These Indian films stand alongside other influential fight scenes from world cinema, shaping the way we appreciate action on the big screen. Whether it’s the rugged landscapes of Sholay, the dramatic twists of Om Shanti Om, or the high-octane action in RRR, these fights continue to resonate with movie enthusiasts across the globe.
Remember, each punch, kick, and clash contributes to the rich tapestry of cinematic history, reminding us why action sequences remain an integral part of our movie-going experience.
Let’s delve into some of the most epic cinematic brawls that have left an indelible mark on action cinema. According to Vulture magazine, these fights have shaped the way we perceive intense combat sequences in movies. Here are three remarkable Indian films that made it onto their list:
Sholay: Jai-Veeru and the Bandits (1975)
Ranked at 31st, this iconic Bollywood classic features the highly ambitious train fight between Veeru (played by Dharmendra) and Jai (played by Amitabh Bachchan). Shot on a moving train along the Mumbai–Pune railway route near Panvel, this sequence took over seven weeks to complete. The bandits, the speeding train, and the dramatic showdown have etched themselves into cinematic history.
According to Vulture,
“Considered a “curry western,” i.e., a Hindi take on the western genre, Sholay borrows from masters of the form. It invokes Sergio Leone’s penchant for gore, Anthony Mann’s morality mechanics, and the character building of Akira Kurosawa’sYojimbo and Seven Samurai. Its release marked the first time screenwriters were ever listed on a movie poster; Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar became rock stars overnight, partly thanks to the zingy one-liners peppered throughout the fight scenes, an approach that eventually became industry standard. And though its co-lead Amitabh Bachchan was known pre-Sholay for his fighting chops, the film — and the way Bachchan used his lanky body to swiftly slice through space — cemented his legend as one of the deftest action heroes of all time.
The opening fight scene is tightly structured, lasting under nine minutes. Inspector Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar) is transporting two handcuffed thieves to a police station when their train gets attacked by bandits on horseback. The thieves, Jai (Bachchan) and Veeru (Dharmendra), offer to help, so Singh frees them and they spring into action. The ensuing battle sees Jai running across the top of a moving train, sniping bandits, then fighting them hand-to-hand when they make it onto the caboose. Bachchan and Dharmendra complement each other perfectly: Jai’s fighting style is calm, collected, nimble, while Veeru is more of a whizbang-smash type, dealing savage punches and strangling bad guys.
The violence of Sholay, loudly and proudly announced in this first fight scene, indicated a shift in Hindi cinema. While films of the 1950s and ’60s considered violence an unnecessary tool, Sholay — released amid the political crises of the 1970s, when rampant corruption, poverty, and unemployment awakened a generation to the notion that their government was never set up to support everyone — embraced feudal tribalism and retributive justice. The Hindi film industry soon saw a rise in films about violence and gangsters, and Bachchan would go on to star in many films that rejected gentility.”
Om Shanti Om: Om vs. Mukesh (2007)
Shah Rukh Khan’s portrayal of Om and Arjun Rampal’s character Mukesh culminates in a climactic fight sequence. Ranked at 86th, this blockbuster moment sees the ghost of Shantipriya (played by Deepika Padukone) returning to save the day by delivering poetic justice.
According to Vulture,
Om Shanti Om is a musical revenge epic and also a film within a film — a triumphant effort from stars Shah Rukh Khan (a.k.a. “The King of Bollywood”) and Deepika Padukone (India’s top-paid actress). It begins in the 1970s, when nefarious film producer Mukesh Mehra murders superstar actress Shantipriya (Padukone, in her very first role) and day player Om Makhija (Khan), her admirer turned attempted rescuer. When the two are reincarnated 30 years later, Om, now a film star, casts Shanti, now known as Sandy, in his film Om Shanti Om as a ploy to haunt and terrorize Mukesh on the set. In Mukesh and Om’s final showdown, the set catches fire and echoes their 1970s fight — a hand-to-hand flurry of bloody punches, bodies flung into corners, and desperation soaring with the orchestra. After a struggle, Om advances on Mukesh’s writhing body and aims to shoot him, but Sandy stops him. “His death is written,” she says, “but not at your hands.” She looks up, and a chandelier smashes to the ground, killing Mukesh. It’s revealed that Sandy was never in the room and that the vengeful ghost of Shantipriya ensured that he got his revenge.
The fight, and Om Shanti Om as a whole, made an impact in a couple ways. First, plenty of Bollywood blockbusters had used reincarnation, a central tenet of Hinduism, as the crux of their plots, but the reveal was unusual in structural terms: It was rare at the time for a Hindi-language film to lay its cards on the table so close to the end credits. People walked out of theaters stunned, oohing and aahing over the shocking ending. Second, its inversion of gender dynamics was also crucial: Om charges forward to protect Sandy with his gun, something Hindi film heroes have done for decades, only to realize that it was Shanti, from beyond the grave, who has been protecting him, who refuses to sully his hands with Mukesh’s blood. Invoking the supernatural is not uncommon in Hindi cinema, but depictions of female rage are. (Importantly, Shanti was not only married to Mukesh, she was carrying his child.) Director Farah Khan and her team took a risk, and it paid off, instantly cementing the audience’s faith in Padukone’s acting chops. She hasn’t stopped working since, and Om Shanti Om joined the pantheon of great Hindi films.
RRR: Raju vs. Bheem (2022)
SS Rajamouli’s Oscar-winning action entertainer features several thrilling action sequences. The one that secured the 100th spot on Vulture’s list is the intense battle between Raju (Ram Charan) and Bheem (NTR Jr) at the interval point. The film’s grandeur and adrenaline-pumping fights have left an indelible mark on audiences worldwide.
According to Vulture,
You could feel S.S. Rajamouli’s Telugu blockbuster shaping what was to come in action cinema over the course of its three-hour-and-seven-minute run time, after it broke through to western audiences and made current Hollywood product look shabby and dull in comparison to its eye-popping spectacle. Rajamouli has cited Braveheart and Once Upon a Time in Hollywoodas among RRR’s influences, and while it’s still a little early to see the influence of his own movie about Indian revolutionaries on American productions, its unfettered maximalism seems destined to leave a mark.
It’s hard to pick a single fight from the film. It starts off with superstar Ram Charan taking on a whole raging crowd of people, includes a sequence in which Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr., another highly decorated (and compensated) Tollywood actor, make a prison escape on piggyback, and concludes with the pair battling British soldiers using flaming arrows and whole motorcycles as weapons. But the core of the movie is the sequence in which Charan’s Raju and Rao’s Bheem collide in the chaos of an attack on the governor’s mansion as two friends seemingly on opposite sides of the colonial divide. Their clash is (comparatively) on the restrained side, though it does still include Bheem grabbing a hose from a fountain and Raju hefting a lit torch so that each can pose dramatically with, and then attack using, their signature element. (Raju also punches a tiger.) But it’s the unapologetic emotions that underscore the fight, the tears and the anguished betrayal, that are ready to leave their mark on the future. For as operatic as the set pieces are, the feelings motivating RRR’s action leads are even more extravagant. American action films don’t always know what to do with big, dramatic sentiment, sometimes eschewing it entirely in favor of heroes who speak in quips or paeans to their families. Here’s to the further opening up of English-language audiences to action cinema from all over. The continued cross-pollination of ideas and approaches is the only way the genre will continue to change, grow, and blow our minds.
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