Word: swordsmanship
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Self-taught in swordsmanship, hand-to-hand combat and making bombs from clay pots, gunpowder and tar, Smith fought as a young mercenary in wars across France, the Netherlands and southeast Europe to the edge of the Ottoman Empire. Captured and sold into slavery, he wound up at a remote Black Sea military outpost, where a Turkish officer shaved Smith's head and riveted an iron ring around his neck. "A dog could hardly have lived to endure" the routine beatings and starvation rations that followed, Smith wrote in his colorful and epic autobiography...
Children of Húrin is set in the First Age of Middle-earth, 6,500 years pre-Frodo. Your hero is the good-hearted but proud and irascible Túrin (son of Húrin), a human warrior who had the good fortune to be trained by elves in wicked swordsmanship. Your villain is the cowardly and spiteful Morgoth, your basic evil incarnate, who squats in his dark fortress of Angband and makes war on all that is just and beautiful. Children is written in Tolkien's full-on high-heroic style, which is sometimes hilariously dorky and faux-archaic, and as a short...
Amazingly, the principals remained relatively unscathed until the end. The critical fight between Hector and Achilles was scheduled to be shot just before production wrapped, to give Bana and Pitt extra time to practice their swordsmanship with renowned stunt coordinator Simon Crane (Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan). But a few days before the fight, Pitt damaged his Achilles tendon--an irony he can laugh about now, though only a little. A few days later, Hurricane Marty, the second hurricane to hit the production, blew down the walls of Troy. The walls were rebuilt, and Pitt's leg healed, but shooting...
...Montrose (John Hurt). The wheres and whyfores are slightly complicated (manifestly humanitarian, of course), but the upshot of the deal is that word of the thousand pounds reaches the ears of the money-hungry English fop, Archibald Cunningham. In between twirling his lace cuffs and showing off his swordsmanship, Cunningham contrives to commit cool murder and expert theft, and the plot is off and running...
...Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur finds his path blocked by the Black Knight, a belligerent fellow who happens to be no good at fighting. The Knight loses an arm, then another, then both legs to Arthur's superior swordsmanship. He is left in pieces on the ground, screaming to the departing King, "You yellow bastard, come back here and take what's coming...