With the advancement of CGI, action movie climaxes have become more varied. Characters can spew laser beams and send meteors flying toward one another. Characters perform superhuman feats of courage, and when done well, it can be incredibly exciting to watch. However, even with all CGI can do, it’s amazing the amount of tension that can be developed when you have a few guys with squibs in close quarters engaging in an epic shootout to the death.
From the westerns of old to modern action flicks fully embracing the art of gun fu, there’s nothing like a cinematic shootout to get the blood pumping. It’s not just mindless spectacle, either. You can learn a lot about a character by seeing how they react to someone trying to take them out. Are they nervous? Resolved? Are they the kind of person who embraces death like an old friend, not afraid of anything?
The best movie shootouts of all time can’t merely be all sound and fury, signifying nothing. They make a movie worth the price of admission alone and do something new with this classic cinematic set piece.
The Best Movie Shootouts of All Time
Unforgiven
The shootout is a classic moment in any western, and 1992’s “Unforgiven” brilliantly subverts the trope. The movie sees William Munny (Clint Eastwood), an outlaw out of his prime, take one last job, bringing him into conflict with fellow outlaw English Bob (Richard Harris) and the town’s sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman). It all leads to a final shootout between William and Little Bill.
A lot of shootouts tend to be grandiose. People do things with guns that normally wouldn’t be possible (like having unlimited ammo). The shootout in “Unforgiven” is refreshing for how realistically it’s portrayed. The whole thing starts with William’s gun jamming, so he tosses it at Little Bill before opening fire on him and the rest of his posse. It subverts the classic western trope of the gunfight that’s normally filled with honor and brings it down into the mud. The building’s dark. The choreography’s a little messy. There’s no honor at the end of this gunfight.
Many view “Unforgiven” as a spiritual sequel to the “Dollars” trilogy that Eastwood starred in decades earlier, where William is the Man With No Name. The “Dollars” movies are great, but they do tend to glorify violence. Here, the bloodshed is given gravity. It shows how violence could corrupt someone like the Man With No Name (read: William Munny) and turn him into a shell of a man where violence is all he knows.
Sicario
In a movie shootout, it becomes so easy to lose perspective and get lost in a blaze of gunfire. Denis Villeneuve masterfully choreographs the border shootout in “Sicario” to where the audience always knows where to look and what each character is thinking.
It’s an incredibly tense scene, as the Joint Task Force looks for cartel members on a busy, blocked roadway. There are cars everywhere, providing a lot of potential coverage and opportunities for cartel members to get the jump on the main characters, which is almost what happens to Kate Macer (Emily Blunt). The sequence also builds to the first gunshot beautifully. It begins eerily quiet; it’s almost mundane. But then the music gradually ramps up, and we know that something bad is about to happen. The fact there are dozens of cars filled with innocent bystanders who have no clue what’s about to unfold only increases the tension.
Once we get into the actual shootout, the violence becomes visceral. There are sprays of blood coming out of bodies, and yet, Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro) carries out his task with clinical precision. When the camera cuts to Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), he’s chewing bubblegum. This is the kind of violence that should make anyone sick. Kate almost has a panic attack since she’s still green to all this, but others have become desensitized to it. Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan spoke about how the greater theme of “Sicario” is about how easy violence is for some people when it comes to making money. For many in this shootout, the violence, indeed, comes very easily.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
“Delightful” isn’t exactly a word one usually associated with movie shootouts, but that’s exactly the tone Wes Anderson brought to the gun fight toward the end of “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
Dmitri (Adrien Brody) has been after Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and Zero (Tony Revolori) the whole movie since his mother gave them a prized painting he wants for himself. Upon spotting them at the hotel, he opens fire. It doesn’t take long for other hotel residents to peer out their doors and without seemingly knowing what’s going on, they, too, begin opening fire.
It’s a ridiculous farce that’s pure Anderson. Then we get some fun whip pans when Albert (Edward Norton) breaks up the commotion, and everyone starts yelling at each other about why they’re shooting. It looks like an exceptionally difficult scene to pull off, which makes one appreciate all of the effort. So many shootouts get sloppy with the cinematography. It’s easy to become lost in the chaos, but Anderson is a great director about getting everything you need to see clearly within the frame.
Shootouts are often serious affairs, as they should. But it’s nice to see the endgame of what we could expect if Wes Anderson ever decides to remake “Heat.”
John Wick: Chapter 4
You could probably make a list of the best movie shootouts of all time using nothing but “John Wick” moments.
The franchise has some absolutely brutal kills in each installment, and it’s the rare series where it consistently one-ups itself with each outing. It’s hard to pick just one “John Wick” moment for this list, but I have to go with the “Stairway to Hell” sequence from “John Wick: Chapter 4.”
John (Keanu Reeves) has to arrive at the Sacré-Cœur by sunrise to have a chance to remove the excommunicado against him. The Marquis (Bill Skarsgård) puts a bounty on his head to ensure he doesn’t arrive, so the audience gets treated to an all-out war before the final gunfight even begins. All of this culminates in one of the greatest set pieces in modern action history: John has to fight his way up a lengthy staircase, killing one assassins after another, to make it to the Sacré-Cœur.
It’s an epic climb to the top, with John eventually getting overpowered and pushed back down to the very bottom of the stairwell, meaning he has to fight his way back up all over again. It’s beautifully choreographed, and we get a bunch of mini-fights throughout. The “John Wick” series does a great job of bringing realism to very stylized fights, and the stairway sequence offers the very best of showing that when John Wick gets knocked down, he gets back up again.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Sometimes, a movie shootout comes along that completely changes the game and gets referenced ad infinitum. That’s the case with the classic Sergio Leone film “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” The entire film leads up to the climactic Mexican standoff where the Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood), Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef), and Tuco (Eli Wallach) finally confront one another. They’ve all been after the same fortune of Confederate gold, and now, the time has come to see who gets it.
Even if you’ve never seen “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” you’ve undoubtedly seen this moment parodied in countless pieces of media. It’s a tense confrontation with Ennio Morricone’s iconic score underlying the pivotal scene. The three men face one another, guns ready to be drawn. Leone makes excellent use of close-ups and drawing the affair out. We’ve been watching this story unfold for nearly three hours, but there are absolutely zero qualms about stretching out the tension to see who comes out on top.
It’s astonishing how a movie that came out in 1966 has a better shootout that’s largely just three guys staring at each other than some modern films have with epic explosions and a barrage of gunfire. It shows how a shootout on its own doesn’t mean much without the sheer emotion and style behind it.
Hot Fuzz
There are a ton of action comedies that either aren’t that funny or aren’t that action-y. “Hot Fuzz” manages to thread the needle perfectly as an amazing send-up of the action genre where you can tell those behind it have a lot of appreciation for everything the genre does, tropes and all. Strict city cop Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) gets partnered with the bumbling Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) to keep watch over a seemingly pleasant town, only for Angel to uncover a vast conspiracy that eliminates anyone who learns too much about the true nature of the town.
It all ends with a literal blaze of glory. Angel suits up to the teeth with weaponry and goes about taking out everyone who’s involve with the conspiracy. This leads to some incredibly funny set pieces around the sleepy English village, and it’s all the more impressive as Angel doesn’t actually kill anyone. He instead finds creative ways to incapacitate the conspirators, so no one actually dies in the end. It’s a much better shootout showcase that doesn’t get bogged down with gore, and instead, you feel better laughing at the various ways the townspeople get hurt.
Edgar Wright brings his usual visual flair and kinetic editing style to the gunplay. He’s not making fun of action films but instead offering something new and exciting to a genre that can feel stale at times.
Hard Boiled
Before filmmaker John Woo directed American spectacles like “Face/Off” and “Mission: Impossible 2,” he delivered arguably his magnum opus. “Hard Boiled” is one of the most adrenaline-inducing action films ever made. The plot’s relatively straightforward: Inspector “Tequila” Yuen Ho-yan (Chow Yun-fat) loses his partner at the hands of gang members and goes to extrajudicial lengths to ensure those criminals get what’s coming to them, all while working with undercover cop Alan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai).
The simple plot’s necessary since the main attraction of the film is Woo’s intricately-crafted shootout set pieces that culminate in an epic clash in a hospital. With numerous extras and guns, there’s a lot to keep track of, which makes it all the more impressive that there’s about a three-minute oner in the midst of everything. There’s only a brief reprieve in the elevator until the two cops get back at it, with the camera staying on them for the duration. The fact this was accomplished in the 1990s before extensive CGI could’ve made things far easier is all the more admirable.
Of course, the hospital scene is only one component of a magnificent film.
/Film has argued before the warehouse raid in “Hard Boiled” is the best action scene bar none. The great thing about “Hard Boiled” is that you can claim anything is the best scene and not be wrong.
The Wild Bunch
Watching an action sequence in a modern film means you can likely expect to find ample slow motion and rapid-fire editing. It’s par the course for an engaging shootout, and “The Wild Bunch” was the first to employ such techniques. The film follows a group of outlaws ready to pull off one final score before calling it quits for good, and they’re all more than happy to lose their lives in the process, believing the world has moved past their sensibilities. There are some great action scenes, which is to be expected with director Sam Peckinpah at the helm, and it all leads to one final glorious shootout at the end.
It’s hard to believe this kind of sequence was pulled off in 1969. It’s incredibly violent, which led to a lot of controversy at the time of release.
The final sequence was absolutely brutal on Peckinpah, as there were so many moving parts to keep track of. But the end results speak for themselves as one of the most brutal depictions of violence in media at the time.
There’s ample bloodshed, but that’s the point. It’s not the kind of western where a good guy shoots a bad guy, and everyone’s happy by the end. The graphic detail and slow motion force the audience to reflect on the massive loss of life, creating a reckoning within the western genre as a whole.
The Matrix
“The Matrix” is a pivotal movie in the history of the action genre. Watching the film’s fight scenes, it’s easy to see the influence of classic kung-fu films, including offerings like “Hard Boiled” as well as anime. But the film took typical conventions and flipped them on their head, particularly with the usage of bullet time. Every action movie that followed took something from “The Matrix,” especially with a sequence as well-choreographed as the hotel lobby shootout.
Everything about the scene screams “cool.” Neo (Keanu Reeves) engages in a barrage of gunfire whereas Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), the more experienced of the two at this point, is more than happy to get up close and personal with her combatants, even doing a cool cartwheel off a wall that nearly took the actress out of commission. The camera work is remarkable as there’s no need for sloppy editing since Reeves and Moss are doing their own stunts. There’s no need to hide anything.
Lana and Lilly Wachowski didn’t just offer up another cool action movie. They fundamentally altered the way movies are able to communicate with audiences. It just so happened to look super cool in the process.
Scarface
It would be a disservice to boil down the final climactic shootout of 1983’s “Scarface” to just Tony Montana’s (Al Pacino) iconic line: “Say hello to my little friend!” The truth is that the shootout, as messy and chaotic as it might be, is a perfect encapsulation of everything Tony is. He came to the United States as a refugee and worked his way up to becoming a drug lord. It’s like a perverse iteration of the American dream. He builds up an empire, but it all comes crashing down so quickly. Instead of trying to find a way out, Tony decides to go out in a blaze of glory, taking out a ton of henchmen all by himself, taking gunfire throughout the battle until he eventually collapses into a pool.
Tony has already lost everything by this point. Even if he got away, he wouldn’t have nearly the amount of money and resources he had as a kingpin, so he’d rather take as many lives with him as possible. There’s a nihilistic attitude within Tony where death is preferable to being a nobody.
Brian de Palma’s direction is extraordinary here, which is miraculous, considering the rough cut was apparently a disaster. A lot of quick cuts and bombastic gunfire makes for a bloody outing the audience can’t help but watch. It’s violent, but it’s the only kind of ending a guy like Tony Montana could have.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
After being on the run for much of the film, outlaws Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) finally get pinned down. What follows is an epic shootout where the two titular characters are fighting for their lives, and there’s zero plot armor here. They take on heavy damage, and while the shootout itself is well plotted, the thing that takes this sequence from good to amazing is how it ends.
“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” ends with the two protagonists rushing out to meet their opponents only for the camera to freeze on them with their guns drawn. We don’t see what happens to them; instead, we only hear massive gunfire and shouting, leaving their fates unknown. More than likely, the two of them bite the dust at that moment, willing to meet their makers right then and there. But the ending and the slight ambiguity leaves some open-endedness to elevate them to the status of legends.
“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” isn’t solely interested in telling a great story. It’s about creating myths. Sometimes the closure we need isn’t any closure at all.
Heat
There’s a good case to be made that the post-heist shootout in the middle of “Heat” is the best action sequence put to film. Director Michael Mann put in a ton of prep work to ensure everything ran seamlessly, and it shows. There are so many moving pieces from the primary characters we’re meant to follow as well as a slew of extras reacting to the gunfire happening around them. It’s a realistic catastrophe, especially as it relates to Val Kilmer’s reloading technique playing Chris Shiherlis. It’s so good that it’s actually taught by the Marines on how to efficiently reload a weapon.
There’s the technical spectacle on display, but the “Heat” set piece also works so well because Mann has spent the time to make you empathize with both LAPD lieutenant Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and bank robber Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro). You find yourself rooting for both men at various points in the film, so when they come head to head like this, you move back and forth for who you want to see come out on top.
The “Heat” shootout works well because it’s the ideal merging of style and substance. Yes, it makes for riveting entertainment watching the action unfold. But there’s meaning behind it; it’s not simply action for the sake of action. It drives the plot forward while revealing character, and it’s the benchmark to which all other movie shootouts should aspire to.
