With The Warrior heading into cinemas, we’ve got fight movies on the brain. Not necessarily the best movies about fighters – Fat City, Rocky and Raging Bull are nowhere to be found here – these are the movies which have the most brutal or unforgettable fight sequences. They’re movies for when you want to watch some damned fighting, and real fighting too… Not that heavily edited or CGI-assisted crap you see nowadays. There’s some many good fight movies that we know we missed a bunch of good ones, so let us know your picks for The Best Fighting Movies in the comments below.
10. BLOODMOON (dir. Kuang Hsiung, 1997)
This just-plain-awful Straight-to-Video movie doesn’t belong on many Top Ten lists, but we made room for it anyway because it’s a fight movie, pure and simple, with stunning choreography that flies right in the face of its pathetic production values. Gary Daniels of The Expendables stars as a serial killer profiler/martial arts master tasked with taking down a homicidal maniac who only murders the best fighters in the world… who all happen to live in the same town (damned convenient). Perfect for a beer-swilling night with the fellas, with plenty of laugh-out-loud dialogue and wooden performances (except from Daniels’ partner, who does his best Eddie Murphy impression, although not a good one, as a homicide detective/martial artist/magician), but also a cast of genuine fighters who know exactly what to do once the fists start flying.
9. UNDISPUTED III: REDEMPTION (dir. Isaac Florentine, 2010)
The whole Undisputed franchise is fight movie gold, but it really picked up once Scott Adkins joined the series. Adkins played the bad guy in Undisputed II: Last Man Standing, but graduates to the hero role in Undisputed III as a humiliated, half-crippled former champion with one shot at freedom: an underground prison fighting tournament. Incredibly manly, powerful fight choreography and some good old-fashioned oppressive prison movie tropes combine to create an exceptional B-Movie that deserves to be mentioned along with the best fight movies ever. Not the most dramatically powerful fight movie ever (that’s a very different list altogether), but it will make you want to put up your own dukes. Just don’t pick a fight with Scott Adkins. He’ll clean your @#$%ing clock.
8. BLOODSPORT (dir. Newt Arnold, 1988)
Jean-Claude Van Damme had his first big starring role in Bloodsport, one of the best American fighting tournament movies (which is admittedly not much of a list). Based on the true story of Frank Dux, Van Damme joins an underground fighting tournament (there sure are a lot of those) called Kumite and gets more than he bargained for when the fights turn deadly. Bolo Yeung plays his main opponent, and he’s such a badass that we’ll see more of him before this list is through. Solid bare-knuckle brawling from start to finish, it’s easy to see why Bloodsport made Jean-Claude Van Damme a household name.
7. MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE (dir. Yu Wang, 1976)
Technically a sequel to 1972’s The One-Armed Boxer, the martial arts classic Master of the Flying Guillotine finds Jimmy Wang Yu pulling his one-armed schtick again (he also starred in The One-Armed Swordsman, another kung fu classic) as he takes on an assassin at a fighting tournament, where his enemies have such unusual weaponry as super-long forearms and the titular flying guillotine, which was the inspiration for the Yo-Yo’s famous weapon in Kill Bill. Tremendous fun from start to finish, with fight scenes that you couldn’t try at home if you wanted to. A little most special effects-driven than the rest of our list, but the actual fighting is as real as it comes… even with the extend-o-arms.
6. DIRTY HO (dir. Lau Kar-leung, 1979)
No, it’s not what you think. Get your mind out of the gutter. In one of the best fighting movies you’ve probably never seen, Kill Bill star Gordon Liu stars as Prince Wang, who has gone undercover to determine which of his heirs is trying to kill him. He can’t reveal his kung fu mastery without giving himself away, leading to great action sequences in which he hides his skills by moving other people’s arms and pretending their his bodyguard (above). He befriends a thief named Ho (Wong Yue of Executioners from Shaolin) whom he trains to be his apprentice. Less brutal than many of the other films on this list, but easily one of the most fun fight movies you’re likely to find.
5. FIGHT CLUB (dir. David Fincher, 1999)
A bit of a change-up now, David Fincher’s Fight Club isn’t a proper “fight” movie in most traditional senses. Although it’s about an underground fighting club, the film is mostly about the evolution of impotent rage into troublesome rebellion, and from there into outright violence. But under Fincher’s insightful direction the pounding of fists against flesh, the squirts of blood on the mat and the sweaty grandeur of bare-knuckle fighting feels more real than practically any other film. It’s a powerful portrayal of how violence, when expressed, leads to both masculine power and downfall, and it definitely makes you want to get drunk and punch a guy.
4. LEGEND OF THE DRUNKEN MASTER (dirs. Lau Kar-leung Jackie Chan, 1994)
More fun than Fight Club (if arguably not as good a film), Jackie Chan’s most impressive fight movie – and that’s saying something – is also one of the best to get an American theatrical release. Chan plays Chinese hero Wong Fei-hung (a character who also appears in such fight movie classics as Iron Monkey and Once Upon a Time in China), who struggles to remain conflict and booze-free after running afoul of smugglers. A sequel to The Matrix choreographer Yuen Woo-ping’s original The Drunken Master (also excellent), this sequel surpasses the original with wildly inventive fight sequences and a spryer sense of humor, courtesy of master physical comedian Jackie Chan. Unlike Fight Club, Legend of the Drunken Master will make you want to get drunk and roundhouse kick a guy.
3. ONG-BAK (dir. Prachya Pinkaew, 2003)
Not all of the best fight movies come from China (although most sure as hell seem to). In fact, a recent edition to one of the best ever hails from Thailand, where badass superstar Tony Jaa made a huge splash with the no holds barred Muay Thai actioner Ong-Bak. Jaa stars as Ting, a Muay Thai expert charged with traveling to the big city to retrieve the head of a sacred Buddha statue stolen from his tiny village. He barely makes into the city limits before running smack dab into a superior freerunning chase scene and from there into an underground fighting tournament. In one particularly brutal fight scene (of many), Jaa takes on stuntman David Ismalone, who redefines “fighting dirty” when he uses every foreign object at his disposal to beat Jaa into submission. But Jaa is the star here, kneeing every mofo in the face with a physical grace matched only by his rage. Jaa’s follow-up, The Protector, arguably has more impressive fight scenes than Ong-Bak, but this film’s simple storyline and brutal action make it the preferred choice in our eyes.
2. LEGENDARY WEAPONS OF CHINA (dir. Lau Kar-leung, 1982)
Making his third appearance on this list, director Lau Kar-leung turns in what may be his career defining work in Legendary Weapons of China, in which he also co-starred. With guns making their way into China, “magical” kung fu warriors are scrambling to find a way to use martial arts to defeat a bullet. Lau Kar-leung plays one such warrior, who knows that magical kung fu is based entirely on illusion and deserts the war effort. Gordon Liu tracks him down to kill him, leading to a series of amazing fight scenes, many of which expose the tricks of special effects-laden kung fu movies in an effort to celebrate real fighting. The final fight sequences use every single legendary weapon of China, from twin broadswords to battle axes to three-section staffs to chain whips, eighteen in total, in one of the most impressive martial arts exhibitions ever filmed.
1. ENTER THE DRAGON (dir. Robert Clouse, 1973)
Still the best fight movie – and maybe it always will be – Bruce Lee’s magnum opus starred the most famous kung fu master in the world as a Shaolin monk who infiltrates an underground fighting tournament (before it was a cliche) to bring its evil mastermind to justice for betraying the temple and indirectly killing Lee’s sister. Along the way he teams up with the Black Samurai himself, Jim Kelly, and John Saxon (who was a bigger star back then) in a series of iconic battles, including a brutal beat down with Bolo Yeung, an early cameo appearance from Sammo Hung and a classic House of Mirrors finale with future Drunken Master co-star Shih Kien. You could argue that other films on our list have more elaborate choreography, but director Robert Clouse (who would go on to direct other memorable fight movies like China O’Brien and Black Belt Jones) infuses his film with a James Bond-like swagger as three symbols of unbridled masculinity badass their way throughout the movie like the shirtless icons that they are, and makes the short but vicious fight scenes as powerful as they come.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE BEST FIGHTING MOVIE EVER?