There have been literally hundreds of BJJ moments in film and TV but here are some that really took us by surprise the first time round. These examples really show the difference between hiring a professional fight choreographer who’s a practicing black belt and dedicating time to training, compared to showing up on the day and being told to choke someone out by a Director without experience.
Mel Gibson Wins Via Triangle Choke
So this isn’t exactly amazing by modern standards, but it deserves a mention just purely for the fact that this is one of the very first really big blockbuster to feature BJJ in film. The choreography was done with assistance from Rorion Gracie and it really shows as the striking isn’t fantastic (again, by today’s standards) but it’s scrappy enough to be believable. You will have to suspend disbelief a little however, when dozens of police officers show up and they seem content to watch Mel Gibson and Gary Busey beat each other to death. The BJJ sequence starts shortly after the fight involves weapons, first Busey lands a Fireman’s Carry, slamming Gibson onto the hood of the police car. As Gibson charges at him, he lands a Hip Throw this time instead and as the pair grapple on the floor Gibson tries an armbar but fails and eats a few shots to the face for his troubles. Gibson then shoots his legs up for a Triangle Choke and we get some textbook 80’s Bullshido when he snaps Busey’s neck.
Banshee’s Armbar To Decapitation
This isn’t an incredible BJJ sequence or a really flashy submission, it’s just a lovely little switch between BJJ and gory murder. It is worth mentioning though, that the entire series of Banshee does have some great grappling sprinkled throughout. The protagonist, Lucas Hood confronts an assassin and they agree to fight in the middle of the highway (sounds reasonable). The fight starts out with your standard back and forth striking match and as the assassin charges forward, Hood lands a nice Belly-To-Belly suplex while a truck swerves to avoid the pair. Hood sees another truck coming and locks up an Armbar to keep his opponent there, before quickly pushing him back to create space and make him stand, This is when the track passes by and pretty quickly decapitates the assassin. Not amazingly technical, but pretty damn smart and fun to watch.
Attack On Titan Knows Everything
This is the only entry that isn’t live action as Attack On Titan is an anime TV series, but it makes the cut based on breadth of knowledge. There’s more than just the above clip across a few seasons, but this is a nice example. It’s highly stylized and might feel more than a little cringey if you’re not used to anime but the actual techniques are pretty solid and widely varied. In this short clip they show an Arm Triangle, a Triangle Choke with the Armbar option, a Footlock from Single Leg X and finally an Arm-In Guillotine. My personal favorite moment is when he’s eating strikes from having Single Leg X on a standing opponent (Clearly the animators are big Luke Rockhold fans), so he uses the position to extend him and escape to standing, pretty spot on.
Basically Everything John Wick Does
This might seem like a bit of a cheat, but there’s just way, way too much to choose from across this trilogy. The above clip is just of John Wick 2 and purely looking at the Judo-based techniques on display but even with that, it’s still around 5 minutes of nonstop footage and if you were to put together all three films, you must be looking at around 20 minutes surely. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise because Keanu Reeves is a longtime martial artist and a legitimate badass. I personally love the fact that there’s a couple of Gi Chokes involved, but using the tailored suits every hitman on the planet seems to wear instead. Then the best moment comes at around the 3:50 mark when Reeves passes guard (really), lands a sweet backstep to the Mounted Triangle and as he rolls to his back, grabs the guy’s gun and shoots him in the head. Beautiful.
The Accountant and Eddie Bravo
I’ll preface this one by saying that the clip above isn’t an amazing technical example, but The Accountant is a pretty well choreographed film throughout and has a dash of BJJ all throughout. The one moment that really stuck out to me was this scene and it starts when Ben Affleck is in Closed Guard and gets his opponent in an Arm Triangle from the bottom. First, his opponent actually does the correct defense by answering the phone and then makes him pay by landing a few punches to the ribs with his free hand. It starts to get a bit crazy then as Affleck stuffs what looks like a Stun Grenade down his opponent’s jacket and secures Rubber Guard to hold him in place until it goes off. Pretty nonsensical, but as far as I’ve seen this is the only example of Rubber Guard or any 10th Planet BJJ in film.
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