I really love fight scenes in movies. So I thought I'd make a thread dedicated to them. What are your favourite fight scenes? What makes a good fight scene? What kind of fighting do you prefer?

May contain spoilers for any film discussed; proceed at your own risk

Hero
Broken Sword vs. The King of Qin

Hero, in my never-particularly-humble opinion, is a work of genius - absolute beauty from start to finish. This fight scene sees the assassin Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), from the neighbouring province of Zhao, storm the palace of the King of Qin (Daoming Chen) with his paramour, Flying Snow (the excellent Maggie Cheung). As Snow holds off the imperial guards outside, Broken Sword enters the great hall, and he duels the king among the vivid green silken drapes that hang everywhere. Though Broken Sword disarms the king, and has him at his mercy, he holds off from killing him, realising that though Qin makes war on his homeland of Zhao, only the king has the vision and the power to unite the six kingdoms and put an end to war. Zhang Yimou's directing talent is peerless, his use of colour in full flower throughout the film, and every action and moment imbued with a sense of grace and dignity.

Kill Bill Vol. 1
The Bride vs. Gogo Yubari
The Bride vs. the Crazy 88
The Bride vs. Johnny Mo
The Bride vs. O-Ren Ishii

Quentin Tarantino was never known for pulling punches, but this improbably bloody half-hour of the first instalment of Kill Bill is a strong contender for his most over-the-top effort. The Bride (Uma Thurman), intent on revenge for the murder of her husband and friends at her wedding, storms the Tokyo clubhouse where one of her assassins, O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) is staying with her yakuza gang, the Crazy 88. At their initial confrontation, O-Ren sends six sharply dressed sword-wielding yakuza at the Bride, of whom she disposes in short order with her Hattori Hanzo katana. Next comes Gogo.

Chiaki Kuriyama's brilliant portrayal of the charismatically sociopathic Gogo Yubari is one of the best performances in a film overflowing with acting talent. Approaching the Bride dressed in a schoolgirl's uniform and giggling girlishly, she wields a spiked ball on a chain and for long moments seems too much for our hero to handle. Her sword having been knocked away, she makes use of the old mainstay of a piece of wood with a nail stuck through it to bring Gogo down.

It seems then as if the Bride can face off against O-Ren - but just as the crime boss unsheathes her tanto, the sound of motorbikes can be heard. Dozens of young Japanese men with impeccable suits, masks and drawn swords flood into the clubhouse and surround the blonde warrior. The now-infamous scene that follows is one of the longest and bloodiest scenes of violence outside a schlock horror B-movie. Every member of the Crazy 88 is defeated in an orgy of swordplay. The scene becomes monochrome in the moment that the Bride plucks out the eyeball of a hapless aggressor (reputedly to avoid censorship), and that transition is handled with Tarantino's trademark stylishness. The ending battle with the remaining half-dozen fighters, seen entirely in the silhouettes of those involved, is the feather in the cap of one of the most epic-scale fight scenes yet screened.

O-Ren's final henchmen, Johnny Mo (Gordon Liu), fights the Bride along a wooden banister. Strangely for a martial arts movie, we see the Bride stumble for a few seconds, one of the human touches setting Tarantino firmly apart from the ranks of imitators. When Mo falls screaming into the pool below, the protagonist is finally ready to take on her target.

The final battle scene, in an almost shocking change of pace, takes place in O-Ren's snow-covered garden. Here Tarantino shows a stark awareness of colour almost on a par with Zhang Yimou. Liu as O-Ren is graceful and perfect in a white kimono, and her and the Bride face off in the most atmospheric scene in the film. The choice of music is as inspired here as it is throughout the film (excellence here almost being another trademark of Tarantino's), switching from the incongruously perfect Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood to a sudden, echoing silence. The Bride's eventual defeat of O-Ren is followed, poignantly, by her carefully crossing O-Ren's name from her list of targets.

For an actress without, I think, a great deal of experience in martial arts films, Uma Thurman is a joy to watch fight. This talent combined with Tarantino's brilliant directorship and an unparalleled soundtrack make Kill Bill a real feast for the senses.

Fight Club
Tyler Durden vs. Lou

In stark contrast to the last two films, Fight Club has an earthy, painful realism to its violence. Here, Lou (Peter Iacangelo) - owner of Lou's Tavern - has just discovered Tyler Durden's (Brad Pitt) secret club of organised masochism operating in his basement. Confronting Tyler, he beats him up, brutally punching and kicking him in the face while Tyler taunts him and laughs maniacally. Turning to go, Lou is suddenly leapt upon by Tyler, who shoves him to the ground and sprays him with blood, still laughing - "You don't know where I've been, Lou!" It's probably Brad Pitt's best role; he has the deranged psychotic down perfectly and naturally.

More to come; I'll do a bit on the bamboo scene from House of Flying Daggers once I get my DVD back, as well as some other stuff.

Mention must of course go to Kyuzo's duel in Akira Kurosawa's classic The Seven Samurai. Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi) spars against another samurai with bamboo sticks. Kyuzo declares the match a draw, but his opponent disagrees, saying that had they dueled with real steel, he would have won. Kyuzo respectfully disagrees, enraging his opponent, who demands that they fight for real. Though he does not wish to fight, Kyuzo is given no choice but to draw. The two face each other for a long, silent moment, as the village looks on with trepidation. Suddenly, Kyuzo's hot-headed opponent charges with a scream. Remaining perfectly still until the last second, Kyuzo sidesteps and kills his aggressor with a precise slash.
The contrast between this tense duel, decided by a single blow, and the complex and involved fight scenes of modern wu xia is interesting, though I reserve judgment as to whether either style is superior.

Most of the fight scenes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon deserve a mention if you ask me. Particularly:
Jen vs. The Masses, and
Jen vs. Shu.

Jen, having stolen the Green Destiny sword (for the second time) runs away in search of adventure. After being approached by two men, whom she bests, she tells them she has defeated Li Mu Bai. Following this, she is approached by various men in a bar wielding various wepons, whom she is rude to, and the result is that she fights them all with the Green Destiny in a flurry of fast moving acrobatics and swordplay, all the while insulting them and leaving the building a wreakage.

After returning to see her 'sister', Yu Shi Lien, Jen storms off, refusing the relinquish the Green Destiny. Shu confronts Jen in a combat area surrounded by weapon racks. Shu attacks Jen with a variety of weapons, either being disarmed, or the weapons destroyed, while Jen continues to wield the Green Destiny. Again, fast moving with impressive swordplay, it culminates with each woman armed with a sword in a final dual.

The Chateau fight scene in Matrix Reloaded. It's just a brilliant, fluid demostration of The One's power, and the ease with which he dispatches The Merovingian's agents is fantastic. That just blew me away. Oh, and the Lobby scene from The Matrix.

You can't talk about fight scenes without mentioning House of Flying Daggers. I would say every shot in that film is nothing less than a work of art. If I was pushed to select one part, it would have to be the fight in the field of flowers. Genius.

House of Flying Daggers was massively excellent, it's true, though I think Hero was a bit better

For all its cheesyness, The Transporter has some of the best fight scenes I've ever seen in a movie, and they're all performed by the actors who were playing the parts of the main characters, in particular Jason Statham who plays the lead role and is involved in every fight. Just a couple of my favourites:

Jason vs henchmen on a bus: a parked single decker with two entrances sees statham trapped between two groups of henchmen in a very tight space, but he resolutely draws a knife and takes them apart using a combination of gymnastics, brute force and pinpoint knife strikes to "pin" his opponents limbs. And of course when he gets of the bus he hits the button as well... this is preceeded by a very quick scene in which a kickboxing champion does roundhouses at him in about three feet of space () and he ties him and his mate up with his old army t-shirt.

Jason vs Sidekick: A work of genious from start to finish, the two main brawlers in the movie duke it out, jason being towered over by someone almost two feet taller than him, and the cameras show this very well. When the start to fight its a perfect display of technical martial arts, well paced punches that look like they would really hurt (unlike, in my opinion, the faux "punches" that get thrown in the Matrix, not to take credit away from the movies but special effects make a different kind of fight scene), quick parries and some agile kicks. In a few blows, statham has dodged most of the bad guy's huge swings and landed a rather meathy kick to his eye that leaves him half blind. So the bad guy stops messing around, feints with a punch and when statham goes to block, grabs him into a chokehold and starts squeezing - which is where the fun begins:

Jason vs everyone: The henchmen run in to see statham caught in a chokehold and rush to start pounding on him. Statham finds his saviour in several half-barrels of grease that he knocks tothe floor, creating a huge puddle of the stuff. A few kicks to the henchies later and a backwards headbutt and he squirms free, only to roll under another barrel and tip its contents all over him (to which there were shouts of "grease me up wummin!" from my friends in the cinema). What follows is ridiculously funny but also a very original and well made fight scene where he defeats the henchmen by being so slippery that they cant get a hold of him. He sends people hurtling across the floor and then skids away from them when they think they've finally caught him, and when they do manage to get a hold of him he just slips right out again. Finally, getting on top of the situation, statham grabs an old bike, kicks the pedals off and hooks them onto his shoes (proper old metal spiky pedals, none of this plastic crap) for grip. He then proceeds to roundhouse kick each henchmen in turn in one long fluid motion, and you can feel the meatiness of the blows he lands as you see the metal connect with their faces. Shortly afterwards the whole thing is broken up by more henchmen with automatics, but he grabs the sidekick baddie to hid behind andnarrowly escapes with his life.

Great movie, wel worth watching if only for the action scenes, including one of the best car-chase scenes I've ever seen (also performed by Statham, who didn't have a stuntman for anything other than the parachute landing scene...)

The fight scene between Kasandra's dad and Wayne (Wayne's world 2).

Nothing has made me laugh quite so much...

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For sheer brutality, nothing quite beats The Bride Vs. Elle Driver. The clos quarters, hot desert, dirt stained, fighting dirty girls with a blow I never saw coming, it was one of the best points in the series for me. That fight scene stripped the razzle dazzle of the Crazy 88 and the 70s nostalgia of Pei Mei and made it dark, gritty, and real(ish.)

I must also dote upon one of my favorites Neo Vs. The Lobby. Nothing is quite as stylish as Neo and Trinity walking through the metal detectors just to whip out their arsenals hidden in the hot trench coats.

Indiana Jones Vs. The Swordsman gets me every time. I love that the Arab swordsman pops out, does his elaborate sword dance, only to be shot by Indiana, proving that the pistol is mightier than the sword. As a side note, that part was not originally written; Ford decided it was more in character to just shoot the swordsman. So after rehearsing the fight scene, Harrison waited for the initial twirls and screams and instead drew a revolver filled with blanks. Instinctively, after hearing the gunshot, the swordsman fell. The director liked the shot enough to keep it in the movie, much to the dismay of the hard practicing Swordsman.

For real laughs, though Cartman Vs. Saddam Hussein in South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut is hilarious! Mata and the mod-squad would be angered if I went into much detail here, so I'll suffice it to say that it needs to be seen by everyone.

For more of a wacky laugh, Eddie Valiant Vs. The Weasels in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is great fun. Death by laughter, baby.

There are probably more, but I can't think of any, so there you go for now.

YES!!! that was the perfect fight seen.
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Pfft. Fight scenes have all gone downhill since the 70s.

Simply hire both One Armed Boxer movies. Best fight scenes in the world

One Armed Boxer vs. Tibetan llamas. The llamas are able to control their breathing to make themselves invincible. This visual effect is achieved by them inflating a life jacket they're wearing under their orange robes. Then, the one armed boxer can only kill them in a single pressure point. Which, of course, he does, by poking them under the arm with one finger.

One Armed Boxer vs Indian yogi (1). The yogi's special move is the ability to run around people on his hands really really fast, thus making them dizzy, then he pokes them in the eyes. One Armed Boxer counters by doing a handstand on one hand, then doing a finger stand on one finger. They then have a bizarre handstand-style joust.

One Armed Boxer vs Indian yogi (2). The yogi in the second movie has the ability to stretch his arms. The fight scene is genius. Imagine a fight between two blokes, one of whom has brooms strapped to his arms, and the other who only has one arm. You get the idea.

One Armed Boxer vs blind flying guillotine master. It doesn't get much better than this. Having killed the thai boxer, by luring him into a fight in a house with a metal floor and a fire set underneath it (that'll learn thai boxers to fight barefoot!), One Armed Boxer sets up a trap for the master of the flying guillotine. In a coffin shop. Let's remember that the master of the flying guillotine is blind, fights with a weapon that's half hat, half frisbee and half medieval torture chamber ornament.

Lobby scene my arse.

Amazon sells them - have a look through the links at the bottom of the page.

I'll stick 'em on my Amazon rental list, Jon-o

That (fighting in about three feet of space) _is_ my favorite fight scene of the film because he is all kicking the baddies arses, and then is all topless and phwoah "look at my buffness". I think that's what I liked about it the most, the tongue in cheekness. -Stretham (English actor) puts on a dodgy American accent. Quality

When I checked last, The Transporter sequal was in pre producion.

w00t!

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I don't know crap about Transporter, but I am getting adverts for the sequel... I'll edit when I find out the US release date!

edit: September 2

One of my favourites is in Rapid Fire, a Brandon Lee film. It's very near the end and between Brandon and the guy who played Ghengis Khan in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Essentially it's two superb martial artists getting the chance to show off their moves with each other. Great stuff. It's also all-round an above average martial arts film and well worth tracking down.

I know it's guns rather than chop socky, but the lobby scene in Equilibrium is still one of the most dynamic action sequences that I've ever seen.

Gothic's avatar reminded me... the fight scenes in all of Cowboy Bebop tend to be pretty great, assuming it's Spike fighting. Spike's fight scenes in Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door are amazing, espescially the fight against the girl in when they first meet.

Gun-fu still counts

Best fight scene of all time:



SUPERFISTED!

Ewwwwwwwwwww!

Another great fight scene- Team America World Police; between the martial arts expert and the terrorist in Paris. The way their arms move is almost poetic.

/not taking the pith. Honnest

All time best fight scene?
My vote would be for Martin Q Blank vs scary troll man! ( I forget his name! )
In the brilliant Gross point blank.
No flashy pointless posturing, no macho one liners, just two skilled fighters trying their utmost to kill the other...

" Hi... I'm Martin Q Blank... I killed the president of Paraquay with a Fork "
Genius!!!!!

the fight scenes in either excalibur or henry the fifth (branagh version) Brutal bloody muddy murder, No swinging the sword like its a tooth pick but honest brutality and drowning in mud because your armour is too heavy to get back up.

All good suggestions, but we all know that really it's Xander versus Harmony in Buffy T.V.S.. The slow-motion shots really give you the full sense of power behind the slaps and hair-pulling.

I've just remembered: They Live. There's a fist fight in it that is exceptionally brutal. I'm pretty sure that the main actors were wrestlers previous to being in the film and one of them caught the other too hard around the head while filming, annoying the other and the staged fight became a not-so-staged fight as two huge blokes beat the hell out of eachother and attempt to remember the things that they were (probably) supposed to be doing.

The two minute long 'corridor fight' in Oldboy is excellent. Oh Dae Su, the protagonist who had been held hostage for fifteen years then released without explanation, finally tracks down the man who runs the kidnapping service. There's a rather grizzly but almost blackly comic scene where he pulls out the mans teeth with the claw end of his hammer before the man reveals information about who hired him to kidnap Oh Dae Su in the first place.

The next scene starts with Oh Dae Su facing the long narrow corridor to the elevator, which is crammed with the kidnappers cronies armed with lead pipes and wooden sticks. I think this is the best fight scene I have watched in a long while because it retains a sense of realism, despite it not being very realistic. Oh Dae Su punches and kicks wildly, swinging left and right with his hammer, and uses the fact that the enemies can only face him two or three at a time to his advantage. It's a striking moment when he is stabbed in the back with a knife, cries out in anguish then collapses to the floor in the middle of his enemies. Then, ten seconds later when his enemies drop their guard somewhat, he leaps back up and carries on fighting, knife in his back and all.

The best part of this is the entire scene is one long shot which runs along the side of the corridor. The accompanying music is also pretty spiffy.

I heard Hollywood want to remake this film with Nicholas Cage. I pray it's not true.

I'm not much into fight scenes for their own sake, but I will allow that a bad fight scene can easily detract from a good movie...

Ah, but a good fight scene can make an average movie far more enjoyable

Quoted for truth! I love that fight, all in one long take...

South Park's Cripple Fight.

'Nuff said.

I still haven't seen 'Cripple Fight' but I'm told by Sues that I must download it.

I also haven't seen Old Boy yet, but that is primarily due to not having seen a reasonably priced copy at a time when I can afford to buy it.

The fight scenes in Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's door are also pretty good. I particularly enjoyed the fight between Spike and the Army lady. I never can remember her name...

I just saw "Ong Bak" an incredible thai boxing film. I'd pick one of the fights from it but the film is one long fight. Check it out if you can!

Oo, I've heard good things about that. The actors look like they're hitting each-other... Because they're really hitting each-other. Interesting.