10 Best Fights Ever Seen in Movies

What’s an action film without action sequences? Whether they’re so-bad-they’re-good minor classics or stone-cold winners, every memorable action film has at least one winner of a fight scene. What follows is the best of the best, the cream of the crop.

The best of the best when it comes to cinematic brawls, that is. Scenes that have at least two characters going at it. Bashes with two (or more) characters who simply can’t move forward with just words. Too much has happened, and only one can walk away without at least a cauliflower ear and a swollen-shut eye.

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Also note that exclusively weapons-based fight scenes were excluded from consideration. This includes everything from the best lightsaber battles in the Star Wars franchise to just about everything from the John Wick movies. Just about everything, not everything. In other words, at some point in the sequence, it needs to be just fists and kicks.

Dux vs. Li at the Kumite in Bloodsport

Bolo Yeung’s Chong Li is the main antagonist of Bloodsport, the movie that made a star of Jean-Claude Van Damme, and there’s an argument to be made that he’s every bit as magnetic as Van Damme’s Frank Dux. A ruthless and vicious fighter who is as dead set on emerging victorious as Dux, Li is the protagonist’s most dangerous opponent at the Kumite. And, by the beginning of the third act, he’s not only put Dux’s friend in the hospital, he’s killed his semifinal opponent.

To keep his winning streak going, Li cheats by crushing a salt pill and throws it into Dux’s face. Though, even with a blinded adversary, Li loses. Why? Because he wasn’t the one who was trained to fight blindfolded.

“Now You’ve Had Enough” in Happy Gilmore

The whooping Bob Barker gives Adam Sandler’s title character in Happy Gilmore isn’t the only entry on this list played for laughs, but it is the only entry that’s exclusively played for laughs. And, as far as jokes in the ’90s comedy classic go, it’s towards the top of the heap if not at the very top. After all, the late, great host of The Price Is Right was as well known for his time as he was primarily due to his affability.

But, as far as the Happy Gilmore Bob Barker goes, he understands how to let someone know when enough is enough. He really understands it. At just over 70 seconds, his bout with Happy is bar none one of the most prolonged fights in any comedy flick, ever.

“Stick Around, Bennett” in Commando

Okay, so this one does start off as a weapons-based fight, but it doesn’t stay that way. Throughout the bombastic ’80s action minor classic Commando, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Colonel John Matrix primarily uses guns. And, at one point, a bazooka. But from the first moment Vernon Wells’ Captain Bennett appears on the screen, it’s obvious that these two are going to end up throwing fists.

Bennett always cockily taunts Matrix, but the audience knows he’ll get his comeuppance. During their third act boiler room brawl, Matrix turns the taunting tables on Bennett, goading him on with the satisfying concept of cutting his enemy with a blade, instead of a quick bullet. Before long, the blades are lost as the two fall off a balcony, and then it’s all punches and kicks. That is, until Matrix throws a pipe through Bennett and lets out the one-liner “Stick around, Bennett.”

[Related: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Reacher‘s Alan Ritchson Team Up for New Christmas Movie]

Former Friends in Captain America: Civil War

The entirety of Captain America: Civil War is an exercise in building tension until it boils over. And, once Tony Stark discovers that it was Captain America’s friend, the Winter Soldier, who killed his parents, the hot water starts to finally splash down on the stove. Naturally, given all his advantages in equipment, this fight isn’t just punches and kicks, but it’s still the most intimate fight featured in an MCU film.

Stark and Steve Rogers both have their explicit motives in the scene. One is trying to exact vengeance, and the other is trying to stand in the way of that happening. It makes the viewer really feel for Cap, who is betraying one friend to save the life of another, just as they can understand Stark’s rage and the implications this scene will have in subsequent films.

Take Your Pick in Fight Club

As could be expected given the title, David Fincher’s Fight Club is loaded with bone-crunching exchanges. And, really, all of them are worthy of a spot here. For instance, the first bout between the Narrator (Edward Norton) and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) in the parking lot of a local bar is pretty memorable for the same thing the remainder are: its brutality.

None of the fights are particularly showy, at least in terms of excessive cinematic flair like in Bloodsport. Instead, they feel realistic, through and through. This includes the bloodiest fight, between the Narrator and Jared Leto’s Angel Face, who, by the end of the fight, has the majority of that face blackened, bruised, and beat to a mangled pulp.

Training Time in The Matrix

The Wachowskis’ The Matrix quadrilogy would go on to feature more elaborate and bombastic fight sequences than Neo’s training sequence in the first film, and it’s for that reason it’s the best. Seeing a CGI Neo take on hundreds of CGI Agent Smiths in The Matrix Reloaded was kneat back in 2003, but it has aged very poorly. As for the final bout between Neo and Smith in The Matrix Revolutions, it wasn’t even particularly fun at the time of release.

Morpheus’ and Neo fighting in the virtual training simulations, however, still holds a certain amount of power and wonder. The audience is right there with Neo as he begins to discover not only that the world is not what he thought it to be, but that he is not truly who he thought he is. He has abilities, abilities that have yet to jump the shark.

The Alleyway Brawl in They Live

They Live is undoubtedly the highlight of director John Carpenter’s latter half filmography. Razor sharp, goofy, creepy when it wants to be; it works front to back. But there are two scenes that have helped it truly retain its pop-culture relevance. The first is when the late “Rowdy” Roddy Piper (as the unnamed protagonist) bursts into a bank with a shotgun and yells, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.” The second is the alleyway fisticuffs between his “Nada” and Keith David’s Frank.

The sequence lasts a gargantuan five-and-a-half minutes, and the viewer feels every second of it. It’s both played for laughs and functions as a legitimately impressive, brutal fight (aided greatly by Piper’s history as a WWF and WCW wrestler). The scene has been parodied quite a bit, including in South Park, and rightly so, as it’s probably the best fight scene in film history.

The Library Fight in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum

Like the remainder of the John Wick franchise, Chapter 3 – Parabellum is mostly focused on “Gun Fu.” But, towards the beginning, once the world’s assassins have been given their notification about the massive bounty on Wick’s head, he gets into a physical altercation in a library. Specifically, with fellow assassin Ernest, played by Serbian pro basketball player Boban Marjanović.

It’s brutal stuff, not unlike the knife shop scene in the same film. But, here, Wick doesn’t even win with a weapon, he wins with a book. He breaks Ernest’s jaw with the reading material, then uses it to help break his opponent’s neck.

Ip vs. 10 Karateka in Ip Man

Ip Man, the story of the Chinese grandmaster of Wing Chun who trained Bruce Lee, is loaded with memorable fights, but there’s one that stands above all. After the Second Sino-Japanese War begins in the film, Ip (played by John Wick: Chapter 4‘s Donnie Yen), his wife, and his son are booted from their lavish home and stuck in an apartment. Their home is now being used as a military headquarters by the Imperial Japanese Army, led (in the city of Foshan, not overall) by Karate master General Miura.

General Miura establishes an arena for bouts between local martial artists and his trainees, offering a bag of rice should the local martial artist prove victorious. When IP’s local rival, Liu, is executed for taking a bag of rice after having lost the second of his two fights, Ip decides to get involved. And he does so in a big way, by requesting a match against ten karateka simultaneously. Ip wins and gifts the bag of rice to Liu’s grieving family. It’s an admirably shot fight scene without a doubt, but it really works because of the title character’s selflessness. It’s as much a character-strengthening scene as it is an action sequence.

Facing Off with Mr. Joshua in Lethal Weapon

Lots of bullets fly in Richard Donner’s seminal Lethal Weapon, but it’s a straightforward exchange of fists that sticks in the viewer’s memory the most once the credits have rolled. Throughout the movie General Peter McAllister’s right-hand man, Mr. Joshua (Gary Busey), slowly emerges as the film’s true main antagonist. A merciless, sociopathic mercenary and assassin, he’s a force to be reckoned with.

Once McAllister is dead, it’s but so long before Mr. Joshua seeks revenge against Mel Gibson’s Martin Riggs and Danny Glover’s Roger Murtaugh. It’s become personal, and Mr. Joshua personally shows up at the Murtaugh house like a bloodthirsty Christmas present. To protect the Murtaugh family and put an end to all the madness, Riggs steps up, beats Mr. Joshua (nearly losing his life in the process), and even has a moment of growth when he allows the police to capture the mercenary instead of executing him. Yet, that doesn’t last long, as Mr. Joshua breaks free from the authorities and gets gunned down by the newly partnered duo.