>> 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]
