- Welcome back to another episode of Scenic Fights,
Fight Scene Breakdown.
(tactical music)
I'm Logan Lo. - I'm Chad Vázquez.
- Today, we are breaking down the stairwell fight scene
from the 2017 Atomic Blonde film,
starring Charlize Theron as Lorraine Broughton.
And you know, we've gotten a lot of requests
for this particular fight scene and I totally see why.
All right, you ready? - Let's do it.
- Let's Go.
- I like how Charlize is keeping the assailant at bay
getting the weapon away from him. - Yeah that's cool
- oof, she just ate that.
-Alright -Bam!
Okay, knee shot.
- All right cool, so elbows and knees
And, all right she just kind of tossed him.
All right so two things interesting that happens now.
We have Charlize using elbows and knee, totally valid,
in a let's say self defenses scenario
when you don't have gloves.
And also second part is there's a part where Charlize
threw the guy, we couldn't see the footwork.
It looked like she just uses her hands
and maybe momentum. - Okay.
- Just to toss the dude. - Right?
- Given her size compared to the guy,
I don't know how valid that'd be, let's break that down.
Charlize's character is dealing with two,
much larger opponents, but what she's doing very well
is using elbows and knees. - Right.
- That makes actually a lot of sense, for anyone.
If you're in a fight, self defense scenario
where you don't have gloves and strikes are being thrown.
So let's look at it.
She's throwing within an angle like so you,
can also go upward like so, like an uppercut,
furthermore whenever the arms get blocked by the opponent,
well, the body's open.
And so we have knees that can be used,
smart choice of weapons for her.
- Funny little story
when I was just sparring with a good buddy of mine,
I got kneed straight in the belly, I immediately vomited.
- Yeah. - It was like an immediate,
contact, vomit. - Yeah.
- I mean, these are some effective strikes.
- Good tools, and again.
- Don't have Mexican beforehand.
- As the fight moves forward,
Charlize throws one of the guys,
we don't see what her legs are doing.
What it seems like is happening,
is she's grabbing the jacket
and with him charging and momentum, just really tosses him.
Now, if she wasn't using her hips or feet
I don't see it happening. - Right.
- Again, there being a size difference.
So an alternative is a really cool Judo sweep,
assuming that momentum is being generated
because the opponent is charging
and using the grips to guide the opponent.
If she used one of her feet to catch that foot, like so
I could see an example of even someone of her size
compared to her opponent,
can throw someone effectively like that.
So that's something that would make more sense
as an alternative move - Sure.
Teep!
Man, you know stuntmen
I don't know how they do that stuff. It's amazing, and
this looks like it's all one cut right?
- Yeah. - It's pretty amazing.
- Everyone just fell, together.
- You know, what's also impressive is,
Charlize is doing a lot of these stunts herself right.
- Mmm, okay. - That's pretty impressive.
Yeah she's taking a lot of punishment
Okay, so now she's using fist
but she's using fist for soft body targets,
that makes a lot of sense.
- Yeah, if you're gonna hit anywhere with a closed fist,
that makes sense, the torso.
- Right, use of terrain, good.
Improvised weapon.
Guy tossed a bag at her.
Ooh, out-the-front knife, out-the-front knife.
This is so cool. I'll be doing this,
the entire video guys, the whole video.
I'll be doing it the whole time.
All right.
So okay,
it looks like there's some defensive work here.
- She's just mauling him here. - Jesus yeah,
She's going for it. I like that she's attacking repeatedly.
She's not just doing one and done.
- All right so, why would she not go straight for the head?
The neck? - That's a great question.
If it was me, if I was doing a fight such as this
I would do the same thing,
I would go for center body mass, larger.
So for me, I would probably do a couple shots to the body
before I go for the head.
So body, body, then the head.
Why? Because I wanna make sure I cause some damage.
Usually when you're talking about weapons,
you generally want to strike larger body mass first,
and then the smaller targets later.
- I'd imagine it'd help you find the target better too right?
- Exactly, exactly. - Okay, That makes sense.
- Oh buddy comes in, okay.
She's forgetting about the first guy
because she's figures he's done.
- Oh yeah he's losing a whole bunch of blood, it seems.
- Oh, this guy.
- And, he's like I'm done, I'm good.
- Man. That is an amazing, how does he fall like that?
Honestly, stuntmen props to you.
Okay, so as we saw in our 'Nobody' breakdown video,
the guy has a knife inside him, and he just pulls it out
and uses it now against Charlize.
Let's see what happens.
Oh, reversal. I totally believe this reversal
- All right, cool! There we have a Drop Seoi Nage.
- So here we've got a lot of things going on,
we have an unarmed defender against an armed assailant.
We have a reversal and we have a throw.
Yes, a Drop Seoi Nage right down the stairs.
So we have three things to break down.
- All right, let's do it. - Let's do it.
- Okay, no we're gonna take a brief segue
to just talk about the OTF knife
which is an out-the-front knife.
It's actually quite an old design, it's spring loaded.
The blade comes directly out the front,
And this is was to me by one of my students actually,
Thanks a lot, Shahan. So with this knife,
you'll note that it's a dual edge weapon
as is the Gerber Mark II, which we discussed previously
in Captain America: Winter Soldier.
These type of weapons are purely offensive tools
to be used as weapons. Why is that?
Note how little metal is on these two weapons.
Whereas if you have a single edge weapon
there's usually a thick spine,
which means that it's a very strong tool for chopping.
These are not meant to take heavy duty work,
these are meant to be punctured into soft tissue.
Clearly the stunt team gave a lot of thought
into what these particular assailants were going to be used
for this particular job.
Great work guys, as we talked about in 'The Hunted'
and in 'Jason Bourne', if I'm unarmed,
and I'm going to go against someone that's armed. For me,
I would traditionally want to be either in Prayer,
or Home Alone, right. And as we said in Home Alone,
it's purely defensive, so I would probably want to be
mainly in Prayer. So Chad,
you don't want to use the real knife right?
- I think no, I'm good.
You sure? You can show everyone how tough you are.
- I don't think I'm that tough, I think I'm fine.
All right so we're gonna be using
our safety trainer knife for this,
okay. - Yes, please.
- As we saw in this, Charlize had her hands
almost palm down as she was defending,
note though that if she has her palm down,
do some sort of grab on me.
- Okay. - Right.
- So cut, right. So I just cut his wrist.
Do any type of defense.
Cut, there's your hand.
- Yeah. - Boom, there.
- Yeah. - So palm down, is it wrong?
It is suboptimal, why?
Because it enables me to give a cut.
However, if it's palm up I can't get that wrist.
I'm gonna try to just slash your wrist
just keep your palms like that.
- Gotcha. - And then defend yourself.
- Right, here.
Harder, It's harder.
Certainly you don't wanna get cut anywhere
no one wants to get cut anywhere.
But in terms of having palm down
against someone with knife,
it is suboptimal if you're going against someone with
it in Hammer Grip. Note that it's the reverse,
when it's in an icepick grip.
Chad let's do the reverse.
Right here. - Oh, I see yeah.
- So I'm cutting in. Now have yourself palm down.
All right, so as I defend, you're just gonna defend right.
- Yeah. - So here,
I'm cutting against the back of his arm,
so it's counterintuitive.
If you're gonna go against someone that has their weapon
in a Hammer Grip, you want to have palms up,
generally speaking. If you're fighting against someone
that has their weapon in an Icepick Grip
you generally want palms down, generally speaking.
Was Charlize wrong in this particular scene?
No, because really it's hard to defend yourself
against a knife if you're unarmed, but in terms of
defending yourself, it wasn't the best way to do it
but I'm not gonna take off too many points for it.
It was suboptimal.
So here in this final weapons exchange with this assailant
before we get to the Drop Seoi Nage,
we're gonna talk a little bit first about A targeting
and B a reversal. All right, so for targeting,
you had asked an interesting question.
Why not just go for the head?
Because I'm tired, I'm bloody, I'm sweaty, I'm hot,
I could miss. Chad I'm gonna launch a strike here
you're just gonna move your head.
- Okay. - And boom,
I just expanded a lot of energy and watch,
Chad could just start taking a walk, to take the back
and then suddenly I've lost.
So for me, I would do the exact same thing Charlize did,
for me I would aim for, larger body mass first.
What I would probably do is one two bam, right to the head.
So I would go one, two to the head
and then she even went to the back
and took the back as well.
In terms of targeting, for me and everyone's different,
for me I would just feel more comfortable,
aiming for center body mass first
before I go for the headshot.
- So you're making mincemeat of the person.
- Well, yeah, I mean
mincemeat you're really slicing the person to ribbons,
here I'm puncturing. So making puncture meat?
- Okay, so longs as there's a little you know, oregano.
- A little meat, a little flavor.
- You know what I'm saying? - There you go.
Now we're gonna do a reversal.
The assailant just pulled the weapon out of his own chest
and does a really slow lunge towards Charlize,
Charlize side steps, capture the crook of the elbow
and use that to bend and do a reversal.
And then as we saw on 'John Wick, hammer that weapon in.
I think that was perfect. And, situationally speaking,
those are the exact conditions
in which I would do such a move.
You don't want to be in a knife fight.
You certainly don't want to be disarming
or reversing anything,
but if you're going to be in a knife fight
certainly these are the ideal conditions.
The guy's exhausted, bleeding out, taking trauma.
I mean really, in terms of ideal conditions
the ideal condition of life, is being at home
in your underwear, watching one of our Scenic Fights videos
and wearing one of our shirts.
I mean, that really it's the ideal condition.
But in the hierarchy of life events, if that's number one
this is like number 80.
So after that really cool reversal
Charlize finishes off the assailant with, a Drop Seoi Nage.
- She starts the first half with a regular
Ippon Seoi Nage grip here,
but her entry and her finish is that of a Drop Seoi Nage.
Now what I'll do is I'll have Logan go in a square stance.
And so we can see how I enter within that space.
So there's a wrist grip involved.
She gets this grip like so. And it seems as though
she's actually using it
to grab the jacket this guy's wearing.
Now, from here the lead leg,
it's going to point to where my bodys gonna go to,
I'm going drop on both knees
within the best square stance I can do,
underneath my partner. So watch this back leg
it moves myself in, so from here, and so that's the entry.
This will be combined with pulling of the hands
but definitely this forward crunch
and it seems like the speed she went
it developed this momentum to launch the guy.
So now here we go, the full move.
And that's the idea of the throw.
With regards to that technique in a full on fight,
self defense scenario, off the mats.
It's a bit tricky because there's no mats, right?
Imagine just dropping right down to your knees on concrete,
that is brutal on your knees.
A modified version is lowering your center of gravity
before you drop down to your knees.
- Right. - Right.
So let's look at the context here.
When she goes into this, underhook, squatting,
does reduce the impact on the knees a little bit.
- Versus just dropping to the knees, right?
- Yes, exactly.
- Makes sense.
Oh look, Chad that's Daniel Bernhardt.
He's from 'Nobody', 'John wick', I mean,
he's an amazing stunt guy.
You know I really like this
she's actually using the gun as a tonfa I'm assuming
because she doesn't have the bullets in it,
so she can bring a lot of force to bear because again,
weapons are forced multipliers.
She can safely do hammer punches which themselves
are very safe, but not very powerful.
Now she's making a very safe weapon for her,
even more powerful I think that's great.
In the hierarchy of weapons certainly a knuckle punch
causes more damage but,
there's also a greater chance of damage.
With a hammer fist, less chance of damage to the person
but also less chance of damage to your opponent.
Here we have the best of both worlds.
No chance I'm breaking my knuckles with this,
there's a high chance that I'm causing
severe damage with this. So just as we saw in 'Nobody',
where Bob Odenkirk was able to wrap just a small watch
around his hand so he was able to have this small
little bit of metal on his hand and was able to increase
the amount of force that he was able to use.
Imagine what we're talking about here,
we're talking about what,
an inch and a half of solid metal, that I'm using here
and then just whatever you're gonna throw at me right?
- Yeah. - I'm gonna go,
bam here, to the head, that I think would be a fight ender,
I think that if someone hit me with a bar of metal like that
square in the head, that's a finish.
Yeah, she's literally grabbing anything she can.
- Yeah at this point. - She's getting the hot plate
she's down so I'm assuming she's gonna do a low attack
And, bam right to knee, high, and right to the head again.
Boom, she just threw her body into that, that was great.
All right now these are two tired and wounded people
once again, probably also emotionally hurt.
- Yeah. I mean look where live has brought them.
- This is the result of poor life choices I would say.
- With that said we carry on, to now grabbing a.
- Oh, she gets a T-Style Corkscrew,
Bam, we come prepared.
All right, she gets to her feet and back in the fight,
swinging wildly.
Oof right into the armpit. - Okay, yeah!
-Bam!
Now she's taking—
Okay he's going for a strangle,
and you can do it with palm-to-palm
that that is a legit strangle.
- That's a lever choke right?
- Yeah, that's one term you can use to refer to it,
a variation of a rear naked strangle.
- Man, he's just taking it in the eye.
- Right in the eye. That's it yeah!
- Ooh. - Ooh. Right in the throat.
- That's done. - Yeah
- Give her your number and boom that's it.
- All right fights over. - Nice.
Cool fight scene though, really cool fight scene.
So now in the final exchange between
Daniel and Charlize, we now have a T-Style Corkscrew.
She's using this tool as a push knife
that we've seen in the 'Jason Bourne' episode.
This makes sense, actually so what's going on here.
Obviously she puts it in her power arm,
and she has a lead hand.
This hand can do to actually kind of keep distance
and harass and set up a more powerful strike
with the power hand like so, very boxing-like.
- I would think that the character had experience
with the push knife because you do see her.
- Yeah she's slashing.
- Kind of doing like these big slashing motions,
which a push knife can actually do, a corkscrew cannot.
So I would think that that would probably be
muscle memory before she remembered,
oh yeah, you know what?
I need to use that as a thrusting weapon.
And that happens right, when you get tired in a fight,
you start going back to like bad habits
or going back to what you know,
so I can see someone that has been really trained going
You know what?
I'm just gonna flail wildly, oh yeah.
And then get back into the professional mindset.
- Which eventually she does move to,
when she gets her back taken for a modified
rear naked strangle. Within the battle now Daniel has
back exposure. In this case Daniel gets
a palm-to-palm grip here in MMA you'll see fighters
do this same strategy because the gloves get in the way.
Right, it's hard to figure-four with that object, right.
So you have fighters, in this case Daniel they'll
grab palm-to-palm and apply a strangle here,
or at least use this grip to get the arm
deeper in to then make space for a figure-four.
But in this case here, Daniel stays like so.
I would also tell some of my students who have
short limbs, big torsos who's going against someone else
who also maybe has a wide frame
to actually use this modified version.
If they can't get a full figure-four with that said,
it seems like Daniel does not have these issues.
So he's going in a suboptimal way on finishing
this rear naked strangle.
- All right so Chad, to be clear,
the lever strangle is still effective right?
Yes this variation can still work,
it takes a little more energy and effort,
but yes it is valid.
- Okay. Because I'm just a nicer person than Chad,
Chad likes to just choke me and do stuff to me.
Whereas right now I don't want to slam this into his eye.
I wanna see if I can touch his shoulder
a number of times before I start going out and need to tap.
And then I'm gonna see how long I can actually last,
if I was not armed and see if I can try to hit him
in some capacity, all right.
And go
Oh, this is a bad idea, this is a terrible idea.
Yeah, that is valid, that is valid.
(laughing)
Now just to finish the scene
and we're gonna do this very slowly.
If Chad is Daniel and has the lever choke,
here I'm gonna try to hit that eye.
Now there's a little bit of luck involved
but she kind of knows, she can feel kinesthetically
where the head is in relation to his body.
She then comes out here and then
just drives that straight into the throat.
If you watch any type of Animal Planet, National Geographic
you can see that animals instinctively go for the neck.
The neck is often a fight ender, here Charlize is trained
she knows this, and so she goes
for what she knows is a fight ender.
She's now caused massive damage by puncturing the eye,
now she's gonna take it, and bam plow that right in
to the throat, total sense makes total sense.
(glass shattering)
I have to say this was a great scene,
I thoroughly enjoyed the film.
I really like how she just took advantage of
what was out there because that's what you do
in a real fight. She didn't have a pistol that was loaded
so she used it as an improvised weapon
to support a hammer fist. She didn't have a push knife,
so she used a T-Style Corkscrew instead.
What didn't I like? She used it slashing first,
versus just a thrust. Also she did do kind of an
unarmed versus armed assailant duel.
Was it optimal? It wasn't,
and I feel that there were better ways
that she could have defended herself
against an armed opponent with an edged weapon
- Within the hand-to-hand combat pretty cool stuff.
One, use of elbow and knees makes sense within real life,
especially in the context of her being a smaller person,
excellent. Cool Drop Seoi Nage, even though
we talked about just some of the dangers of applying that
in a non-soft floor matted area.
And then of course we looked at the rear naked strangle
in a modified version, it's valid it works.
One little negative thing I would say is,
her being a smaller person, fighting multiple bigger people
and there's cases where she's
taking a certain amount of punishment
and moving them that I feel is unrealistic, but
compared to everything else,
that's just one little small thing I think overall,
pretty good pretty cool.
- Yeah, so in light of all of this
it gets a solid A from Chad and me.
- Yep. - Really cool scene.