The Best Fights of Film Part 3: Bowfinger and the Fake Purse Ninjas

       And the award for most random looking warlord goes to….

Bowfinger (1999) was neither an action film nor anything to be taken seriously.  However, the featured martial arts in the featured fight scene are second to none.  Like really, if “none” was the amount of martial arts in one movie, then Bowfinger‘s martial arts would come in second…like…after the movie that had none at all…when we’re ranking them in order of best martial arts movies.  That said, my “Best Fights of Film” is deliberately all over the place in terms of actual fight quality, from serious to all-out slapstick.  Here’s one of the funny ones…

Go to YouTube and watch this fight.  Just click here.

The scene is humorously well-scored (“Kung Fu Fighting”) and deliciously funny.  From the very start, Eddie Murphy’s seemingly terrified death screech harbingers only good things to come.  Things like Murphy’s spastic yet rigid (and terrified) technique, old school kung fu theater sound effects, kicking someone from five feet away, his enemies in a tornado of flipping themselves into unconsciousness around him as he cowers, and an homage to Bruce Lee’s classic head stomp.

When Steve Martin comes in, I’m reminded of Predator’s “Dillon, you son of a bitch!”  The scene in which Carl Weathers and Arnold Schwarzenegger engage in the best handshake ever!

As if things weren’t already going splendidly, then we introduce Eddie Murphy’s character’s white martial artist brother played by Steve Martin in his most dynamic (and only?) action scene ever.

This reminds me of an even sillier version of the opening fight in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003).  In fact, I wonder if the director of The Raid films used this as his inspiration.  You should watch The Raid (2011) and The Raid 2 (2014)…very similar combat intensity.  Okay, not at all similar intensity. LOL. But The Raid films are about as intense as it gets, so watch them.

The Best Fights of Film Part 2: Undefeatable (1993) and Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki (1991)

Best Fights of Film Part 1: Troy (2004)