bona fide “star” when “Charley Varrick” came out in '73.
My pick for “gripping” is “The Hurt Locker.”
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### Author:  [@Charlie\_Wayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Wayne)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/31 "2014-06-04T01:26:53Z")
> [@Labdad](#):
>
> “Charley Varrick” is one of my all-time favorites, but Matthau was already a “star.” He won an Oscar in '66 for “The Fortune Cookie” (with Jack Lemmon), and then was paired again with Lemmon in '68 in “The Odd Couple.” So he was a bona fide “star” when “Charley Varrick” came out in '73.
>
> My pick for “gripping” is “The Hurt Locker.”
Well, I’m happy that I explained my conjecture was just a guess.
Thanks Labdad. I enjoy learning something new every day. 🙂
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### Author:  [@typoink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typoink)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/32 "2014-06-04T03:23:30Z")
_Silence of the Lambs_ is the yardstick I measure this by. Gripping, suspenseful story, intense plot twists, gruesome-but-largely-understated visuals, fantastic performances of well-realized characters, and a story that unfolds and resolves masterfully. Absolutely a gem. I still see it as one of the best-realized films I’ve ever seen in a hard-to-articulate manner…part of my brain will always be convinced that everything in that movie is slightly more real than reality.
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### Author:  [@common\_good](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/common_good)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/33 "2014-06-04T03:52:19Z")
Pee-Wee Herman saw a really a really gripping movie at some theatre off the main drag. Don’t know the title, though. I heard Justice Clarence Thomas was a fan of “Long Dong Silver”. I managed to miss that. I’m sure it was pretty cerebral, tense, and had a happy ending.
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### Author:  [@Charlie\_Wayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Wayne)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/34 "2014-06-04T07:50:15Z")
I began to watch “All is Lost” and before I began watching through the entire movie, I FF’d a few times to check the language, picture quality and sound volume.
I noticed that no matter how far I FF’d, there didn’t appear to be any more than one char and one location involved in this movie and I really didn’t want to spend 2 hours watching a film like that. So, I FF’d thru the entire film and it ended in the way I figured it would and I was happy that I FF’d thru it all and didn’t bother to watch it.
But then, I looked it up in Wikipedia because that is the only place I know where I can get a good summary of the plot. I was shocked to learn that the movie ended in exactly the \*\*opposite \*\*way that I figured it would end.
As a result, I now wonder about the wisdom of FF’ing through an entire movie unless you are prepared to accept that it might end in a way very different from the way you assumed it would.
Oh well. Live and learn.
> **[All Is Lost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Is_Lost)**
>
> All Is Lost is a 2013 action drama film written and directed by J. C. Chandor. The film stars Robert Redford as a man lost at sea.\[A\] Redford is the only cast member, and the film has 51 spoken English words. All Is Lost is Chandor's second feature film, following his 2011 debut Margin Call. It screened Out of Competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
> The title of the film is a nod to E. W. Hornung's observation that when courage is lost, "all is lost".
> Among many honors, the film was nom...
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### Author:  [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/35 "2014-06-04T18:07:43Z")
If you like war movies and intense battle scenes I suggest **We Were Soldiers** , with Mel Gibson as Lt. Col Hal (Hap) Moore in the true story of the battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam, from the also very good book, _We Were Soldiers Once, and Young._
Madeleine Stowe, Greg Kinnear and a great Sam Elliot. It was a hell of a battle and the story leading up to it, and the story of the wives at home is very well done.
If your rent or buy the DVD check out the deleted scene in the church at home. There is an older couple sitting in the pews, surrounded by adults and children, who are the real Col. Hal Moore, his wife, children and grandchildren. It is a pity the scene wasn’t used in the movie but there was just no place to fit it in once the battle was in progress.
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### Author:  [@PurpleClogs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PurpleClogs)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/36 "2014-06-04T20:45:58Z")
High Tension
12 Angry Men
Flowers of War
Crash
Deep Impact
Devil
P2
The Villiage
Cloverfield
The Game
Die Hard
Apollo 13
Keepers Creepers
Seven
Rampage
Burried
ATM
and the first scene of Scream
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### Author:  [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2014, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/37 "2014-06-05T03:12:37Z")
> [@common\_good](#):
>
> “Bridge on the River Kwai” was very gripping. If you’re a younger person and haven’t seen it, you should. The ending is fabulously suspenseful. (“My God…what have I done ?”-Alex Guinness.) …
A tiny nitpick for one of my favorite films: Colonel Nicholson says, just before being mortally wounded, “What have I done?”
That and of course his conversation with Colonel Saito atop the completed bridge on the final evening:
“I’ve been thinking. Tomorrow it will be twenty-eight years to the day that I’ve been in the service. Twenty-eight years in peace and war. I don’t suppose I’ve been at home more than ten months in all that time. Still, it’s been a good life. I loved India. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. But there are times when suddenly you realize you’re nearer the end than the beginning. And you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything. Hardly made any difference at all, really, particularly in comparison with other men’s careers. I don’t know whether that kind of thinking’s very healthy; but I must admit I’ve had some thoughts on those lines from time to time. But tonight… tonight!”
That has me tears every time…
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### Author:  [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2014, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/38 "2014-06-05T03:15:42Z")
And as my own submission I would have to say\* Ronin\*. Once the pace gets going John Frankenheimer doesn’t let up. And the best thing of is that all of that action was done for real, in-camera. Just a wild, well written ride all the way to end.
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### Author:  [@common\_good](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/common_good)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2014, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/39 "2014-06-05T04:16:51Z")
> [@MonkeyMensch](#):
>
> A tiny nitpick for one of my favorite films: Colonel Nicholson says, just before being mortally wounded, “What have I done?”
>
> That and of course his conversation with Colonel Saito atop the completed bridge on the final evening:
> “I’ve been thinking. Tomorrow it will be twenty-eight years to the day that I’ve been in the service. Twenty-eight years in peace and war. I don’t suppose I’ve been at home more than ten months in all that time. Still, it’s been a good life. I loved India. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. But there are times when suddenly you realize you’re nearer the end than the beginning. And you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything. Hardly made any difference at all, really, particularly in comparison with other men’s careers. I don’t know whether that kind of thinking’s very healthy; but I must admit I’ve had some thoughts on those lines from time to time. But tonight… tonight!”
>
> That has me tears every time…
Thanks…long time since I’ve seen it, but you’re right. The scene you describe on the bridge was moving. Was Colonel Nicholson the British Commander of the bridge project ? I thought Alec Guinness played him and spoke the “My God, what have I done”, line ? Bill Holden running through the river screaming “Kill him…Kill him !” to the reluctant young comrade was a brutally vivid portrayal of war’s horror.
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### Author:  [@Charlie\_Wayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Wayne)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2014, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-have-you-found-to-be-the-most-gripping/689881/40 "2014-06-05T06:48:05Z")
> [@common\_good](#):
>
> Thanks…long time since I’ve seen it, but you’re right. The scene you describe on the bridge was moving. Was Colonel Nicholson the British Commander of the bridge project ? I thought Alec Guinness played him and spoke the “My God, what have I done”, line ? Bill Holden running through the river screaming “Kill him…Kill him !” to the reluctant young comrade was a brutally vivid portrayal of war’s horror.
I’m fairly certain you are correct.
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