Yuku free message boards

*Warning- pretentious film grad alert*

So, I'm gonna go out on a limb & say that I love this scene. Yeah, it's got it's flaws like not much for exchanges & repetitive slow motion, but it's one of my favorite Van Damme scenes & here's why. It's shot (and mostly cut) entirely like a Western shootout. Almost every angle is straight out of classical Western- the shot between the legs, the cutting back and forth, the choice of music, etc. The shot-reverse shot really reminds me of stuff like The Good the Bad and the Ugly or The Wild Bunch. The coolest part being that Van Damme moves his cut- making the audience think he's going to reveal a gun at his side, but he's just revealing his leg- which becomes symbolic for a gun during the entire fight. Van Damme only kicks with that leg (if I'm not mistaken) throughout the entirety of this particular fight- which doesn't make a lot of sense for a fight scene, but does make sense if that leg were a gun- it'd be the heroes first weapon of choice. I used this scene in my Western class as my finishing argument on martial arts & westerns and I simply can't say enough good stuff about it.