Past now, Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans has well-established his penchants and proclivities as a director and a storyteller; his work is characterized by precisely executed choreography and colored with graphic violence. Evans' new movie, The Raid ii: Berandal  (read our review), proves no exception to either of these traits, and expands on the formula that made his 2012 smash, The Raid: Redemption, such a hit.

Whether yous've seen the film already, the crimson band teaser and light-green band trailers, or kept yourself pure of all preview footage, using simply the original movie as a barometer, ane thing is for sure: The Raid 2: Berandal brings the pain. Yous'll see a veritable smorgasbord of physical punishment judiciously doled out in unsparing doses but past watching the promo clips, and that nonetheless just scratches the surface.

That got us thinking: what other martial arts films have gone the distance with painful-looking and occasionally gruesome fight scenes? The Raid films certainly aren't the first to embrace brutality, later all, as the genre has a storied history of broken bones, beatings, and maimings. So here are ten of our favorite blench-worthy injuries in martial arts catechism (in no particular guild).

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12 Thundering Mantis/Mantis Fist Fighter

Thundering-Mantis-Ah-Chi

Full disclosure: Thundering Mantis is a hokey cheese-fest. If that tickles your fancy, you lot'll probably consider it a ninety minute treasure trove of hamfisted please, but even if non, the flick is worth sticking with thanks to its totally unhinged climactic brawl.

Thundering Mantis follows Ah Chi, a martial arts devotee with a knack for butting heads with local tong thugs. He's instructed in the ways of the Insane Mantis way by a crotchety old homo, and bonds with his new master's nephew. Only disaster strikes when those aforementioned gangsters, led by their boss Hsia, kill the old human being, kidnap Ah Chi and the kid, and torture them both.

The kid, sadly, doesn't make it, and Ah Chi does what any good martial arts hero would do: he breaks complimentary of his bonds, dismantles all of Hsia'southward cronies, and makes a literal meal of Hsia himself. The allusion is obvious - praying mantis' cannibalize their own kind - but that doesn't make the zeal with which Ah Chi chows down on chunks of his enemy'southward flesh whatever less disturbing.

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11 Ong-Bak

Tony Jaa hasn't quite had the sustained, lasting affect on martial arts movie theatre everyone thought he would after 2003's Ong Bak, and it'southward no surprise why; while the film isn't terrible, information technology's generally memorable for a scattering of fight scenes. Simply human being, those fight scenes sure are worthy of remembrance.

As Ting, Jaa is tasked with retrieving the head of the eponymous statue, navigating the dangerous streets of Bangkok and taking on the minions of crime kingpin Komtuan as office of his quest. Eventually, Ting and his trusty sidekick, Humlae, end up in a fracas at the human foot of a humongous Buddha statue, desperately fighting to make Ong Bak whole again.

Ting eventually gets into it with Komtuan's right mitt human being, Saming, who enters a drug-induced berserker rage and starts wailing on Ting with every implement available to him. Ting stoically fights on, deflecting the onslaught as all-time he can, simply so Saming gets the bright thought to assail with a two-human being band saw. The woodcutting tool proves effective: Ting can just do so much before he'southward forced to block, grimacing in agony every bit the saw'southward teeth gorily cut into his forearms. Ouch.

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10 Flashpoint

Speaking of ouch, how most that final scrap between Colin Chou and martial arts legend Donnie Yen in Wilson Yip's 2007 motion picture, Flash Indicate? When you put talents like Yen and Chou together and permit a helmsman similar Yip direct them, you should naturally look greatness, and here that's all-time observed in the fireworks display that is the motion-picture show's climax.

The fight itself is stupendous, so much so that the brutality at its core nigh sounds banal on paper. But sometimes, a barbarous strike to the face is roughshod enough, and Flash Point demonstrates equally much quite handily when gangster Tony (Chou) and supercop Ma (Yen) come to blows in a remote village post-obit an hr and modify of backstabbing in Cathay'due south criminal underworld.

By the fourth dimension the movie nears its ending, both men are soaked in sweat and stained with claret; it's a merciless battle for sure, but the slice de resistance comes in the form of a ane-two punch Yen aims perfectly at Chou's mug, practically taking his head off in the process. Chou looks like he's been hit by a sledgehammer earlier Yen chokes him out - and he probably felt like it at the time, too.

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9 The Bodyguard

The first thing everyone should larn about Sonny Chiba: don't e'er mess with Sonny Chiba. Or perhaps that'due south the only matter. Basically, tangling with Chiba ways you lot're going to be in a world of injure, so you're better off but leaving him alone and not bothering him to brainstorm with.

If he comes subsequently you, though, that's a different kettle of fish entirely. The Bodyguard takes that idea and runs with it on a slightly meta level; Chiba'south playing, well, Chiba, a karate teacher in New York who foils a hijacking plot on a flight to Japan. Arriving in Tokyo, he announces his intention to fight criminal offence and cleanse the streets of drugs for the practiced of society.

It'due south an inexplicable movie, but it'south full of some pretty impressive grue - and just near whatsoever Chiba is good Chiba. What happens when you try to get the drop on Chiba in the middle of the night? He punches through a door, grabs your arm, and wrenches it so hard the os pokes through the skin.

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8 Five Element Ninjas

Revenge is a common theme in martial arts fare, particularly when it concerns a character's students or mentors running into untimely demises. (In fact, there are a couple of entries on this very list that deal with that exact trope.) 5 Element Ninjas is no exception; the film'due south plot kicks off with the destruction of protagonist Tsiau Chin Hau's school and the deaths of his friends.

Grisly stuff, but Mentum is a resilient guy, and he bounces back quickly, falling into the company of his three new sworn brothers and undergoing training to defeat the quintet of ninjas responsible for massacring his colleagues. The ninjas are equally lethal as they are crafty, though, each representing one of the five elements - golden, wood, water, burn down, and earth.

Then Chin and his comrades use methods of combat devised to crush them, each equally lethal and crafty as the ninjas themselves. Most notable is their technique for fighting the wood ninjas, which involves sickles and chains; after dispatching all but one ninja, the four avenging warriors work together, drawing and quartering their remaining enemy in gruesome way.

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vii The Fable of Drunken Master/Drunken Master II

Today, Jackie Chan isn't really associated with graphic violence; information technology's not office of his make, or at least it hasn't been since he made the trip to Hollywood in the mid-90's. Even before then, Chan tended to participate in more forgiving (but no less awesome) genre fare, which makes The Legend of Drunken Master something of a rarity in his piece of work - since it'southward actually kind of encarmine.

Almost of that viscera comes upwards during a tea firm melee, equally Wong Fei-hung (Chan) and Master Fu Wen-chi (Lau Kar-leung) discuss the crisis facing precious, aboriginal Chinese artifacts, which are being stolen and sold by foreigners. Partway through their talk, they realize the entire restaurant has emptied, and suddenly, they're beset upon by legions of the Axe Gang.

When you lot hire the Axe Gang, you lot're certain to become the job done, merely Fei-hung and Wen-chi give them a run for their money. Fei-hung starts swinging abroad with a bamboo pole, and that improvised beat-stick becomes fifty-fifty deadlier when the ends split, turning it into a non-cease splinter machine every bit he leaves nasty-looking gashes on scores of anguished enemies.

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6 Ip Human

Another Donnie Yen/Wilson Yip joint? Well, they clearly work well with one another, so why not? Also, Ip Human is an arguable mod classic, not only a great martial arts moving-picture show only a great moving picture flow (and a improve instance of the biopic genre than most of its peers) - and it has some truly gnarly fights to give it weight.

Here, Yen plays Ip Man, grandmaster of Fly Chun and the homo responsible for training none other than Bruce Lee; the film's plot revolves a not bad bargain effectually Japan's invasion of China in 1937, and it only so happens that the conflict between the Japanese interlopers and Chinese locals sets the stage for i of Ip-Human being's most iconic fight scenes.

Challenging ten people to a fight sounds like a one-sided prospect, merely when Ip Human pits himself against the Japanese general's karateka, it's actually one-sided for them. Ip Human being tears them apart like a child opening altogether presents; one poor sap in item winds upward on the receiving end of a nigh endless barrage of rapid-fire blows to the chest, crumpling to the floor as Ip Homo batters him mercilessly.

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5 V Fingers of Death

You may recognize Five Fingers of Death (aka Rex Boxer) for the musical cue that plays when its leading human, Chi-Hao (Lieh Lo), powers up his Iron Fist technique - Quentin Tarantino used information technology quite liberally in Kill Nib. Merely the motion picture has more than then just referential value; information technology's a genre classic, through and through.

Information technology's besides super-violent. Chi-Hao has great hope as a martial artist, and his aspirations to greatness end up putting him at odds the evil Ming Dung-Shun, a nefarious martial arts master with a mean streak in him a mile wide; he conspires with Han Lung, Chi-Hao's competitor, to cripple Chi-Hao, and even hires a trio of Japanese thugs to impale Chi-Hao's principal.

Only he'southward never more than duplicitous and wicked than when he punishes Han Lung for delivering him bad news by having his son gouge out the poor man's optics. Talk nigh shooting the messenger.

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4 The Street Fighter

Putting The Babysitter on this list and neglecting The Street Fighter would be a travesty, mostly because The Street Fighter is a superior movie. Then we're double-dipping on our Chiba, merely it's a well-deserved double-dipping; Chiba is, later all, ane of the greats.

And The Street Fighter remains his all-time movie, or at least his best known and most successful. It'due south a two-pronged story that sees his character, mercenary for hire Takuma Tsurugi, lock horns with Yakuza equally well equally with condemned murderer Junjo, who wants to avenge his siblings following an altercation with Takuma at the starting time of the motion-picture show.

The Yakuza plot takes up a great deal of The Street Fighter's running fourth dimension, but information technology ends with Takuma going mano-a-mano with Junjo; simply when it seems like Takuma's on the ropes, he tears out Junjo'due south throat with his blank hands in a moment that'southward jaw-dropping in terms of sheer bloodiness.

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three Master of the Flying Guillotine

We're maybe taking some liberties here - describing decapitation as an injury is sort of like describing Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier'due south 14-round Thrilla in Manila as harmless play fighting. But Jimmy Wang's follow-up to his 1971 classic, One Armed Boxer, has one of the most infamous pieces of weaponry in martial arts history.

Vengeance is the name of the game hither, as the titular main goes looking for that single-amputee hero, bent on getting even for the deaths of his two students in the previous film. The main's trump menu is a wicked little armament that slides comfortably over a target's head before slicing it clean off in 1 smooth movement. Harsh, only inventive.

The master uses his mortiferous cap on a number of targets, like chickens and statues, before running across a bum in a eating place trying to bluff his style out of paying the bill by pretending he'due south the ane-armed boxer. Big mistake. Without hesitation, the master winds upward his toy and kills the poor ragamuffin, leaving patrons to scatter in horror. Dining and dashing actually doesn't pay, it seems.

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two Conclusion

Of grade, the martial arts genre is so deep and and so varied that you lot could probably make an entirely different top ten without breaking a sweat - though including either The Raid: Redemption or Merantau, the first martial arts outing Evans and star Iko Uwais enjoyed together, would exist cheating.

Still, this option ought to prep your palettes for the unbridled mayhem of The Raid 2: Berandal once it arrives in your surface area. In the meantime, share your own favorite (brutal) moments in martial arts movies below.

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1 More than: The Raid ii: Berandal Review

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The Raid 2: Berandal is in theaters in New York and Los Angeles, and opens wide today.

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Andy Crump (356 Manufactures Published)

Boston-based critic Andy Crump has been writing about film for the web since 2009, and has been a Screen Bluster contributor since Spring 2013. He also writes for Motion-picture show Mezzanine, In Review Online, and Paste Magazine. Yous can follow him on Twitter at @agracru. Currently, he has given up on shaving.

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