Movie Depictions of Fights

[sanjuro_ronin]

IMO, this film contains some of the best knife fight choreography in any movie, and (also IMO) better than the knife fighting in any American-made movie. But in the end, it's all just choreography. A big difference in The Man From Nowhere is the sense of danger, and the emotional content and motivation that drives the protagonist to fight.

Not bad at all.
Personally, knowing how knife fights actually work, I find most "final knife fights' overly drawn out and ceremonial.
It stems from the "kung fu" view that the final fight between two masters must be long and drawn out.
Samurai movies were/are, paradoxically, the opposite.
The final fight between the two masters tends to be like a nuclear explosion, going from pure stillness and potentiality to full on massive release of energy !

[Jimbo]

Not bad at all.
Personally, knowing how knife fights actually work, I find most "final knife fights' overly drawn out and ceremonial.
It stems from the "kung fu" view that the final fight between two masters must be long and drawn out.
Samurai movies were/are, paradoxically, the opposite.
The final fight between the two masters tends to be like a nuclear explosion, going from pure stillness and potentiality to full on massive release of energy !

Agreed.

Besides the 'Kung Fu' view, IMO the long, drawn-out fights in KF and Chinese movies in general might also have another cultural influence; Beijing opera, where the battle scenes are highly stylized and intricate. Very different to Japanese martial culture. Only some fairly recent Japanese MA movies have incorporated longer and more stylized fight scenes, clearly influenced by Chinese (and Thai) MA films.

Here is a pretty realistic fight scene from the excellent Korean suspense film I Saw the Devil. In the scene, a fake cab driver and his 'passenger' target the wrong 'victim', a brutal serial killer. This knife scene is believable as movie scenes go, because it's quite common in real life for knifers to require many swarming stabs to stop/finish off their 'opponents'.