Many Hollywood stuntmen consider that the all time best choreographed fight scene ever captured on film. The guy that played the Captain Turner, Alan Graf, is considered one of the best in the business and he vetoed the original script as to how the fight would be mapped out. He wanted to play it straight, like how a real fight to the death would be between two hired enforcers. Here is a breakdown of the scene from a stuntman>
"Minahan still shoots the hell out of the sequence. (I’ve always been particularly fond of the editing of the build-up to it, with Dan and Turner sizing each other up on their respective porches, always shown in parallel until the wagon rolls between them, acting as an unintentional prompt for the fighting to commence.) But the fact that these two middle-aged men are short of breath within moments of starting makes the combat seem far more intense and horrifying than if Brown and Graff were uncorking haymakers and flips and whatever other elaborate moves were originally planned. This is not a fancy cowboy movie fight. This is two old, hard killers digging down deep for every last scrap of energy, every last dirty trick, to stay alive long enough to get the advantage of the other one. And because it’s so simple, and so exhausting, the little moments in the fight become hugely magnified. Obviously, the one that sticks with you is when Dan just happens to pluck Captain Turner’s eye right out of the socket, but consider the sequence leading up to it. Despite our history with Dan, Turner sure seems to have the advantage on him in terms of strength and skill, and the fight could have been over much sooner if Hearst had been quicker to nod his approval for Turner to deliver the killing blow. That the nod is even necessary calls back to the earlier scene where Hearst tells his man to drag out the fight as an object lesson to the camp. That Hearst doesn’t give the nod, though, seems less about warning the hoopleheads about what will happen if they cross him than it does about his confusion that the fight is so close in the first place. Neither Hearst nor Turner were expecting Dan to put up as much fight as he did, and so an uncertain Hearst waits too long, which gives Dan just enough time to escape the latest hold and crawl away. And what’s so amazing about the final version of the fight choreography is that this isn’t the moment when Turner’s eye comes out. Instead, Dan gains only a moment’s respite before he’s getting his skull banged against a brick, but he’s also in a position where he can reach out in the desperate hope of finding some weak spot to yank on. And when the roles reverse, Al doesn’t hesitate a second before giving Dan the smallest of nods to make sure this ends now. Dan doesn’t win because he’s better; he wins because of luck, and tenacity, and because his boss didn’t screw around when the time came to nod. It’s that simple."
I wish Deadwood made it to 5 seasons...
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