KSK Mock Draft: Movie Action Scenes In Which We'd Like to Star

Each week leading up to the draft, we at KSK will be holding a mock draft of our own in the category of our choosing. This week, we're picking cinematic action sequences we wish we could be a part of (the dangling preposition sounds better). The rules: (1) No sex scenes, and (2) once a movie has been selected, no one else can select a different scene from that movie. Draft order was serpentine and determined by first come, first serve.

In order to increase the awesomeness, I embedded or linked to as many of the scenes as possible. Say goodbye to the rest of your day.

ROUND ONE

1. Captain Caveman: The Battle of Stirling, Braveheart

I don't care that Mel Gibson is a fucking lunatic. Horses get ruined, hamstrings get sliced, blood splashes on the camera, and large, blunt objects smash people's skulls. Sign me up. Bonus: if you start "Welcome to the Jungle" when the people start running at each other, the song meshes perfectly and ends when Wallace throws his sword and it sticks in the ground. I'm not kidding. It's fucking cool. (This narrowly beat out William Wallace's first revenge scene where he pretends to surrender, then smashes a dude's face with a mace in slo-mo and drives a rack of antlers through another guy's throat. Sa-WEET!)

2. Unsilent Majority: THE car chase, Bullitt



"Is there anything on Earth better than a great car chase? I think not. This was the one that set the tone for for generations to come. You've got American muscle cars (Mustang vs. Charger) racing through the hills of San Francisco (Crazy Taxi come to life) culminating with a badass explosion. If you don't have a man-crush on Steve McQueen you're probably gay."

3. Big Daddy Drew: Battle of Pepellenor Fields, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

"I want to either ride the big fucking elephant or be one of those ghosts that sweeps along and fucks shit up. Awesome shit."

4. Christmas Ape: Opening Battle, Gladiator

Good scene. Excellent use of burning Germans. However, it's an absolute waste of a pick. This is MAYBE the third-best scene in the movie. I would have taken either the first arena battle (man wearing Minotaur costume gets stabbed by one of the big German guys from Beerfest; delightful use of mace and trident; buckets of blood; wall-spike impaling; prominent double-sword decapitation) or the "Carthage" arena battle in Rome (guy beaten to death with helmet, archer chick sawed in half by chariot axle). In fact, that scene's so sweet I'm gonna post video of it. Screw Ape's pick.



5. Monday Morning Punter: the Big, Sweet, Long-Ass Car Chase, Ronin.

"Only I would definitely not be flashing the brights and shooting out the window a lot more."

6. flubby: Sonny getting gunned down at the tollbooth, The Godfather.

His reasoning: "Not really sure what this draft is all about." The email subject line in the thread I started was "Mock Draft: Action Scenes We Want to Be a Part of." flubby does a lot of drugs.

ROUND TWO

7. flub: Deckard versus Roy at the end of Blade Runner

A cool scene, but no fucking way I'd want to be a part of a scene where my enemy saves my life, makes a preachy "tears in the rain" speech, then dies without me killing him.

8. MMP: Hoth Battle, beginning of The Empire Strikes Back

"I REALLY wanted to pick Vader vs. Skywalker, but since this draft already has so much depth at dork, I feel a need to be a little more creative with my selection... How often do you get to fly a speeder, watch your co-pilot get shot while you yourself are virtually unscathed, crash, use a grappling hook to throw a grenade into another walker, and then flee the scene in another craft reserved for your exclusive use? That's what I thought."

9. Xmas Ape: Final fight, Drunken Master II

"I'm tanked and kicking everyone's ass with impeccable moves. It's about 10 minutes of the best fight choreography ever. People disrespect Jackie Chan because of the painfully goofy shit he's done since coming to the U.S. but his body of work is amazing and this is probably the best example of it."

10. BDD: Post-robbery street shootout, Heat


"Wearing a suit and shooting people with a bottomless assault rifle has long been a dream of mine. It really doesn't get any better than that. And I'm wearing sunglasses while doing it! I also liked it when Sizemore used the little girl as a human shield. Children make great human shields."

This pick destroyed my will to live. I came up with the idea for this draft SOLELY to pick this scene. I was hoping to steal it in the second round because there was no way Braveheart would fall that far. And tubby civilians like Drew can't even understand the full awesomeness of the scene. This is pretty much the only scene in cinematic history where villains employ the basics of fire and movement and show some knowledge about marksmanship, sighting in and firing from a stable position whenever possible. (Drew's right about the bottomless assault rifle, though. A 30-round magazine doesn't last that long on an AR-15 when you've got it set to full auto.)

11. UM: Final scene, Léon (known by Americans as The Professional)

"This is where things get tricky. Yes, Leon dies, but that's not about to discourage me. He kills himself along with Gary Oldman ( always a good idea) in order to save a 12 year-old Lolita named Natalie Portman. If I had to go early this is the way I'd do it. Nothing beats the old ring trick."

Further proof UM is TERRIBLE at these drafts.

12. CC: Morpheus's rescue from The Matrix.

This is one long motherfucking action scene. You get to go through security strapped with guns, shred a marble lobby and do a one-handed cartwheel while shooting people, run on a wall and kick somebody in the face, blow up an elevator shaft, jump out of a building into a helicopter, fire a minigun, crash the helicopter into an office building, dodge bullets, have a superfast flying kung fu fight, and make a guy get hit by a subway train. That's your money's worth right there.

ROUND THREE

13. CC: The climactic scene from A History of Violence.

It's not as long as I might like, but it's my lifelong dream to axe-stomp somebody's Adam's apple.

14. UM: Major Kong riding the bomb, Dr. Strangelove

"Hmmm...I might have a death wish. But who cares? The world was about to be destroyed and jumping out of a plane while riding a nuke seems like it would be a damn good time. "

15. BDD: The helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now

"I win. Have a nice ride home, everyone."

Drew's damn pleased with himself. It's a great scene because of "Ride of the Valkyries" and Robert Duvall saying badass things ("Music?" "Yeah, I use Wagner. Scares the hell outta the slopes"), but as far as helicopters fucking shit up the better bet is Black Hawk Down.

16. Xmas Ape: Huge fight scene at O-Ren Ishii's, Kill Bill Vol. 1

"I have to be a chick, but I get to take out tons of people single-handedly in brutal, beautifully realized ways."



Nice pick. If I got to be Uma Thurman for that scene I'd find a way to take a shower afterwards. You know, to soap up my breasts.

17. MMP: Opening Scene, The Replacement Killers.

"Chow Yun Fat walks in, blows a bunch of holes into people, walks out. Best scene in the whole fucking movie. Plus, my name would be Chow Yun Fat. Tits and tits."

18. flub: Time-travel, Superman 2

flubby made this pick several days after we had stopped discussing the draft. I had to remind him to make his final pick. By this time he had finally figured out the point of the draft: "Superman makes time go backwards by reversing the Earth's rotation. I'd go back to [last] Friday morning and make sure my dumb ass understood what exactly we were drafting."

There you go. Disturbing windows into our psyches. flubby has brain damage, Unsilent wants to die, and I prefer an intimate, hands-on murder to some fiery explosion. Even though Drew claimed victory, UM made a solid point: "How can you win? This is all about what I'd like to live out (and if I die who cares, the movie's over)."

So think about that while you mock us for leaving out Saving Private Ryan, True Romance, El Mariachi, both Bourne movies, Fight Club, the sword fight from The Princess Bride, the running chase from Casino Royale, Finding Nemo, et cetera and so on. I, for one, already regret not grabbing the opportunity to be the T-1000 from Terminator 2. I missed my chance to turn my hands into blades and stab people in the face. Damn.

UPDATE: Drew would like to point out that I missed the fact that he switched out his first pick with the opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.