From full-throttle action flicks to moody boxing dramas, the best movie fight scenes tend to boast brutal physicality, world-class choreography and huge personal stakes. They’re gladiatorial bouts between mortal enemies, pushing themselves to the limit to come out on top; they test the limits of our hero’s endurance, and what they’ll do in order to win, or just survive. Often it’s with fists, sometimes with weapons. Occasionally, the entire set is weaponized. (We’re looking at you, Mission: Impossible — Fallout.)
Whatever the case, the greatest fight scenes are gripping, visceral, and merciless. And it’s not always a one-on-one affair: in Kill Bill Vol. 1, The Bride (Uma Thurman) is forced to dispatch an entire ballroom full of sword-wielding Yakuza before her final confrontation with O’Ren Ishi (Lucy Liu). In Kingsman: The Secret Service, it’s an aggy Colin Firth versus a church full of religious fundamentalists to the tune of Lynyrd Skynyrd. And don’t even get us started on the Bond movies, where scraps with villains and henchmen have been a staple since Sean Connery first put on the tux. (As you’ll read below, we’ve gone with Goldfinger‘s Fort Knox fight with Oddjob. But there are plenty of honorable mentions: Bond vs. Trevelyan in GoldenEye, the franchise’s greatest grudge match; Bond vs. Dave Bautista on a train in Spectre is classic 007; for another train-based tussle, look no further than his duel with Red Grant in From Russia With Love.)
Below, GQ breaks down our favorite movie fight scenes.
10. Tony Stark vs. Captain America and Bucky Barnes, Captain America: Civil War
Sure, superhero movies are no longer en vogue, and dyed-in-the-wool cinephiles have never really been fans, so those reading this might balk at the inclusion of a Captain America on an all-time list. But at the end of the day, comic-book cinema has defined Hollywood for the last decade and a half, and boiled down to their essential parts, they’re basically just fight scenes stitched together by “plots.” In a weird way, then, it’d feel odd not to have some sort of MCU representation here. Let’s go with the handicap match from Captain America: Civil War, wherein Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) goes toe-to-toe with former friends Steve Rogers aka Captain America (Chris Evans) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) in a supercharged brawl with the freedom of the Winter Soldier at stake. Pound for pound, it’s one of the most impressively choreographed sequences in the Marvel universe: when Stark is being double-teamed by Rogers and Barnes, their actions have all the intricacy of a three way dance, yet it’s brutal and punishingly physical. And for the smackdown to be layeth upon the mascot of the MCU? Immediately one of the most memorable sequences in a comic-book flick.
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