- Welcome back to another episode of Scenic Fights (knife thuds) Fight Scene Breakdown. (upbeat techno music)
(glass crashing) (knives whishing) I'm Logan Lo, and I'm a
Pekiti-Tirsia Instructor at Paxibellum Martial Arts. - And I'm Pak, a judo black belt and coach at Paxibellum Martial Arts. - Today, we'll be breaking
down the knife shop scene from "John Wick: Chapter 3 and we have the fastest
knife thrower in the world, The Great Throwdini, to show us how valid or not John Wick's knife
throwing skills are. Are you ready?
- Let's get it. (mouse clicks) - They're noticing
they're in a knife shop, lots of knives.
- How convenient. - Right? Oh, and here we go. - Oh.
- Nice pass. - Right in the butt.
- Right in the butt. Oh my God. We have to stop this.
(mouse clicks) You see, in most knife
scenes when they come, the guy just tries to
fight and force it through. In this scene, John Wick comes in, gets the obstruction out of
the way and continues to fight. Love that. We'll talk more about that later. (mouse clicks)
Does a back handed throw. - Nice.
- Nice. Good reversal. - Flying sidekick. Oh, right at his nuts. (chuckles) - Oh, but he missed, Thank God! - There would be no John Wick 4. (Logan laughs) - John Wick is just
throwing those wild knives. - This is pretty funny.
- It is. This is awesome. I don't throw my knives, but if I did, I'd wanna John Wick it. - He's a ninja.
- He is a ninja. - [Pak] A superman knife stab. - Oh, this dude is just
getting stabbed by his buddy. - Beautiful Nidan Kosoto Gari. Here, you see John Wick
hitting an Osoto Gari to a Nidan Kosoto Gari. Now, in movies, we rarely see
judo moves done in succession. A lot of times we often
see judo throws being like one big massive throw.
- Right. - This was a great demonstration
of using combinations. - So it's realistic.
- Oh, very realistic. - Cool.
(mouse clicks) - Oh my God, he's not getting
up from that nut shot. - Oh my God. I would not
want that to happen to me. John Wick is going to
town with these knives. There's more knife action. - He's got-
- One after another, after another, right in the forehead. - He got aggression. Look at that, bam. He's just going for it
right in the forehead. - Oh, Jesus. - [Logan] Well that guy's not getting up. - [Pak] Oh, look, that's Tiger Chen. - Did a nice disarm there and
hatchet action or tomahawks. Wow. Look at these guys go. Now, this is good. Not a lot of blocking, but a
lot of passing and striking, I like that. Arm break. And bam, we have another arm break. But it looks like their
arms are okay somehow. - (laughs) He got thrown
with a bitch slap. - Wait, is that a legitimate judo throw? - Yeah. I'll call it a
bitch slap Tai Otoshi. - Of course you would.
(mouse clicks) - [Pak] That looked like an
iron palm push from Tiger Chen. - A pass. Throwing Tiger
right into the case. - [Pak] Beautiful Osoto Gari right there. - Oh man. Let's talk about that.
(mouse clicks) In our very first John Wick video, I talked about how if anyone
throws anything at me, a kick, a punch, I'm slicing that. I'm making mincemeat outta that. Awesome. - Maybe he watched your breakdown. - Maybe he did. (mouse clicks) Okay, nice break. - How many times does
an arm break? (chuckles) - Apparently a lot. Oh, he needs an Excedrin for that. Throws him into the case. Okay, we have another standoff here. Again, he could have
just passed it, right? As he did initially, but he doesn't because you wanna to build up the tension. I can't watch this.
- Oh God. Oh, Jesus Christ. Not the eye.
(mouse clicks) You gotta think about how dramatic and nerve-wracking it is
knowing you're about to die by eye stab. - Yeah, that's not a good way to go. - Sorry, Tiger. (mouse clicks)
All right, he's done. He's walking away.
- All right. - [Pak] Unfinished business though. - [Logan] Roger will
get up. Roger, get up. And no. - Ooh.
(mouse clicks) - He's not getting up.
- Nah. - So, now, we're gonna demonstrate
and grade how realistic and accurate the knife and judo work was. Now, remember, this
grade is only for that. In terms of entertainment,
this was pretty dope. What do you think? - It was very fun to
watch. I absolutely agree. - And remember kids,
don't do this at home. If ever confronted with a knife, run. Pak, you ready for this?
- Let's get it. - The first thing I wanna
talk about between Roger Yuan and John Wick is the karate
chop that John Wick does for the backhand number two, he does this. Notice that it's a karate
chop rather than a hard block. Why is that? The reason why is because in Kali, we always assume that we have a weapon. So, here as we do the karate chop, I'm really doing what's
called a capture and a cutout. So, we actually see that
happen in the following scene. So, if he follows up with a Number Two, here's my capture and cutout,
which is the karate chop. I come in now here, notice
that in our many other films I say I hate when the guy tries
to force the weapon through. It's not gonna work. Pak
is much stronger than me. He's never gonna let me go. However, I can capture and cut out, why? Because he's pushing out
anyways. He wants to push out. I let him push out and then
I would follow up immediately with a backhand to the throat. However, John Wick notices,
'cause he's John Wick, another assailant coming. So, instead, he redirects and throws his weapon
towards that assailant which is highly unlikely,
but he is John Wick. So, in this very next scene, John Wick does a reversal on Roger. Roger comes in with the
backhand Number Two, stop by John Wick and then he paced the assailant
weapon hand to his hip. I like that because you don't want a
weapon hand floating around and twisting around. That's a nice little detail. Then John Wick bent the arm, twisted it and plunged it into Roger
finishing the fight. That is orthodox very
standard Kali work, I love it. Okay, and with this very
next scene is passing and blending versus blocking,
which is he passes the weapon and he blends with that force
to come in with his own force. Why do I like that over a block? I'm a smaller person and generally I don't want to
be overwhelmed with an attack. There's always a chance
that if you do a block you're overwhelmed and
the weapon proceeds. Whereas with a pass, the
danger is getting out of the arc of the attack. So, what I don't wanna do is I don't want to walk
into the arc of the attack. I want to pass and blend
the opponent's force away from me as I launch my own attack. Note that for the first guy he does a pass and blend
attacking to the head. And then for the second guy he does a pass and blend
attacking for the throat. I personally would prefer the later because then I can
attack soft body targets, less chance of me
breaking something on me. Regardless, great Kali
fighting by John Wick. So, for this next scene,
you can really tell that John Wick has had
some serious Kali training. Here, there's another Number Two attack which is stopped by John Wick. John Wick then launches what
looks to be a kidney shot, then comes around and
does an arm break here. Am I gonna break it? Ideally, that's what I want. I think Chad would disagree with me because again, the person can walk around. But what we want is we
want the shock of it to at least wrench it so
that arm sustains damage. That damage accumulates and that's really what
all fighting is, right? You wanna sustain as little
damage to yourself as possible and maximize the damage
to the other person whether it be incremental or exponential. - Okay, so now, let's take a
look at some of the creative judo in this sequence. Here...
- Wait. I got 2.5 million views
on my John Wick video, you're not throwing me. Throw Chad, Chad. - Now the real star is here. I got this. After you. - Thanks, Chad. I was actually
afraid of breaking Logan. - Good thing is I'm unbreakable, baby. - Let's get it. In this scene, John Wick
hits a beautiful Osoto Gari to a Nidan Kosoto Gari. They're tied up. John Wick just blocked to strike, enters with an Osoto Gari, kicks the leg but doesn't really get the
throw like he thought he would. So, he follows up with what's
called a Nidan Kosoto Gari by kicking out that base leg.
(Chad thuds) This is a beautiful example
of chaining your attacks. The likelihood of using one single attack and working all the time is very low. So, what you wanna do is start an attack and follow up with several other attacks until you get the result
of throwing your opponent. Now, let's see that in full speed. (Chad thudding) That's how you do Osoto
Gari to Nidan Kosoto Gari. In this scene, you could see
John Wick smacking his opponent and throwing him to the ground. Now, it's hard to tell which
throw he actually executed because the lower extremities
are cut off in the footage. However, I'm gonna use my best guess from observing how the opponent fell by assuming that John Wick
executed a Tai Otoshi. To execute this throw, I wanna
first have wrist control here and normally I would slap my opponent but because Chad's not Logan. I'm gonna just firmly place
my hand against his neck, do my back step, one,
two, extend my leg here. Make sure your heels are up and to throw, I'm gonna pull this arm, push against the neck and extend my leg. Now, let's see that in full speed. (Chad thuds) (Chad thuds) (Chad thuds) In this scene, John Wick
blocks a kick from Tiger Chen and he goes into what I like to call a hopping or skip Osoto Gari. Now, what we normally do in
a Osoto Gari, we're tied up, we have upper body control. I'm pulling him and I
step in for that throw. Here, John Wick and Tiger
Chen are in kicking range. Tiger Chen kicks, John Wick blocks and snaps it down to the floor, forcing Tiger Chen in a bladed stance. And what John Wick does
is he covers that distance by skipping right into this configuration, throwing him with the Osoto Gari. Now, let's see that in full speed. (hand thuds)
(Chad thudding) (Chad thuds) And now, to go over John
Wick's knife throwing skills. We have the world's most fastest, most accurate knife thrower
in the world with 44 records, a world champion in knife
and tomahawk throwing. I throw people, he throws knives. We got the great Throwdini, let's get it. - Hey, Pak, nice to meet
you. Excuse me, over here. Logan, let's throw some knives, man. - So, Throwdini. Can Jon wick actually
throw as fast as he threw? - No.
- Okay. - What is good news? How
he threw is 100% correct. - I see sometimes people
throw kind of like that and it's just a straight shot and other times there's
like a twirl action. Is there a difference between those two? - My style, which is a
circus style, end-over-end. - End-over-end. The twirling kind. - Yeah.
- Gotcha. - The knife is actually
spinning in the air. The other style would be like a no spin in which index finger is on the knife and when it's thrown, the
finger stops it from spinning and it goes straight.
- Oh, I see. - And the other way would
be like a forced half spin like this where the
hand slows the knife out and makes it just take a
half turn at any distance. - Is it a preference type of thing or is there some benefit
to one over the other? - I think circus style
end-over-end is the most accurate of a spin style. - Yeah, you don't want to
give your insurance manager a heart attack, I get it. So, one other thing I
noticed was that I saw and I'd never seen this before,
I saw John Wick throw it as an ice pick grip, which
is like the reverse grip. Is that possible? - I would say it's extremely unlikely. It's not that somebody's
gonna come along and say, "Hey, I can do it, maybe you can." But in 26 years of throwing...
- Oh. - I've never thrown it that way and I've never seen anybody
else throw it that way. - Well, you are the Great Throwdini. So, I'll take your word for it. - Thank you. - Can you show the audience and myself how to throw like John Wick? - No problem. So, grab it by the blade like so, just bring it behind me, almost
like I'm tapping my shoulder and then out and down with my arm. - Do you break your wrist when you go? - No, the wrist stays solid.
- Okay. - And the knife just leaves my hand as I come down to the bottom of the blade. Do you mean to have your
throwing arm side back? - For me, it's comfortable
to put my opposite foot in the front.
- Okay. - And then I turn my body
into the throw a little bit so I get the mechanics of my
body into that knife as well. - Okay, now, how many times
have you actually hit a person when you didn't want to hit a person? - We don't talk about
that since the accident. - Gotcha. Let's do it. (knife thuds) - And that's how a knife
is supposed to stick. So, Throwdini, you just threw
that. Are you happy with this? - I'm very happy with it.
- Okay. - That's the way it should stick. Knife is horizontal to the ground and that the axis this way, vertical, is perfectly straight up
and down with the board. I was throwing that half
spin from seven feet away. If this were being thrown
to stick into someone, you would want that knife to
always get there point first. Down like this is just gonna
hit and fall over like this, it's just gonna rotate and drop back down. - Throwdini, those were a lot of knives and axes being thrown. Was there a particular
scene that you really liked? - I particularly like that ending scene when he throws a tomahawk,
slightly different than this. This tomahawk has 12-inch handle. - Okay. - So, I would throw it like this. - Right. - But the one they used in that scene had a very long handle. So, John Wick didn't throw it this way. He had both hands on,
brought it back over his head and then threw it that way. - Okay.
- Released, spins through the air and gets to its target exactly like that. It was perfect. - So, you feel that Keanu
Reeves, he was taught correctly. - Nailed it. Perfect. - If you guys wanna find
out more about Throwdini, visit his website, knifethrower.com. Thanks a lot, buddy.
- Thank you, Logan. Thanks for having me. (upbeat techno music)
(glass crashing) - What a fantastic fight scene. Action packed, high paced, chaotic in the best ways possible. Shout out to the choreographers. They really nailed down
the complex sequences in both Judo and Kali. - Absolutely, and if there
is any critique we'd give it, it comes from Throwdini and how the knife throwing
wasn't completely accurate. So, in light of all this, I think a fair grade would
be, what do you think? Like an A minus? - Absolutely. This scene gets an A minus.
