8. The Hallway Fight - Oldboy
Running roughly three minutes in length, the famous hallway fight scene in Oldboy is one of the most visceral and authentic fight scenes in recent cinema history, with protagonist Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) taking on a gang of assailants with no more than a hammer. The scene was genuinely filmed in one take - the take used in the film was #17, after 3 days of shooting - as Chan-wook Park's camera dollies back and forth along the hallway, the only additional flourish being a CGI knife protuding out of Dae-su's back. The intimate nature of the fight meant that Choi Min-sik couldn't rely on a stunt double for a single second of the scene, making the achievement all the more laudable; this is a grueling shot that asked a lot of its leading man, though I'm sure that most will agree the result seems extremely authentic, all the more so than crafty editing and a stuntman would have allowed.
How It Changed Cinema: It pushed its leading man to the limit, a reminder of true suffering for your art, and that sometimes, a stuntman just won't cut it. If the guy in the frame is real, it feels more real to us.