>> Speaker 1: We're not quite sure if gun violence in movies is harmless
make-believe, or
post-modern moral decay, but we know it's definitely [SOUND] awesome.
These are the Top 10 Movie Shootouts of All Time.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Lt. Archie Hicox: It would appear there's only one thing left for you to do.
>> Major Dieter Hellstrom: And what would that be?
>> Speaker 1: Kicking us off at number 10,
it's hard to talk about shootouts without Tarantino's name coming up.
He's a man with a fondness for graphic violence of all types and
his filmography reflects his knack for it.
>From the standoffs in Inglorious Bastards and
Reservoir Dogs, to the vengeful butchery of Candyland in Django Unchained,
he's made a career on spectacular gun deaths.
We should even mention the shootout from True Romance,
since Tarantino wrote the script.
And while we wanna give him all the credit that he's due,
our number 10 actually goes to a good friend of his.
>> Right Hand: Friends of yours?
>> Pick-up Guy: I, look, I swear,
I have no [SOUND] idea what the hell's going on here.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 1: We're talking about
Robert Rodriguez and the badassery that is his Desperado bar shootout.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 1: Sporting dual Ruger KP90s
that pop out of his sleeves in what seems like a very unlikely fit.
Antonio Banderas kicks off the killing in Desperado with some impressive
moves against an entire bar of red shirt bad guys.
Culminating in a one on one blind machine gun spray and pray and
a hilarious amount of empty clips.
Desperado is Rodriguez's sequel to El Mariachi his debut feature
that he shot for a rumored $7,000 famously carting
the camera around on a wheelchair in lieu of an actual dolly.
But he got a serious upgrade with Desperado, and he netted himself a whole
lot more guns, blood, and Antonio freaking Banderas with the loop.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: Next up at number 9, we've got to love a shootout with the mob.
There's the final shootout from the Departed, hit girls incredible
shootout from Kick Ass, and the inverted russian mob shootout from Boondock Saints.
And while we're at it,
we should take a moment to bask in the absurdly over the top insanity of
Willem Dafoe's reenactment of their front yard shootout from elsewhere in the film.
>> Paul Smecker: There was a fire fight.
>> Speaker 1: However our number 9 goes to a relatively unknown cope
classic State of Grace for it's final shootout.
>> [MUSIC]
[SOUND] >> Speaker 1: The whole film itself is
worth checking out if you haven't seen it yet.
It follows undercover cop Sean Penn as he returns to the neighborhood that he
grew up in as he gets involved with the Irish mob.
But the shootout is just spectacular.
A far cry from the super-heroics of other entries on this list,
it's hard to know if anyone makes it out alive.
It's slow, intense, and brutal, and conflicted in its depiction of violence.
And the sound is the best part.
With everything silent except for the gunshots,
the focus rests solely on the death and
destruction that unfolds before us, not the acrobatic heroics of a gunslinger.
It almost reminds us of another great silent shootout that
just missed this list from Road to Perdition.
But it's definitely a sleeper classic, and it's hard to watch in all the best ways.
So, any shootout fan should bite the bullet and give it a chance.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: Next up we're looking at the next generation savagery directors
come up with when they combine shootouts with science fiction.
And we got some awesome choices here from the warehouse shootout in Robocop, to
the police office massacre in Terminator, to another Arnie bloodbath in Predator.
And we really wish we could pick he hallway shootout from Equilibrium,
because it's cool, and flashy, and campy, and blast to watch.
But it's just not quite impressive enough to edge out our number 8 pick,
with the lobby shootout from The Matrix.
>> Security Guard: Please remove any metallic items you're carrying, keys,
loose change.
>> [SOUND] >> Security Guard: Holy shit.
>> Speaker 1: Seems like hardly a list goes by when we're not talking about The
Matrix, but here we are again with another exemplary action sequence from the film.
And this probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise, seeing how it's not exactly
controversial to claim that The Matrix will go down in film history as a classic.
And check out this scene.
The destruction of the entire lobby is crazy.
Not just because of how gratuitous it is, but look behind the scenes.
This stuff wasn't CGI.
It was brilliantly coordinated special effects, and what's more,
they've gotta deal with actors messing up like this.
Which would have meant they had to reset the entire gag back to the beginning,
rebuilding whatever column and re-rigging it with new charges.
It's no wonder the entire sequence took ten whole days to shoot,
what with all the stunts, explosives, and wire work throughout.
And the result is a marvel to watch, not so
much one of those shootouts where you're under the edge of your seat,
wondering if our heroes will make it out alive.
But wondering just how badly they'll manage to mess up the bad guys.
And in this case, it's pretty clear the answer is very, very bad.
>> [MUSIC]
[SOUND] >> Speaker 1: Now shootouts certainly
aren't limited to the domain of American filmmakers.
There's plenty of international claim to the shootout crowd.
And when it comes to modern full-throttle, balls to the wall insanity,
there's no director with better pedigree than John Woo.
That's right, Woo is pretty much the craziest,
most recognizable, most influential action director to come out of Hong Kong cinema,
and he's got the shootouts to show for it.
In fact, he's made such a career of awesome shootouts that most of his
movies have two or three that we considered for this list.
Hard Boiled has the opening tea house shootout,
the absolutely absurd warehouse shootout, and the final long take hospital Shootout.
And Face/Off has one or two shootouts of its own.
But for our pick for
number 7, we're going with one of his awesome shootouts from The Killer.
No, it's not the badass double-crossing shootout in Chow Yun Fat's apartment.
And no it's not the even higher intensity shootout where Chow and
Lee defend a house against dozens of indistinguishable, generic bad guys.
Our number 7 goes to the final, epic church shootout,
that sees the two heroes mow down armed assailants like untamed grass,
as they burst in through every entrance imaginable.
Shooting blindly in a scene that took 36 days to shoot, and
over 40,000 rounds of blank ammunition.
This film managed to inspire our earlier pick, Desperado, as well
as some other films that just missed this list, like The Professional and Nikita.
Yes, it's over the top, melodramatic, and gratuitous, but
it's all those things in the best possible way, which is exactly why love them.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: Of course if we're going to honor international directors it's
pretty much required that we turn our eye to spaghetti westerns.
A string of Italian made American westerns that emerged in the 1960's.
And while DJango deserves an honorable mention for it's coffin mounted
machine gun massacre, we've gotta look to the spaghetti OG, Sergio Leone.
A massively important filmmaker for the genre.
He's actually one of John Woo's biggest cited inspirations.
Known for his bleak use of widescreen, long staring closeups, and tension more
than his actual violence, Leone has enough great shootouts to fill this whole list.
Of course, we can only pick one.
But it's really not that hard, after all.
We really wish we could pick the awesome armour-plated final shootout from
A Fistful of Dollars, or
the train station shootout from Once Upon a Time in the West.
But we would be doing this list a great disservice if we picked anything but
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.
For a shootout, there are very few gun shots here, only two to be precise.
But that doesn't keep this from being one of the most tense sequences in film
history, thanks to Leone's impeccable direction and Morricone's historic score.
Extreme wides cut in with extreme close-ups has come to be know as one of
Leone's trademarks.
Along with the circular arena made up for this custom-built graveyard that was
thrown up in two days by 250 Spanish soldiers for the sequence.
Leone's camera says so much more than his silent characters, and for
that we have to honor this career-defining masterpiece.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 1: Of course,
cowboys, cops and gangsters don't have the monopoly on shootouts.
We can't forget about soldiers, so we're looking to war films for our number 5.
There are some great shootouts in the likes of Black Hawk Down, basically,
half of Lone Survivor and the sniper battle from The Hurt Locker.
But for our number 5, we're going with Saving Private Ryan.
>> [SOUND] >> Captain Miller: Cover, cover.
>> Speaker 1: In terms of battle scenes most people hear Private Ryan and
think of the D-Day landing sequence that is certainly famous for a reason.
But that's about as much of a shootout as dump trucks are commuter cars.
So it has no real place on this list.
And although it's an oft forgotten middle child, the sniper scene is phenomenal.
Interestingly enough,
the shot taken here is actually based on a real shot, although not from World War II.
During the Vietnam war, a marine Private Hatchcock was engaged
in a sniper battle with an entrenched Viet Cong.
When he saw a glare from the enemy's sniper scope, and
put a round through the scope and into his eye.
Gripping, emotional, filled with restraint and cathartic in its climax,
you probably won't realize you were holding your breath until it's over.
>> Private Jackson: My God, I trust in thee.
Let me not be ashamed.
>> [SOUND]
[NOISE] >> Speaker 1: Next up at number 4
we're giving it to the geniuses that are Joel and Ethan Cohen.
And, no, not the Danny Boy Tommy Gun shootout From Miller's Crossing,
although that's pretty badass, if a bit cartoonish.
We're talking about the masterfully constructed game of cat and
mouse between Llewelyn Moss and Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 1: From
the pitch black game waiting game through the hotel door,
to Llewelyn's near escape down a silent alleyway, to their duel across the street.
Everything about this sequence is hyper-realistic, except for
maybe the shotgun silencer.
In fact, the one thing that should most speak to the restraint of
the sequence is that much like the rest of the movie, the hero and
the villain never come face to face.
Not only that, they never so much as inhabit the same room or
even share a shot on screen.
And yet the Cohens managed to construct a shootout that's not only, functional and
dramatic, but memorable and dangerous.
Spliced together in a series almost and
near misses, it's minimalism at its most effective.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Tony Montana: You wanna play games?
Okay, I play with you.
>> Speaker 1: To hell with restraint.
While we love a seething duel of the minds,
we're equally fond of blazing guns and high body counts.
Enter Brian De Palma.
Yes, he's pretty well-known for
his Untouchables shootout that pays equal homage to Eisenstein and Hitchcock.
But our number 3 goes to the bloody climax of Scarface that sees Tony Montana
introducing the world to his small acquaintance.
>> Tony Montana: Say hello to my little friend.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 1: That little friend is
actually an M16 assault rifle with an M203 40-millimeter grenade launcher And
even though it is filmed with blanks, Pacino grabbed it by the muzzle after
firing a volley, and burned the [SOUND] out of his hand.
Another cool bit of technical trivia is that the guns in this sequence were
all electronically synchronized with the camera shutter so
that it captured the muzzle flashes more effectively.
But enough nerding out.
Let's just look at the awesome carnage in the shape of multiple explosions,
wave after wave of attackers turned into hot lead swiss cheese.
And an unbelievably stubborn Montana who, after dozens of bullet wounds,
is notoriously still standing.
>> Tony Montana: I'm still standing.
>> Speaker 1: Where other directors on this list had made violence heartbreaking,
terrifying and brutal in equal measure,
De Palma succeeds in making it look really, really [SOUND] cool.
Even if it was ultimately meant as critical or satirical.
But, that doesn't take away from the absolutely epic, enthralling, and
iconic nature of this shootout.
So, we're happy to count it as one of the best.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 1: Just
in case you haven't had enough of westerns, we've got one more for you.
And it's not Butch Cassidy, Shane, Open Range, 3:10 to Yuma, Unforgiven,
Tombstone, or High Noon.
Although those shootouts are all worthy honorable mentions in their own right.
For our number 2, our pick belongs to one man.
Sam Peckinpah and his master class of a shootout that is The Wild Bunch.
>> Mapache: What do you want?
>> Pike Bishop: We want Angel.
>> Speaker 15: You want Angel, no?
Right, I am going to give it to you.
>> Speaker 15: [FOREIGN]
>> [MUSIC]
[SOUND] >> Speaker 1: He's an absolute legend,
notorious for his violent films, violent relationships, and alcohol abuse.
He's rumored to have been so
frustrated with his crews inability to capture real gunfire with their special
effects that he grabbed a real revolver and emptied it into a nearby wall.
Showing them exactly what he was looking for,
and most likely scaring the [SOUND] out of them in the process.
The violence of the film was seriously criticized at the time.
But Peckinpah cited a desire to turn the sanitized TV
westerns on there heads with a film that actually showed the realities of violence,
as it appeared on TV's daily in Vietnam war footage.
And it be a hard sound to suggest that Peckinpah held back with
the violence here.
Pretty much no one is spared in this legendary suicide mission.
And they didn't have enough costumes for all the people Peckinpah wanted to murder,
so most actors would die, wash off their costumes then go die again.
But the scene is notable for more just it's successes.
It's also a landmark in editing and staging perfectly mixing film
at six different levels of slow motion and cross cutting.
Between a multitude of different arenas of simultaneous action
while remaining coherent for audiences.
>> Neil McCauley: Stay down.
We want to hurt no one.
We're here for the banks' money, not your money.
Your money is insured by the federal government.
You're not gonna lose a dime.
Think of your families.
Don't risk your life.
Don't try and be a hero.
>> Speaker 1: And finally,
coming in at our number 1, we're looking at the incredible work of Michael Mann.
He's orchestrated awesome shootouts in films like Collateral, Public Enemies, and
Miami Vice, but nothing can ever live up to the perfection that is the robbery
sequence from Heat.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 1: The epic showdown between
De Niro and Pacino that fans had always been waiting for.
The sequence is notable and that it is both incredibly gratuitous, bombastic, and
intense while still seeming to be more real than any other shootout ever shot.
And well that’s mostly because it is.
Michael Mann put his actors through such a rigorous amount of training in
preparation for this film that they pretty much did everything for real.
They dressed up in disguises and cased the actual bank during operating hours,
escaping undetected in a get away vehicle.
The cops were introduced to, and socialized with actual cops.
The criminals were introduced to,
and socialized with actual professional criminals.
All the actors spent
three months training in heavy weapons in preparation for this film.
With the police officers receiving police training, and
the robbers receiving alternate training.
And it all culminated with Mann building a life-size,
to-scale replica of the entire street on the shooting range.
And putting the actors through a live-fire version of the shootout.
Except against targets not each other.
The film is often lauded for how absolutely massive it sounds.
Now when it comes to the sound effects, most films have all their gun shots hits
and ricochet replaced by the post production sound team after the fact.
It's probably a safe bet to assume that every other film on this list did
just that.
And he did this too using three post production sound stages to simotaniously
create a massive mix of the scene, until Micheal Mann heard it, and hated it.
And threw it all out in order to replace it with the audio they recorded on set.
Booming with the coffinous echoes of 800 to 1000 blank rounds per take
ricocheting off the walls of the downtown corridor.
It's meticulous, visceral, heart pounding filmmaking and it's just about the realest
example of on screen gun violence ever committed to film.
Which is why we think it's the number 1 shootout of all time.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 1: So what do you think?
Did we leave out one of your favorite shootouts?
Do you disagree with one of our picks?
Let us know in the comments below,
and be sure to subscribe for
more Cinefix movie lists.
>> [MUSIC]