There's a duel come Friday, y'all. Gun-toting flicks Shoot 'Em Up and 3:10 to Yuma will vie for our dollars. Both picture shows offer ferocious men wincing ferociously and beating on each other. Which bring us to this week's focus: the fight scene. A brawl can be bloody. It can be more elegant than a ballroom dance, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-style.
But fight scenes can also be pretty dang sweet. There are some that make us smile and giggle and awww like proud grandmamas. So today, we're gonna celebrate the onscreen duels that bring out the softie in all of us. We only tallied nine, so if there's an adorable war of fists or machetes that makes you go weak in the knees, throw your verbal punches in the Comments section.
Rocky, this one's for you:
1. Raising Arizona: Gale Snoats (John Goodman) and Evelle Snoats (William Forsythe) are buddies of our hero, H.I. McDunnough (Nicolas Cage). They don't wanna fight him, but when they learn he's in possession of a baby worth a lotta dollars, well, they gotsa do something. And the takedown is all primal screams, Cheerios flying all over the trailer. Yum!
2. Class: It's hard to say who is tougher: preppy babyface Andrew McCarthy or preppy babyface Rob Lowe. And perhaps that's why it's so cute to watch these prep-school roommates tumble around in the mud, clawing at each other. And they have a damn good reason: Cutie-pie poor boy McCarthy slept with cute-pie rich boy Rob Lowe's hot mom. Oh no he di'nt! You know neither boy is gonna get hurt, and all you can think about is whether mud stains will come out of Lacoste. So freaking cute.
3. Footloose: Seriously, Kevin Bacon and Chris Penn do not want to fight. They have worked their heinies off to plan a dance and have hung streamers, swept the floor and set the glitter in the beams. All they want is to get their dance on. Alas, no. The jerk-off antidancers show up ready to throw down. The good guys swore to their girls there would be no fights. And that's what's so cute. What ensues is the most chivalrous ass whooping imaginable, wherein the boys throw punches in defense of their right to line dance. Can it get any cuter?
4. Donovan's Reef: Director John Ford had a great sense of humor. Reef is almost like a chick flick for men, as Michael Patrick "Guns" Donovan (John Wayne) and his buddy Thomas Aloysius "Boats" Gilhooley (Lee Marvin) scam to help their absentee buddy convince his Boston-based daughter (Elizabeth Allen) that her dad is worthy of an inheritance. More importantly, Guns and Boats have the same birthday, so naturally they have a huge annual fistfight every year. After all, real men don't share birthdays. This is classic Ford-style rough housing, sentimental and mushy as a pillow fight in a sorority house.
5. Road House: Let us all praise Patrick Swayze, who kicks so much butt as Dalton that he's famous in the expansive cross-continental bar scene. It's not as hard as you might think to focus on the best brawlthat's definitely the war that goes down on Dalton's first night in the Double Deuce. We have already seen Dalton kick ass, but when things go nutsglasses flying, waitresses throwing punchesDalton just stands by and soaks in the raucous. We know what the patrons and the warriors don't understand: Dalton is a zen masterhe has to feel the fight before he can fight it. So deep, so heroic, I know.
6. Gremlins: A housewife (Frances Lee McCain) fights off Gizmo's mean-spirited cousins with blenders, knives and other household appliances. We know Mrs. Peltzer is gonna win, because the war is only just beginningwhich is what makes this furry brawl more cute than scary. We all learn an important lesson: You don't mess with the lady of the house, especially when it's almost Christmas.
7. Dumb & Dumber: The Farrelly brothers offer amazing insight into the male mind when they show us Lloyd Christmas' (Jim Carrey) fantasy. He tries to dine elegant with his babe (Lauren Holly), but a waiter wants a piece of her. Boom, he takes down the waiter. The chef comes out, full-on ninja. Lloyd kicks the crap out of him and literally pulls the guy's beating heart out of his chest cavity. That's love, I tell you.
8. Every Which Way But Loose: Ma Boggs (Ruth Gordon) has a fistful of problems. Her son Philo Beddoe (Clint Eastwood) lets his orangutan, Clyde, eat all her Oreos. The damn hairy ape! She rails on incessantly about her frustrations. That's why it's so damn gratifying when the Black Widow gang members show up on Ma Boggs' property. She takes her shotgun to the leather-clad dudes and makes 'em run like little girls. They sure as hell didn't get her Oreos, and we totally see where Philo gets his guts. Yay for Ma!
9. Raiders of the Lost Ark: Harrison Ford was supposed to take down a creepy guy wielding a scimitar. The scene was written to be an all-out whip-action duel. But young Harry was hot, so he had an idea. Why not just shoot the guy? And why not just smirk in a way that will crystallize Indiana Jones as one of the most beloved, likable, cynical-yet-warm archaeologists in the history of movies? Not a bad idea
