6 Brutal Fight Scenes That Will Make You Cringe

Have you ever punched anyone in the face? I know that seems like a very Fight Club-ish way to open this article, but it is a fair question for the territory we are about to tread in. Have you ever felt how cathartic it is to slam your fist into someone's face at high-speeds? I don't mean just punching someone randomly in the face (as that is cowardly and fucking stupid), but I mean the feeling of gratification you get when you pummel someone who has done you wrong on some level. The way your hands hurt as you can feel them cracking against the bones in the other person's face? The way your sweat drips down into your eyes but you can't wipe it because that will leave you open? The feeling of splintering someone's bones against the ground as you whittle their face slowly into a pile of mangled meat and teeth fragments? The way their sobs of "stop" slowly become a slurred jumble of sounds they can barely whimper out of the bleeding mouth hole on their face? The shock and awe of the on-lookers as they realize you just beat a man to death? Yeah, me neither. Which is why a list of scenes like this is so needed. Because people like us can live vicariously through them without any of the repercussions normally associated with such actions. So on that note, here are 6 bone-splintering fight scenes. And no, I didn't include anything with Bruce Lee, because that would have been way too easy. Intro And Final Fight Scene - Gangs Of New York The real question here was not whether to put this movie on the list, it was which fight scene do you put on. Now, I know many of you might scoff at this, as you expected this list to be all hand-to-hand fights. But nowhere up above in the title does it say "bare knuckle," or any such thing. I simply said "Brutal Fight Scenes," and this movie has quite a few of them. Also, don't get mixed up. Yes, these people used weapons, but this was still a man-against-man skirmish. There were no guns or anything. Just handheld weapons and some fucking crazy dudes. Gangs of New York belongs to Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays Bill the Butcher, aka one of the most memorable bad guys ever put on film. From the moment we first meet him, even though we know nothing about him, we feel fear. He seems like a wild animal forced into human skin and made to control himself, yet you can see that he's about to burst out at any given moment. Though the fight at the beginning is absolutely brutal, especially when Day-Lewis sticks Liam Neeson like a pig, the real brutality lies in the final fight. It is here that we see Leonardo DiCaprio avenging his father's death, fighting the Butcher in the same streets where his dad died years earlier. Just two dudes, fully intent on murdering each other. Kind of makes you wish that we still functioned that way, doesn't it? Wait, no it doesn't. Hallway Scene - Oldboy One of the greatest single-take shots from any action film (and there are quite a few that have utilized it), the hallway fight scene from the original Oldboy doesn't even really require me to say anything about it. Instead, I'll just embed the video below and let the ballet of carnage speak for itself. About as real and as brutal as fight scenes get, this is one man and one hammer versus a whole hallway of goons, and it is a beautiful thing to behold. Maybe some people think violence can't be beautiful, and in the context of real life they are right. But here, it is just pure art. Honestly, Oldboy is cinema at its finest and most fucked-up, and I absolutely love it. Jared Leto Beatdown - Fight Club They called Jared Leto Angel Face here because of how, well, angelic he looked in Fight Club. With his perfect blonde hair and flawless complexion, he was the pretty one among a bunch of social miscreants (who at least looked the part). But at one point, "narrator," or "Jack," realizes that Tyler Durden is taking quite a shining to Angel Face. As you know, Tyler and Jack are quite close, so this makes Jack a little frenzied with jealousy. Jack just can't wait to get his hands on Angel Face. What starts out as a typical Fight Club brawl slowly turns into something else, as you can see Jack is not doing this for the rush of it. He wants to hurt Angel Face. He wants to hurt him badly. In his own (brilliant) words: "I wanted to destroy something beautiful." You hear this during a scene where Jack is literally just in the throes of beating this dude to the toothless, mangled mess you see above. It is a visceral fight in a movie filled with them. Just watch the reaction of the spectators in that scene, as they slowly become horrified at Jack's action. What is crazy is, Angel Face stays committed to Jack's cause, even after almost being beaten to death by him. The Magazine Beatdown - The Bourne Supremacy I know there are probably scenes that might be considered more brutal than this, like the slave fight from Django Unchained, but there is a reason I chose this one. Let's be honest for a second, beating someone down with a fucking rolled up magazine like they are a dog that just shit on your carpet is pretty remarkable. It shifts the way you think about a fight scene. I would also be so presumptuous enough to say that this scene ushered in more "close quarters" fighting scenes. Think bathroom scene from Casino Royale. Wait, did I just say that Bourne film inspired a Bond film? So what I am essentialy saying is, Bond inspired Bourne, but then Bourne did some shit that helped to inspire Bond. Wait, this is getting stupid. What I am really saying is the magazine fight scene from this Bourne movie was badass, and made you look at the concept of a fight scene differently. Ever since seeing it, the first thing I do when I am in a dangerous environment is scan it quickly for magazines I can roll up and beat people with. And I thank Matt Damon for that. When Tony Jaa Finds Out His Elephant Is Dead - The Protector First of all, it is SUCH a shame that The Protector 2 sucked, because part one was pretty fucking awesome. It is like The Jungle Book on meth. Essentially, it's about a dude who loves elephants. When his elephant gets taken, he goes on killing spree to find it. When he finds out that it's been killed, he ups his killing spree immensely. Though the whole film is filled with Muay Thai awesomeness, it is all at its zenith when Tony Jaa finds out that his beloved elephant is dead. At first he has no reason to live, so they all start beating him down and he just takes it. Then one of the dudes stabs him, and it is like that wakes up some rage in him, because that is the genesis for the mass ass-kicking and bone breaking orgy he partakes in. It is the idea of someone at absolute zero, with nothing left to lose, finally snapping. Sound design works wonderfully as well here, as each crack and snap of bone echoes so much that you can truly feel it. Final Fight Scene Between Gemma And Jubei - Ninja Scroll I know what you're probably thinking, "WHAT? AN ANIME MOVIE??!! How dare he?" Listen, people can say what they want about fight scenes, but the anime Ninja Scroll is filled with some of the best fight scenes in cinema, period. That giant rock dude almost won out, but I had to put the final conflict between Gemma and Jubei as the closing entry on this list for one reason and one reason only. The magical beatdown really kicks in at the 1:56 second mark, check it out for yourself below. You just do not see fight scenes like that in the movies. Partly, because you can't. That level of violence and gore and agression would end up coming across as almost satirical in a film. Yet here, in Ninja Scroll, it works perfectly. Honestly, the entirety of the fight scene above is about as good as it gets when it comes to people relentlessly beating each other on film, animated or not.

6 Brutal Fight Scenes That Will Make You Cringe

The Magazine Beatdown – The Bourne Supremacy