Action stations... Matt Damon in the Bourne Ultimatum.
Spontaneous applause and whooping might be a regular occurrence for our film-going cousins across the Atlantic, but British audiences tend to be a more reserved bunch. So when the assembled hacks at last week's Bourne Ultimatum press screening suddenly erupted like over-excited frat boys only 10 minutes into the film, it was clear that Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass were doing something right.
The source of all the excitement was the film's first fight scene, a brutal but elegant piece of film-making which sees Bourne disable a group of CIA operatives in a tiny corridor in Waterloo station while Paddy Considine's appalled Guardian journalist cowers in a corner. As much as anything else, the reaction could be put down to the fact that Greengrass, using only very simple ingredients, has engineered an action sequence that serves as an antidote to the type of bombastic, gratuitous and hyperactive sludge we're becoming used to seeing in modern blockbuster cinema. There isn't a wasted shot in the scene, it's absolutely clear who the combatants are and where they are in relation to one another, and every time a blow lands you feel it. Plus there is a danger to the scene that's rare in a film culture where punching somebody is generally nothing more than a precursor to pulling out a gun.
All of which led me to thinking about cinema's other great fight scenes. It's obviously not an exhaustive list (my martial arts film knowledge is woefully limited and the Crouching Tiger style, for me, seems to have more in common with dance than combat), so please feel free to throw in a few (gentle) suggestions of your own.
From Russia With Love If there's one thing the Bourne Ultimatum demonstrates, it's that Bond is still playing catch up - even after the warm critical response to Casino Royale. In this second film of the series though, before the template had become too restrictive and when they weren't afraid to keep things simple, Terence Young captured all the ferocity of the clash between Connery's Bond and Robert Shaw's Red Grant. It's all the more effective for its cramped setting in a sleeper car on the Orient Express.
Raiders of the Lost Ark The precursor to a thousand and one inferior set pieces, this sequence sees Harrison Ford battling a monumental German officer beneath the wings of a rotating bomber (in which Karen Allen is trapped, obviously) as petrol from a punctured refuelling truck seeps towards them. It's so contrived it shouldn't work, but Spielberg never lets it get confusing and sells it all with a schoolboy breathlessness that leaves you unprepared for the bloody climax.
The Princess Bride The battle between Cary Elwes' masked man and Mandy Patinkin's Inigo Montoya follows a simple blueprint: Rob Reiner took the best bits of Douglas Fairbanks Jnr's finest sword fights and turned the volume up to 11. It's one of those rare fight scenes where, for all the gloriously over-the-top swordplay, the script remains paramount, and Elwes and Patinkin do full justice to William Goldman's flashing witticisms.
The Empire Strikes Back When The Phantom Menace crawled apologetically onto screens in 1999, one of the few good things critics could say about it involved the brilliantly choreographed three-way lightsabre duel which formed its finale. But for all its technical and physical élan it still can't hold a candle to the defining scene of the series in which Luke Skywalker first confronts Darth Vader. It's not often the hero is beaten comprehensively in a film, and it's the emotional undercurrent, rather than the choreography, which makes the sequence unforgettable.
Evil Dead 2 Edward Norton's self-inflicted beating in Fight Club might win other people's votes, but Sam Raimi got there first. In this brilliant revision of the first film, Bruce Campbell's hand is bitten by one of the possessed inhabitants of the isolated log cabin and proceeds to inflict a beating on its hapless owner. Campbell's performance might just be the finest piece of physical comedy in modern cinema, and Raimi shoots it with typical invention.
