50 Best Movie Bar Brawls
FIGHT!
The World's End (2013)
The Brawl: We don't want to spoil a thing about any of the awesome scraps in The World's End, but this list simply wouldn't be complete without them. So let's just say some cool shit goes down and leave it at that.
Coolest Scrap: There's one that involves a cameo, Nick Frost using bar stools as battering rams (you can see that in the trailer) and lots and lots of carnage.
Collateral (2004)
The Brawl: More of a shoot-out than an all-out brawl, admittedly, but it's suitably epic in scope as Vincent (a grey-haired Tom Cruise) goes after a Korean gangster. The score by Paul Oakenfeld is also nothing short of fist-pumping.
Coolest Scrap : Well, just all of it, really - the fact that it's in an absolutely packed nightclub adds real drama and danger as the general public (otherwise known as US) get caught in the crossfire.
The Great Race (1965)
The Brawl: "Now can I get me some fighting room?" This is a Western, so of course it involves a scrap in a saloon - and it's one of the funniest ever found in a Western.
Coolest Scrap: The flashes of comedy throughout the fight, ensuring you'll be howling with laughter at both the scraps and the silliness.
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
The Brawl: "Fuck you! Make me a Martini you fat bastard!" Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) goes on the offensive when a patron refuses to let him leave because he's got his eye on Angie (Michelle Monaghan).
Coolest Scrap: Kenzie bitch slaps the patron and sends him crashing into a table.
The Ninth Configuration (1980)
The Brawl: Former astronaut Billy Cutshaw is bullied in a bar by a biker gang who recognise him. Bullying behaviour includes pouring beer over his head, making him lick it from the floor and kicking him in the ass.
Coolest Scrap: Cutshaw snaps and crushes a glass in the hand of one of his antagonists. Cue a blood-curdling scream…
Rush Hour (1998)
The Brawl: Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan head into a pool hall. "Follow my lead and do what I do," says Tucker, which leads to Chan racially insulting the bartender and getting himself into a bar fight.
Coolest Scrap: Chan uses the pool tables to his advantage, flipping over and under them and chucking balls at his attackers.
Universal Soldier (1992)
The Brawl: Bar brawlers line up. Jean-Claude Van Damme's cyborg knocks 'em down one by one in this daft but dizzying skirmish. People really never learn, do they?
Coolest Scrap: It's basically just one long scrap, with Van Damme breaking each man one at a time. Well, they did ask for it.
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A Bronx Tale (1993)
The Brawl: “That ruined my whole fuckin’ lunch.” Chazz Palminteri goes up against a load of bikers who've just popped in to stir up a little trouble. And trouble's exactly what they get when Palminteri locks them in and, well, you know...
Coolest Scrap: The whole thing's a blur of flying fists and feet, and it ends with the bikers being turfed out and hurled onto their vehicles.
The Terminator (1984)
The Brawl: The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) goes clubbing! Oh, alright, he's actually after Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), who's having a quiet drink at a VERY '80s nightclub.
Coolest Scrap: Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) enters frame just in the nick of time - but not before we've chewed our nails to stumps.
The Replacements (2000)
The Brawl: Fights between football fans are legendary, and this one's a footie fight that involves Keanu Reeves and Jon Favreau, which is a sentence we never thought we'd write. That and the fact that it ends with everybody in jail singing 'I Will Survive'. Life, eh?
Coolest Scrap: More of a Coolest Line, this one - mostly because it's Rhys Ifans screaming “Let’s play football, bitch!” C'mon, what's cooler than that?
Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.