9 Violent Mainstream Movie Scenes That Went Too Far

3. Tony Scott Drags Out Patricia Arquette's Tortorous Fight Scene - True Romance

James Gandolfini and Patricia Arquette put on one of the most grotesque displays of mixed-gender, up-close fighting you're likely to see (if you're lucky, nothing else will even come close to this.) True Romance was written by Quentin Tarantino, though the directing duties fell to Tony Scott, who doesn't have nearly as much staging creativity or restraint as Tarantino when it comes to filming violence.

The Reservoir Dogs' torture scene is a stiff, Victorian-era period piece compared to the hyper-violent lunacy of this fight. At almost every point in this scene, most of the audience is just waiting for this to be over so we can cheer when Arquette walks away. And we know that's going to happen, yet Tony Scott refuses to let her (or us) off that easy.

He literally throws everything he's got at her, making what would be an uncomfortable fight scene between two guys even more cold-blooded by brutalizing a woman. It shouldn't matter what genders are involved, obviously, except that Scott is constantly taunting us with it, having Gandolfini call her "baby" in between choking her and smashing her head into a wall, all while focusing on Arquette's cleavage in many of these shots.