Movie Fight Scenes They fought the good fights! First, no gunfights. That's a different dance school altogether. Second, no evident recourse to CGI, which in fight-scene terminology stands for Completely Girly Imagery. Third, anything goes as long as it flows: old movies, foreign films, dramas, comedies, duds and classics, martial-arts sequences, slugfests, brawls and furniture re-arranging domestic squabbles. Fourth, tools and implements are permitted, especially if deployed in manners that have nothing to do with their original intention. To sum up, all that's required is a little flesh-to-flesh physical intimacy, a certain measure of palpable conviction, a degree of grace in the unfolding of the act, and an audience left panting for the opportunity to watch the whole thing again on DVD. Finally, this list, alphabetically organized and blatantly selective, is always subject to change. The Big Country This sumptuous 1958 superwestern, shot in "Technorama" by Ben-Hur director William Wyler, features a classic manly jaw-breaker between Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston. Most interesting for its use of long shots and sound edits, which emphasize two large men duking it out like angry insects in a vastly larger world. The Bourne Supremacy Encountering a would-be assassin in an otherwise very tastefully presented empty house, Matt Damon's Jason Bourne proceeds to go all Martha-Stewart-of-Mayhem on the predator, using just about every available domestic object (including, most memorably, a rolled-up newspaper) to properly clean house. Directed with pulse-pumping intensity by Paul Greengrass. Enter the Dragon All the fight sequences in this 1973 object of cult worship are keepers, but the final showdown, between the cat-like Lee (Bruce Lee) and the razor-clawed Han (Kien Shih), is the most iconic of them all. Love the way Lee licks the blood from his paw. Fight Club The ultimate significance of this once hotly argued-over 1999 movie may still be in dispute, but it does have the scene where Edward Norton's character beats the living poop out of himself in front of his boss. Who hasn't felt that? From Russia With Love The second James Bond movie (released in 1963) confines Sean Connery's 007 and Robert Shaw's peroxide-blond killer in a tight train compartment and turns them loose on each other. A true benchmark in close-quarter bruising, and still the best argument that Bond was best before gadgets took over. Proof: The Russia-indebted stairwell brawl in last year's Casino Royale. Hard Times This 1975 diamond-in-the-rough contains the best unarmed Charles Bronson sequence of them all: the stone-faced one, cast as a Depression-era street fighter, stuck in a large wire cage with a bald human beast named Street (Nick Dimitri), and compelled to use his fists as an especially persuasive means of convincing the big guy that size doesn't matter. Which it doesn't, provided you're Charles Bronson. Kill Bill, Volume 1 Okay, I know Quentin Tarantino's a divisive presence, and I know a lot of folks think his rep is as dubiously unearned as the 2000 Florida election count, but you've got to hand it to anybody who can pull off this one: Uma Thurman in form-fitting yellow leather kills off an entire army of armed assassins in a joint called "The House of Blue Leaves," then goes one-on-one with the ravishingly deadly Lucy Liu, and the whole thing looks like it might have been staged by Vincente Minnelli as a tribute to Akira Kurosawa. That's gutsy. Oldboy He's mad, he's got a hammer, and he's got to clear a long corridor - navigated in this 2003 South Korean-made release by a single tracking shot - full of unyielding human obstacles that stand between him and the freedom he's been denied for years. Talk about motive. And talk about home improvements. Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior There's a bar brawl in this 2003 movie, the first to introduce knees-up "Thai Warrior" Tony Jaa to the world, that's so exhilaratingly visceral and satisfying it could bring out the brute in Mahatma Gandhi. Peace later: pieces now. The Quiet Man For all his formidable skills with guns, horses and stagecoaches, director John Ford loved the spectacle of large and, ideally, intoxicated men pounding each other silly as an approving chorus of impeccably cast character actors cheered them on. He did it many times, but never with such punishing grace and knockabout enthusiasm as in this 1952 release. The combatants, by the way, are John Wayne and Victor McLaglen. Back to the "Top 10 Lists" Main Page