Sunday, June 2, 2019

The three most realistic movie gunfights?

A scene from Sicario. We are the Mighty. 

We are the Mighty has a list up of what they say is the top three realistic gunfights in movie history. The list is the border shootout in Sicario, the D-Day scene of Saving Private Ryan and the infamous bank robbery in the movie Heat. It's a fairly good list as all three scenes are pretty amazing. I'm going to post the videos here and add a couple of entries I think they may have missed. Keep in mind that all of these videos will have some obvious spoilers. 

Sicario is one of the better movies released in the past year and has some of the best dramatic scenes in recent years. It's also one of the few movies to deal with the Mexican Drug War. The sequel isn't as good but it has some pretty good scenes as well. The scene in question is one of the more tense and brutal ones I have seen in recent memory


Saving Private Ryan's D-Day scene is obviously one of the better put to film. I have heard stories of World War II veterans who had to walk out because it was so similar to the real thing. However, I don't know if I really consider it to be a movie "shootout" so much as a huge battle scene. Still it's pretty worthy. 


Finally, they cite what I have always considered to be the best shootout in movie history, which is of course the bank robbery from Heat. It's almost cliche to praise the movies excellent gun fights and realistic sound design. The gunfire was recorded on scene and people have praised the acting and performance of the main characters for years. 



I'd add a few more to this list. First of all there was the final shootout in The Way of the Gun. It features realistic reloads, the consequences of not looking where you leap and quite possibly the only correct use of a revolver's ejection rod I have ever scene in film. It's a great scene and a great movie which I highly recommend. 


I've also heard that the final scene in The Veteran, a 2011 movie, was very good. I haven't actually seen the movie but I have seen the last shootout. From what I understand the shootout was the only good part of the movie but it's very similar to Heat in that they used the actual sounds of the guns while filming the scene. 



Finally, I think the final shootout in Unforgiven was one of the best in a Western. Westerns tend to have good shootouts but almost none of them are realistic. Unforgiven at least tried to do so and was a damn fine dramatic scene as well. 



I do enjoy realistic gun fights in movies but they tend to fail pretty hard at delivering. All to often directors go for flash over realism. The above movies are pretty good examples of directors actually trying to be realistic. 




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