Ever since The Great Train Robbery introduced filmgoers to the joys of a glorious gunfight in 1903, shootouts have become a staple of cinematic spectacles. Throughout movie history, filmmakers have tried to one-up each other by creating the most titillating exchange of gunfire possible. Over a century since its inception, the shootout continues to be a favorite attraction of audiences. They can be gory and horrific or stylized and fun; they can be slow and quiet or chaotic and bombastic. Let’s look at some of the best to ever grace the silver screen.

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Best Movie Shootouts

15. Fast Five (2011)

One of the greatest movie shootouts

One of the most successful action franchises in movie history, the Fast and Furious films have made a name for themselves through big, ridiculous set pieces. The Favela shootout, however, is one of the more understated entries — it’s a relatively straightforward gunfight. 

What makes it so great is its succinct evolution of character relationships. Up until this point, the Rock’s Luke Hobbs has been Dom and the family’s biggest foe. Here, he’s been bested and looks as though he’s at the end of his rope, until Dom and crew show up and save him.

Dom extending his burly arm to Hobbs’ burly arm is instantly iconic and solidifies the Rock’s addition to the F&F family.

Best Movie Shootouts

Conclusion

Moments like the Favela shootout make Fast Five the greatest Fast and Furious movie (anyone who says otherwise is a liar and a fraud).

Best Movie Shootouts

14. Carlito’s Way (1993)

Run, Al, run  •  Best Shootouts

While the Scarface shootout sequence is far more famous, it is the final sequence in Carlito’s Way that provides the best Pacino/De Palma shootout.

Brian De Palma uses the Grand Central location to heighten the gun battle between Carlito and his hunters. Perhaps the best example of this is when Carlito is forced to shoot his way off an escalator as commuters shriek and run for cover. We all have our crazy Grand Central story.

Greatest movie shootouts

Conclusion

Though it’s one of De Palma’s less-discussed films, Carlito’s Way’s shootout provides the ultimate climax to an underrated movie.

Best Movie Shootouts

13. The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006)

Here wind is shaking the grass

Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a humanist war film that strives for a docu-realistic portrayal of the Irish War of Independence, rawly depicting the horrors of living under colonial rule. 

Its ambush shootout is a showcase of this approach — largely stripped of any score, the scene shows us a civilian militia nestled in the green hills of Ireland taking on the world’s most powerful army. In the end, it’s a quiet victory, and no one’s in the mood to celebrate.

Best Movie Shootouts

Conclusion

Probably the most understated shootout on our list, The Wind That Shakes the Barley’s ambush insists on realism, refusing to glamorize the ugly truth of guerrilla warfare.

Best Movie Shootouts

12. Taxi Driver (1976)

Just another Saturday night for Travis  •  Best shootouts

Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece is a practice in restraint. Most of Taxi Driver is set to a simmer, though the audience knows that at some point it will escalate to a rolling boil. This boil doesn’t come until the film’s very end, when its protagonist Travis Bickle marches up the stairs of a brothel to rescue a child prostitute. The sequence is a slow death knell; each bullet fired is vividly and devastatingly portrayed upon impact. It’s a vigilante shootout stripped of any Hollywood heroism.

Best Shootout Scenes Ever

Conclusion

Taxi Driver’s shootout provides a pitch-black culmination to a despairing film. We can’t recommend it highly enough.

Best Movie Shootouts

11. The Wild Bunch (1969)

Say what you will, but they are a wild bunch

The porch shootout in The Wild Bunch is a chaotic bloodbath, and that’s what makes it great. Shots of guns firing and gore flying speed by our eyes before we can really make sense of them.

It’s a hyper-stylized Western shootout that has had a clear influence on modern shootout masters like Quentin Tarantino and John Woo.

Best Shootout Scenes Ever

Conclusion

The Wild Bunch is an early example of stylish violence that still has emotional weight — we wouldn’t want to be caught in this battle.

Best Movie Shootouts

10. L.A. Confidential (1997)

Terrible room service

L.A. Confidential feels like a movie out of time — though made in 1997, it has all the trappings of a Film Noir from the Golden Age of Hollywood. This old-fashioned and deliberate pacing allows for a methodical and gripping shootout. Our heroes are woefully outnumbered, but through smart blocking and the simple communication of glances, they come out on top, and we believe it.

Best Movie Shootouts

Conclusion

L.A. Confidential’s shootout plays like the rest of the film – intelligent, stylish, and immensely satisfying.

Best Movie Shootouts

9. Hot Fuzz (2007)

Edgar Wright makes shootouts fun

According to the characters in this film, this is technically a “shoot off,” but we’ll make an exception. The ultimate shootout of Hot Fuzz contains all the elements that make Edgar Wright movies great: it’s tightly edited, filled with nods to genre tropes, and refreshingly original.

The sequence probably also holds a record for the lowest kills-to-shots-fired ratio (zero), proving a shootout doesn’t need to be filled with gore to be enormously satisfying.

Best Movie Shootouts

Conclusion

Hot Fuzz may be a comedy, but its action sequences (and final shootout in particular) are on par with those of any genre.

Movies with Shootouts

8. Point Break (1991)

Robbing: often a dangerous profession

Like Fast Five, what makes the bank shootout in Point Break so great is not so much the action but the character revelations within it. The film is essentially a star-crossed love story between Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Utah and Patrick Swayze’s Bodhi, and this shootout marks a point-of-no-return for both characters.

Kathryn Bigelow’s direction of the scene evokes the feeling of watching a slow-motion car crash – everything is going wrong, no one involved in the shootout wants to be involved in the shootout. It’s sad, beautiful, and wildly entertaining. It’s all fun and games until there’s an undercover cop who shoots you in the chest.

Best Western Movie Shootouts

Conclusion

Point Break’s shootout is a must-watch for anyone looking for a gunfight with heart. Or just a gunfight — the gunfight’s pretty good, too.

Movies with Shootouts

7. No Country for Old Men (2007)

A low-key, high-stress shootout

Probably the quietest shootout on the list, the firefight in the Coen BrothersNo Country for Old Men is more horror than action. Real-life boogeyman Anton moves with a cold precision that is so intimidating, it doesn’t seem like he’d be stopped even if Llewelyn did shoot him.

The scene is expertly paced and beautifully shot, understated yet profound. It’s Coen Brothers through and through.

Best Western Movie Shootouts

Conclusion

No Country for Old Men is a great movie with a great shootout. What’s not to like?

Best Movie Shootouts of All Time

6. The Untouchables (1987)

Best use of a baby in film?

De Palma is a master of the shootout, and the stairway sequence in The Untouchables is his crowning achievement. 

Centered around a baby carriage rolling down a short set of stairs, the scene is a testament to the power of film editing. In real time, this moment wouldn’t last more than five seconds, but through slow-motion, cross-cutting and close-ups, the sequence is stretched into two minutes that feel like two hours. It serves as an unforgettable lesson: check to make sure the room is clear of babies before you engage in a shootout.

Best Movie Shootouts of All Time

Conclusion

The Untouchables provides an iconic shootout, and for soccer fans, a fantastic slide tackle.

Movies with Best Shootouts

5. John Wick (2014)

A night out on the town for John

Keanu Reeves has been in his fair share of movie shootouts (one more still to come on this list), and John Wick threw him into yet another one. And another. And another.

The Red Circle Club shootout is the best of them – outdoing itself with more and more over-the-top set decoration and gun tricks as the scene progresses. Reeves trained on a shooting range for the role, and it shows. The cinematography is clean and clear, letting us take in each stunt in all its glory.

Best Movie Shootouts of All Time

Conclusion

No action fan is an action fan without having seen John Wick, a film which revitalized one of cinema’s greatest action heroes, Keanu.

Best Police Shootout Movie Scenes

4. The Matrix (2014)

This made these glasses cool

Have we mentioned Keanu Reeves yet? Ah, then let’s focus on the groundbreaking work of the Wachowski sisters. By 1999, movie audiences were well acquainted with shootouts, but no one had seen one quite like the one in The Matrix.

The Wachowskis pulled from martial art flicks, science fiction, and shoot-em-ups to create jaw-dropping action set pieces, none better than the lobby shootout. Their innovative approach completely changed how action blockbusters looked, and raised the bar for any shootout to follow.

Best Movie Shootouts Ever

Conclusion

We can’t say you have to see The Matrix because of its shootout. You simply just have to see The Matrix.

Greatest Movie Shootouts

3. Hard Boiled (1992)

They just keep coming…

John Woo is the godfather of the modern shootout, influencing everyone from the Wachowskis to Tarantino, and the hospital shootout from Hard Boiled is probably his finest. 

It takes its time while also maintaining consistent blood-pumping action. It’s all clearly depicted and technically spectacular (a three-minute oner during an intricately choreographed action sequence? How?). Shootouts don’t get much better than this.

Best Movie Shootouts Ever

Conclusion

To understand how the modern action movie came to be, it’s crucial to study John Woo. And it’s also very fun.

Best Gun Fight Movie Scenes

2. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

One of the most iconic endings of all time

While Hard Boiled provides the perfect shootout direction, Butch Cassidy provides the perfect writing. The end of the classic film is beautifully bittersweet, a testament to friendship and believing in an impossible dream. While the shootout itself is fun, it’s that indelible final freeze frame that cements it as an all-time great moment in cinema. 

Best Movie Shootouts Ever

Conclusion

Butch Cassidy shows that sometimes a great shootout isn’t about the shooting, it’s about the friends we made along the way (especially when they’re two of the most attractive and charismatic men in human history).

Greatest Movie Shootouts

1. Heat (1995)

The greatest shootout of all time

The shootout doesn’t get better than it does in Heat. So intensely researched that Val Kilmer’s reloading technique is shown in basic training, so committed to realism that the gunshot sound effects were recorded on location, director Michael Mann created the ideal cinematic gunfight.

But it’s not just its realism that gets Heat the top spot. The performances in the shootout are exquisite: we see the pain in Neil’s eyes when he realizes it’s hit the fan; we see the desperate resolve of Vincent to finally get these guys. These are characters at the top of their respective fields operating at full velocity. This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. 

Best Gun Fight Movie Scenes

Conclusion

Heat is the perfect culmination of an intricately crafted plot cresting. We’re not sure who to root for, but we’re certainly along for the ride.

up next

How to Direct a Mexican Standoff

Now that you’ve got your primer in shootouts, it’s time to take a look at another classic feature of action movies: the Mexican Standoff. We'll cover how to direct these moments of tense pre-action by looking at examples from Tarantino, John Woo and Taylor Sheridan.

Up Next: Mexican Standoffs →
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1 comment

  1. I have been looking at quite a few list of best shootouts and for the life of me I cannot figure out why the shootout in Sean Penn’s “BAD BOYS” from the 80’s in no where to be found. Not only is it the most realistic of them all, in my opinion, but it truly shows what is actually happening in this same Chicago today. Please take a second and check it out. You won’t regret it.

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