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Ricochet Movie Fight Club: Question 20
Two-time champion, Brian Watt, learned exactly how hard it is to win three in a row. Teaching that lesson (with a little help from a blind Audrey Hepburn) was J D Fitzpatrick, who earned the right to ask: What movie has the best duel? All movies should be pre-CGI. For this question, a duel is defined as a single moment of combat between two characters, with a clear resolution. Duels can be short or long, but they should display unity of time, place, and action, meaning that the contest is restricted to a particular moment in the film, not drawn out over its course.
The Rules:
- Post your answer as a comment. Make it clear that this is your official answer, one per member.
- Defend your answer in the comments and fight it out with other Ricochet member answers for the rest of the week.
- Whoever gets the most likes on their official answer comment (and only that comment) by Friday night wins the fight.
- The winner gets the honor of posting the next question on Saturday.
- In the case of a tie, the member who posted the question will decide the winner.
Notes:
- Only movies will qualify (no TV shows) however films that air on television (BBC films, a stand-alone mini-series) will qualify.
- Your answer can be as off-the-wall or controversial as you’d like. It will be up to you to defend it and win people to your side.
- Fight it out.
Movie Fight Club Questions by Week:
- What is the best film portrayal of a book character? Winner: Charlotte with 18 likes for Alan Rickman’s portrayal of Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies.
- What is the best motion picture comedy of the 21st century? Winner: split decision. In an exemplary display of genuine sportsmanship, Randy Webster conceded the fight to Marjorie Reynolds’ pick Team America: World Police.
- What film provides the most evocative use of location? Winner: Taras with 21 likes for Lawrence of Arabia. Wasn’t even close.
- What is the best film that utilizes or is inspired by a work of William Shakespeare? Winner: Dr. Bastiat with five likes for The Lion King, a film inspired by Hamlet.
- Which movie has the best surprise ending, or unexpected plot twist? Winner: Repmodad with 18 likes for The Sixth Sense.
- What pre-1970s black-and-white movie would be most enjoyed by a modern 18- to 25-year-old audience? Winner: E J Hill with 9 likes for a Casablanca. (He didn’t exactly designate it his official answer, and most of the likes may have been for the modern Casablanca trailer rather than for it as an answer to the question, but nobody seemed to dispute it on those grounds, so that’s how the cookie crumbles.)
- What movie did you go to based on the trailer, only to have felt cheated? (i.e., the trailer was 10x better than the movie?) Winner: Back to back wins by E J Hill with 9 likes for Something to Talk About.
- Name the worst movie portrayal of your profession (where applicable.) Winner: LC with 8 likes for Denise Richards’ Dr. Christmas Jones in The World is Not Enough.
- What is the worst movie that claims to be based or inspired by a true story? Winner: Tex929rr with 16 likes for the, “…terrible acting, and countless deviations from history,” in Pearl Harbor.
- What is your favorite little known movie? Winner: A last-minute rally for Tremors made the difference as Songwriter took the week 10 win!
- What is the best movie that you never want to watch again? Winner:
HitlerCharlotte with 15 likes for Schindler’s List. Sorry, Richard Oshea but Jesus won the real fight.
Week 11.5 Exhibition Match (as a make-up of sorts, since Songwriter didn’t get the week 11 question submitted in time) Name the best movie theme song ever? No winner declared but I’m pretty sure it was I.M. Fine with “Moon River.” - Name the best animated feature-length movie of all time. Winner: I.M. Fine with 10 likes for Pinocchio, and justice for I.M. Fine prevailed.
- What is the worst acting performance in an otherwise good film? Winner: In one of the most brutal fights we’ve seen yet Repmodad fended off a furious 12th-round onslaught by Gary McVey to give Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves the win with 20 likes.
- What is the quintessential American movie? Winner: Miffed White Male pulled off the comeback with 20 likes for The Right Stuff. There was a two-way tie at 19 for second place as well.
- What’s the most entertaining movie set during WWII? Winner: Arahant clearly won with Casablanca’s walloping 30 likes despite the withering onslaught by Sisyphus on the final day.
- What is the best movie love story? Winner: Songwriter with 20 likes for The Princess Bride with 20 likes. Up managed to make a strong showing and Dr. Bastiat is still conducting recounts trying to “find” some uncounted votes.
- What’s the best’ buddy’ movie? Winner: Brian Watt wins with 12 likes for The Man Who Would be King.
- What is the worst movie (not a made-for-TV movie) ever made? Brian Watt joins E.J. Hill as the only other back-to-back winner with 16 likes for Barbarella. Brian will get another crack at it by choosing the week 19 question. Can he make it three?
- What is the most frightening non-bloody film you’ve ever seen? The winner: J D Fitzpatrick with Wait Until Dark, starring the lovely Audrey Hepburn getting terrorized over a doll, sort of.
It can’t be a whole movie—unity of time, place, and action. Try again. :)
BTW, I loved that clip of The Three Musketeers. Gotta check it out—along with Master and Commander, of course.
Rocky and The Best Years of Our Lives.
Well, a “unity of time” is, of course, relative since time can be measured in seconds, hours, days, weeks, decades, or centuries. Place: the open ocean.
But alas, I shall take my toy boats and go home.
Though the rule, pretty much eliminates Spielberg’s Duel and Ridley Scott’s The Duellists…or even Sleuth which is a prolonged duel of wits. Pity.
Oh…CASABLANCA!
…I panicked.
Why not? Lazlo duels Strasser, using singers as weapons!
Is that your official answer?
… and with @brianwatt‘s inclusion of Casablanca we’ve added one of the movies I was waiting for. :)
It already has @songwriter‘s approval. Can this late entrant make up ground?
I think the question is whether it is Brian’s official answer at this point, seeing as how I dq’d his original.
I love this fight, but…why’s the bad guy gotta be Irish?
So, @aaronmiller and @kirkianwanderer, what I think is:
First, if you’re going to train martial arts, find the one that you love doing enough to do it three to five nights a week for the rest of your life. Beats trying to do something you hate.
Second, I’d be very careful equating martial arts training to actual fighting to combat. To my mind, three very different things. Although, each can inform the others.
I’m a “all rivers flow into the ocean” guy, so unless something is silly, I’ll train it. I’m not a striking arts guy, because most fights wind up in a grapple, and because I can train grappling at 95% all night every night. Were Kirkian and I to pair up and train MT at 95%, we could do it maybe once or twice a month, and the rest of the time would be icing our bruises. I’ve learned a lot from MT: My old school jujutsu uses elbows and knees on a straight vertical or horizontal plane. It was spending some time at MT that taught me to project that knee or elbow forward in a devastating manner.
@phcheese, I hate it when that happens.
I can’t believe it took until page 4 for The Adventures of Robin Hood.
It occurred later in the movie but, “Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’, boy”. One of the best movie lines ever…
Totally agree. “Pardon me, but I have a boat waiting” and then crashing through the boat. It’s a bit of a shame that the movie was so long; it could have had 20 minutes chopped off it and still been a good movie.
Does Kevin Costner have a ten-shooter?
They denigrate those that they fear.
Also, you’ve got Scarlett O’hara, and Jack Ryan, so the Irish are well represented in film badassery.
No one’s mentioned the duel between Judge Roy Bean and Bad Bob. Not Dirty Bad Bob, but the original Bad Bob.
That scene from Casablanca always gives me goosebumps.
That’s great advice! And I agree with you on the grappling; it’s good to practice (and we do a session maybe once a month, I’m on the uni team, so three two hour sessions a week) but a variety of hand to hand and leg focused combat is much more fun (it’s also fun in some ways to be the smaller/lighter opponent, because when someone grabs my leg it’s easier for me to throw my arms around their neck and bring my knee into their core). Sparring gets boring if you rely too much on grappling.
And the knees and elbows thing in MT is very true. I still instinctively favor a mid or head kick because I’ve been a ballet dancer most of my life, but a well placed knee will do the job excellently.
The length and the absurdity of the famous fight in They Live gets my vote. Rowdy Roddy is the king.
First off. I just got back from watching Russell Crowes Unhinged. A brand new movie, in a movie theatre with a socially distanced packed house.
Which was great as I was at Andy Signores online birthday party last night. And I will be sure to tell him the next time I see him about the fights going on on Ricochet.
As to best duel. you need to watch it in the original Shakespeare.
Uh…Yes! Yes! That’s my Official Answer! Casablanca because of the famous song duel thingy! Come on, Ricochet friends, you can make Casablanca the winner. It has to happen. Switch your votes and official answers now. Do it for Bogie and Ingrid. Do it for Paul Henreid! Do it for the cause of freedom from tyranny! Do it because Casablanca needs to win as many of these here Ricochet Movie Fights as possible!
Do it for all the right reasons…except True Love.
I second that. The formal duel as resolution that seals the protagonist’s fate and ends the story. The first movie duel that came to my mind.
I think that as dueling has gone (thankfully) out of fashion, we have debased the word “dueling” into any sort of fight.
To me a duel is a prearranged meeting between two combatants, almost always over a point of honor, conducted within a set of rules governing that meeting. This thread, it seems to me, has conflated any fight between two antagonists, using any weapons from swords, guns, fists, wits, or even songs (really . . . Casablanca?). Is a metaphorical duel a duel or is it something else? Folks, it seems to me that a mere fight isn’t a duel, especially if the object is solely to kill or maim. No honor would be settled there. Liberty Valance’s intention is murder, isn’t it? Rathbone’s brilliant sword play isn’t a duel, it’s a fight to the death for reasons other than honor.
Even brother Brian gets it wrong citing Gene Kelly’s d’Artagnan. He accepts challenges to duel with the three musketeers, but the impromptu fight he cites is with the Cardinal’s guard. And as much as I like Master and Commander, probably the best illustration of leadership in recent movie history, a war isn’t a duel.
I will however always carry a torch for “The Duellists”, Ridley Scott’s first feature based on Conrad’s novella. Two Napoleonic cavalry officers meet over an imagined insult. The entire movie is the story of one duel. It just takes a decade or two. The duel starts and stops because of injuries, war, and politics. The duel isn’t a number of separate issues, but a single point resumed time and again. It’s beautifully photographed, paced quite a bit slower than any other Ridley Scott feature. The entire action of the movie is based on two equal partners meeting and understanding how the duel will go forward until honor is settled. That, to me, is the meaning of the word.
( BTW, I can be such a pedant sometimes)
Okay, fine…what my sometimes pedantic brother said. Sheesh.
“Play the Marseillaise” anyway…it’s a rousing tune.
Just to note, that my brother’s more precise definition of a duel likely narrows the competition down to The Duellists, Barry Lyndon, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.
So, I withdraw my tongue-in-cheek desperate, official answer of Casablanca and will vote for The Duellists.
I just want this to be a matter of record because otherwise I’ll never hear the end of it.
So how about this one:
This seems to be borrowed from the duel between Gregory Peck and Chuck Connors in The Big Country: