Ah, sword fights. For as long as humans have been making movies, we’ve been using the magic of cinema to capture two or more people wailing on each other with a variety of sharp, pointy things. Sometimes the sword fight is classical and refined, a gentlemanly contest of skill and athleticism. Other times, the fights are brutal and protracted, long marches towards ugly death in which only the most grimly determined can survive.
Yessir, we love ourselves a good sword fight, and so we’ve decided to compile our favorites into a single list, split into two parts. We came up with eight categories and each offered up our choice for our favorite within that category.
Below, find our picks for Best Animated, Best Fencing with Rapiers/Sabres, Best One vs. Group, and Most Underseen, as well as clips from the fights in questions.
Enjoy, and stay tuned for the second part with our final four categories, including Best Overall!
ANIMATED
Brendan Agnew: Kubo and the Two Strings
Karasu vs. Monkey
Animated sword fights are tough. There are a few involving animated elements (Jason and the Argonauts’ skeleton fight) that sing, and a couple in hand-drawn films that are acrobatic and impressive (the underrated Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas starts off with some really fun swordplay) but as a rule, they’re hard to make work as extended sequences. As much work as choreographing and writing the story of a fight can be, bringing that to life one frame at a time is positively herculean.
Which is why the marquee duel in Kubo and the Two Strings is so damn impressive.
LAIKA strongly piled additional difficulties onto this sequence, from the rain on Monkey’s fur to the arena of the ship sinking during the thunderstorm to one of the weapons being a chain blade. Not only that, but it’s also interwoven into another action beat in the main quest story of the film AND contains a character revelation which — while it won’t necessarily come as a surprise to older viewers — reframes the fight and most of the story leading up to it. But instead of stumbling over this litany of hurdles, Kubo and the Two Strings clears them with confidence. The reversals (like a cute beat where it looks like the movie is sending a male character to come to Monkey’s rescue, only for her to end up having to save *him*), the music, the dialogue, the degrading environment as the fighters chip away each other — everything coalesces into a powerful sequence of drama and visual splendor.
Also, it’s a fight in the rain where a monkey uses a katana. That’s one of the dictionary definitions of awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjdesHuied8
Brendan Foley: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
Red Rackham vs. Captain Haddock
This pick is sort of a cheat, seeing as how the mo-cap technology used to bring the world of Herge’s boy-reporter Tintin to life means that the action doesn’t have to be generated out of thin air as it would in films like Kubo. But the combination of physical actors’ movements and the outsized, exaggerated designs of the characters results in a battle that feels almost dream-like. It’s the kind of swordfight you imagined having against your friends and siblings as you bounced off couch-cushions and swung cardboard rolls at one another, but given real weight and depth. Every child has at some point fantasized about clashing blades either against or with pirates, and with this fabled contest between dashing Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) and wicked pirate lord Red Rackham (Daniel Craig), Steven Spielberg presents maybe the ultimate version of that fantasy.
The animated space allows Spielberg to indulge in every specialty he has, from his gift for iconography (Red Rackham, with his red mask and sneering performance by Craig, is a pirate fiend for the ages) to his knack for knowing precisely how to steadily escalate a set-piece to wilder and wilder heights as it progresses. Going all the way back to early films like Duel and Sugarland Express, Spielberg has always possessed an intuitive understanding of how to use visual grace notes to sell and amplify a piece of action. As Haddock and Rackham balletically clash blades, the camera spins and swoops away and around them, charting the progression of a spark down a trail of gunpowder towards a massive trove of explosives, lending the scene a visual pressure cooker that heightens each gag, each gasp-inducing turn in the fight.
The fight is so good, it kind of spoils the actual climatic battle between the contemporary Haddock and Rackham, but you can only fit so much legendary into one film.
FENCING WITH SABRES/RAPIERS
Brendan Agnew: Rob Roy
Robert Roy MacGregor and Archibald Cunningham
I generally love fights in this category because of how quick and nimble they can be, how showy the swordsmanship, how witty the patter of the character interactions. And there will be at least one other entry that reflects that old Hollywood swashbuckling sensibility.
But sometimes a sword fight subverts the usual trappings of its own tools, and you get something as raw, brutal, and as gloriously cathartic as the climactic duel in 1995’s Rob Roy.
Liam Neeson is at peak Scottish sexiness (his own Irish heritage notwithstanding) as the titular Rob, a man who has been robbed of everything. Brand an outlaw, his good name besmirched, his family violated, his home burned, and his brother killed. One man in particular (Tim Roth’s gleefully despicable Cunningham) has been at the root of this and, by God, there will be a reckoning. The arena of the fight feels more like exactly that — an amphitheater of gladiatorial combat — rather than a fun prop-laden sword playground. The combatants square up, recognize they will neither ask nor give quarter, and then the fight occurs in almost complete silence.
But what a story it tells.The actors are selling an entire film’s worth of hate through only a few looks they shoot each other, and director Michael Caton-Jones captures these more intimate moments in between wider shots that deftly showcase the action. Both men have demonstrated their skill in combat as they’ve narratively spiraled inward toward each other, but their strengths are wildly different. Cunningham, armed with a rapier, is quick and economical, whereas Rob’s claymore (the basket-hilted kind, not the 4-foot long broadsword) is powerful and slow. The toll it takes on MacGregor during the fight is palpable, and the Scottish swordsman is clearly losing to the English villain, not through a lack of skill, but the sheer physical cost of swinging that weapon. Cunningham stays out harm’s way with ease, making the larger man bleed as well as sweat, until all seems lost.
Then, just when our hero is on his knees, about to be run through, the music swells, he grabs his enemy’s sword *in his bare hand* and cuts the bastard nearly in half. It’s glorious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27M5KWI_q50
Brendan Foley: Captain Blood
Peter Blood vs. Levasseur
Let me preface this by first saying that, swear to God, not all of my picks are going to be pirate-related.
Let me also just say that we will have much, much more to say about the triumvirate of Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, and Olivia de Havilland in some of the entries ahead. Certain merry men require an entry all their own. But these three really did form a perfect symbiosis of swashbuckling, each element illuminating and enriching the others around. Errol Flynn was never more dashing than when he had de Havilland to rescue and Rathbone to battle, and he in turn only made de Havilland all the more luminous and Rathbone all the more deliciously wicked. There’s a reason that the template struck by these three has been repeated ad nauseum without ever being bettered.
Director Michael Curtiz understood what made each member of the ensemble so valuable and he gave each room to shine. In Captain Blood, Flynn plays an Irish doctor arrested on a trumped-up treason charge and dumped into a life of slavery, serving under the kindly Arabella (de Havilland). He escapes and becomes a pirate, why not, and years later turns the tables and captures Arabella in a raid. When dastardly French pirate Levasseur (Rathbone) demands they hold onto Arabella for more malevolent ends, Blood ends up dueling for the honor of a woman he might have one-time considered an archenemy.
The duel between Blood and Levasseur is as well-choreographed as any bout Flynn and Rathbone undertook, but what really eggs this one on for me is the epic setting. Blades clash as waves crash, while the rocky terrain trips up Levasseur while Blood leaps nimbly about, a chorus of pirates cheering them on as they go. It turns what could have been a perfunctory bit of mid-movie action into something vital and epic, Hollywood bringing hoary tropes to mythic life.
ONE VS. A GROUP
Brendan Agnew: The Mask of Zorro
Young Zorro vs. Practically Everyone
The Mask of Zorro is a criminally underrated film. Not only is it one of the best films by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) and the best adventure script from Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio (Aladdin, Pirates of the Caribbean), but it’s also the best Batman Beyond film we’re ever going to get. And, true to the character’s swashbuckling roots, there are just acres of sword fights.
One of the most entertaining comes at about the midpoint of the film, when Alejandro (Antonio Banderas) — having trained with ex-Zorro Diego de la Vega (Anthony Hopkins) — first puts on the mask and cape of the legendary outlaw for a recon mission at the villa of the villainous Governor Montero (Stuart Wilson). Of course, nothing goes smoothly — the film’s other baddie, U.S. Cavalryman Captain Love (Matt Letscher), sounds the alarm, and Zorro must fight through Love, Montero, and a whole brigade of guards in order to escape.
This running sequence of mini duels and melees is the first time Antonio Banderas (the best Zorro the screen has yet seen) gets to showcase everything that Alejandro has been training for. Zorro slashes, dodges, leaps on tables, swings on branches, cuts ropes to entrap enemies in the environment, and generally buckles the swash as though he studied at the School of Errol Flynn (which, given that legendary fencer and cinematic sword fighting coach Bob Anderson was the sword master on this movie, is basically true). The acrobatics and heroic charm are very reminiscent of the golden age of Hollywood swordplay, but there’s also a more modern physicality to the fighting, and added dramatic danger as Zorro faces foes who have already proven how ready they are to kill.
And did I mention that Zorro totally dual-wields a pair of fencing sabers as he fights two opponents at once? Because he does, and it’s ludicrously rad.
Brendan Foley: Kill Bill Vol. 1
The Bride vs. Everyone Else
Sometimes, the deciding factor is just sheer tonnage.
There may not actually be 88 members of the Crazy 88, the suit-and-tie wearing samurai servants of crime lord O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), but their numbers sure feel inexhaustible as the Bride (Uma Thurman) slices and dices her way through them one at a time. Less a scene and more a full act, the gore-geyser laden spectacle of the battle in the House of Blue Leaves just goes on and on, but because director Quentin Tarantino and genius fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping design the sequence with self-contained rhythms of rising and falling action, differentiating through location shifts, soundtrack changes, and even a startling flip from color to black and white (mandated by the MPAA but effective nonetheless), the fight never gets boring. Every time you think that there is no way the film can top itself, there will come a gag or kill or reversal that perks the energy levels higher than ever before. Dressing Uma Thurman in the Bruce Lee outfit is its own form of throwing down the gauntlet, the kind of move you cannot pull unless you have something truly spectacular on hand, and Uma (with an assist by stuntwoman Zoe Bell) succeeds wildly at earning her place as a cinematic icon.
There’s a sneakier, darker reason for the scene’s resonance. Late in the game in Vol. 2, Bill (David Carradine) rebukes the Bride’s claims at the moral high ground by asking her if she enjoyed killing everyone who stood between her and Bill. In tears, she confesses that it’s true, she did. By making these scenes of frenetic, cartoonish bloodshed so wildly entertaining, Tarantino forces us to be complicit in that same delight. The Bride’s bloodlust is our own, and her final journey to transcend that ugliness in her soul and become someone better speaks to our own quests towards maturity and empathy.
Until then, we can keep watching that guy get his skull split in half over and over.
UNDERSEEN
Brendan Agnew: Stardust
Tristan vs. Zombie Septimus
If The Mask of Zorro is underrated, Stardust seems to have been all but forgotten in the stampede of Hollywood distancing itself from its post-Lord of the Rings fantasy obsession. Which is a shame, because apart from being a delightful romantic adventure in much the same vein as The Princess Bride, it has one of the more interesting fights, from a technical standpoint, in the past couple decades.
Our hero Tristan (Charlie Cox) has been made allies of circumstance with the devious Prince Septimus (Mark Strong) as the pair attempt to stop a witch from cutting out the heart of a fallen star (which are people in this particular magic kingdom). The witch, Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer), uses her magic to kill Septimus, and then reanimates his corpse with voodoo to fight Tristan. Not only does Tristan need to reach the witch before she can kill his beloved, but to do so, he must vanquish a swordsman who can’t die…again. His recently-earned fencing skills avail him little as slashes and stabs prove ineffectual, and Mark Strong (as well as stunt double Rob Inch) does a magnificent job with physical challenge posed here.
Even without the third-act stakes, the basic premise is interesting enough and the execution so impressive that this would be worth a look. Septimus will often use only one or two limbs in robotic attacks and defenses, often positioned so that the performer clearly cannot even see the opponent he’s fighting, and frequently contorts to shapes that can make your joints ache just by watching — at one point arching himself all the way over to literally fight backwards. But Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, Kingsman: The Secret Service) is no stranger to action, and juggles the swordplay, the ticking clock, and the comedy beats (like cutting the rope for the wrong chandelier) with aplomb.
There. If Stardust has passed you by until now, you have more than enough reason to give it a spin.
Brendan Foley: Blood and Bone
Bone vs. James
If there was any justice in this world, we would be like five films deep into the ongoing adventures of Bone (Michael Jai White) as he walked the earth and righted wrongs. Alas, we have only Blood and Bone to hold us over, though thankfully this film packs so much ass-kicking into one 90-minute go that it’s hard to feel like we’re missing out.
Why this little DTV action programmer is so wildly effective is baked into the reversal that makes the climatic sword fight between Bone and the evil James (Eamonn Walker) so satisfying. Earlier in the film, smug, pampered James shows off his antique sword collection to streetwise ex-con underground martial arts master (and avenging angel on a secret mission of retribution against James and his entire criminal organization) Bone, and Bone claims ignorance with regard to the ancient weapons and their use. So when the two finally go head-to-head for the final showdown, we’re keyed to expect the worst when James grabs a sword. ‘Oh no,’ we think, ‘the one thing Bone isn’t an expert on kicking ass with!’
So when Jai White catches that sword and immediately begins spinning it around like a pro, you can’t help but cackle at how perfectly the trap has been set. There are action films that work because the protagonist is vulnerable and human (Die Hard), but films like Blood and Bone instead render their heroes as unstoppable forces of righteous justice. You’re not there to worry over whether Michael Jai White is going to win, you’re there to cheer and holler as he finds new and increasingly elaborate ways to punch holes through evildoers. Like its leading man, Blood and Bone is outrageously confident in its own abilities, and it’s a testament to the prowess of both Jai White and Ramsey that the film is every bit as good as it knows it is.
And that’s all for now folks! Join us soon as we name our picks for Best in a Wuxia Film, Best Featuring Samurai, Best East vs. West Bout, and Best Overall!
