Some of the better movie gunfight(s).
 

Okay first of all this is not a definitive list. I also know this has been done before, but I've never done a list of best movie gunfight(s). In some cases it's a staged gunfight that takes place in a movie and in other situations it's the over all movie. Join in if you want. My only criteria (mine not yours) is I avoided movies with spectacular ,but totally over the top sequences like "Equilibrium" and anything by John Woo. It isn't that I don't like those films, but I'm looking at movies that stage gunfights that it seems plausible any of us might find ourselves in. I don't mind some poetic license (see the shotgun in "Open Range"). After all it is showbiz. Order of movies is not a Top 10 list - or even a top fifteen or twenty.

My List

"Open Range" (2003) That big showdown at the end. Reality meets classic Hollywood.

"Taxi Driver"(1976). Travis rescuing the damsel in distress.Considered to be horrifically violent and grim in 1976. It still packs a wallop in 2013. An up close gunfight. Everybody gets hit and the carnage is not only brutal, but accurate. No fancy acrobatics. Just men intent on killing each other.Blood, tissue and brains. Ewww. The Seventies.

"Die Hard"(1988). That's right. It's in my list. The gunfights are larger than life, but the participants are having to work at it. They bleed, they sweat and scream and get hurt and die. Ahhhh. The Eighties.

"The Untouchables"(1987). Operatic gunfights. Terrific Ennio Morricone score, but no goddam somersaults and cartwheels.

"The Way of the Gun"(2000). Classic. People get hit. It isn't pretty. They miss and they expend ammo at a prodigious rate.

"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969). The final gunfight. A mix of grim reality and an almost mythical quality. Those guys are good, but they're only Human in the end.

"Heat" (1995). I don't think I really need to say anything. Still the Gold Standard. Even Micheal Mann is still trying to top himself and in my humble opinion he hasn't done it yet.

"The Wild Bunch"(1969).
Pike: We're not gonna get rid of anybody! We're gonna stick together, just like it used to be! When you side with a man, you stay with him! And if you can't do that, you're like some animal, you're finished! *We're* finished! All of us! Well in the end they were finished, but holy-cow they make sure to slam the door real hard going out.

"Dirty Harry" (1971). Slow shooting. Single shots, a beautiful S&W Model 29 thrown onto the concrete (oh the agony) misses etc. But the movie made the 44 Magnum a god and Inspector Callahan legend.

"Appaloosa" (2008).
Everett Hitch: That was quick.
Virgil Cole: Yeah, everybody could shoot.

"Terminator 2" (1991)
Okay I'm sort of breaking my own rule, but the Terminators aren't Human. And it's still a very cool movie.

"Ronin" (1998). Renowned for the car chases, but it has some pretty good gunfights thrown in for good measure.



Okay that's it for now. That's my list. What's yours? Oh and don't think I am saying you can't list John Woo and what not. For example I give honorable mention to "The Professional", "Lethal Weapon" and "The Last Boy Scout".

I'd like to see this as feature for our Facebook page, Best Gunfights of All-Time tournament bracket. Nominate 32 gunfights, with four regions, eight per region, with voting. One gunfight per film, and Michael Mann has to be his own region, otherwise the Elite Eight would just be Michael Mann films (like how Grantland dedicated an entire region to Duke players for their "Most Hated College Basketball Players of all time" bracket.)

If "Michael Mann" is one region, what are the other three? A John Woo region? A Westerns region?

Would would the number 1 seeds be? Potential Cinderellas? Do war movies count?

(Heat would have to come in first, right?)

That's a good idea. Now to be honest the whole tournament bracket thing has always defeated me. In other words I would be no good at actually designing one.

Yes Mann might need his own region. I think that westerns could be a region since some of the best gunfights are from westerns (or so I believe). I forgot Saving Private Ryan when I put my list together.I don't see why war movies couldn't have their own region. "Glory", "Battleground", "A Bridge Too Far", "Platoon", "The Longest Day", "Enemy At the Gates" ,"The Wild Geese" and "We Were Soldiers" are just a few that come to mind and I'm not even mentioning the various Korean, German, French and Polish war movies. I guess science fiction/comic book movies might be their own category ..... region (sorry). Then there are action movies. John Woo is good, but so are many of his peers from China, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea. Boy it's making my head hurt. If you want to give it a go I will help out where I can.

Let me know. Good idea though. Could be lots of fun.

Including war movies just feels little... disrespectful. Action directors can't necessarily do war movies, I think Pearl Harbor and Windtalkers made that clear. It's also hard to pin down a single scene. The Omaha Beach sequence or the final battle in the end in Saving Private Ryan?

I just checked, I'm not sure Michael Mann has enough films to fill his own region. (Eleven films on IMFDB, but not all created equal. Not a lot of gunfights in Ali, I'm afraid.) It'd be way too easy to get an All-Michael Mann Final Four. (Off the top of my head, bank heist in Heat, end of Miami Vice, club shootout in Collateral, lodge shootout from Public Enemies.)

I'm a big Peckinpah fan, so I'll throw this one in first:

The Getaway. McQueen at the top of his game. The film is a heist flick, a road film, and a solid drama. The shootout with police after he takes the shotgun from the gun store is amazing, and the shootout in the hotel at the end helped to define what action films would look and feel like for the next 20 years.

Aliens. The Pulse Rifle. Every time it lights up a room, I smile. What a tense claustrophobic nightmare of a movie to have such sweeping action scenes.

Boondock Saints. It's not terribly realistic, but it's just entertaining as hell. Il Duce pulling gun after gun from that vest was cool. The cafe. The peepshow. The court room.

Casino Royale. Daniel Craig's first turn as Bond was loaded with unflinching brutality. The first scene literally establishing this iteration of James Bond as a bulldozer. The shootout in the embassy was a happy surprise for me. I never expected to see a Bond this capable without gadgets falling out of every pocket. It was the bond film I'd always wanted to see.

True Grit. John Wayne will always be Rooster Cogburn to me. When Cogburn rides against the Ned Pepper gang, it's not a wild shootout, not a long shootout, but it's a damn good moment in cinema.

One of my favorite Hong Kong movies has got to be Hard Boiled.

Blackhawk Down is one of my favorite war movies.

Blood Diamond

Black Lagoon being a favorite Anime because it showed me how realistic guns can be drawn and animated

I know that there are some who like to criticize "L.A. Confidential", but I think that gunfight at the end is very well done.

Oooh, I totally forgot about LA Confidential. What is there to criticize about it?

Beats me, but I've read more than a few comments on other gun forums in which posters savage the gunfight at the end. They never go into details just bitch about it. I own it and I like it.

Well, two guys with only four guns against what, a dozen dirty cops seems a bit disproportionate, but I liked it. (Then again, why didn't Captain Smith just torch the motel and burn them out?)