Krav Maga 411

One thing I really hate is when fight scenes in movies are unrealistic. I don’t mean your basic kung fu movie; I mean movies that are supposed to be realistic and gritty, like the new Cohen Brothers’ movie “No Country for Old Men”.

Spoiler alert: if you haven’t seen the movie yet this will spoil a short scene in the beginning for you.

Before I start talking about the one scene that I had a problem with, I have to tell you that this is a truly great movie and you should definitely see it. So anyway, in the beginning of the movie, the psycho bad guy with the goofy haircut is sitting on a bench in the sheriff’s station handcuffed with his hands in front of him.  The sheriff who arrested him is talking on the phone with his back to him.  The bad guy gets up from the bench and comes up behind the sheriff, slips the handcuff chain over his head, pulls him down to the ground and chokes him to death. The sheriff basically struggles, doesn’t know what to do and dies. First of all, a cop would never turn his back on someone like this to begin with. Secondly, I realize that it takes place in 1980, seven years before Darren Levine started teaching Krav Maga to US law enforcement.  However, they had to have some sort of hand to hand combat training before that. The part that really killed me was that even if he didn’t know how to get out of the choke, the whole time he was being choked his elbow and arm was right on top of the psycho’s groin. He should have been pulverizing his privates.

Here’s a link to a post on Krav Maga 411 of a video clip of Jarret Waldman from Sherman Oaks Krav Maga instructing on how to get out of being choked from behind with a wire or rope.

Here’s is the preview clip for “No Country for Old Men”, a fragment of the scene I am talking about is at 1:16, but in the movie it seems like he’s choking him forever. Even if you don’t see the movie, it’ll give you a rough idea of what I’m talking about here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBqmKSAHc6w[/youtube]