Need some aggro? Books and movies to quench your thirst

Allergies rendered me into a snot factory on Sunday and Monday and made it impossible for me to attend combat fitness and Haganah on March 19. So instead of working out, I watched “13 Assassins,” a movie loaned to me by a friend at the gym. It was a pretty cool Samurai flick with some good sword play and the always compelling code of the Samurai, or bushido. After watching Assassins only a day after the season finale of “The Walking Dead” that featured a hooded, sword-wielding stranger  decapitate a zombie, I have a strong urge to learn how to use a Samurai sword. But that urge will have to wait, first I’ll get proficient with just a knife, then I’ll  move onto bigger edged weapons. What doesn’t have to wait, though, is the watching or reading of fictional characters whoop ass with their fists and feet and all types of weaponry. If you have the urge to watch or read some good agro, here’s a short list of my favorites in no particular order:

Hannah - This movie came out in 2011 and features some awesome hand-to-hand combat between a teenage girl, her father, neo-nazis and covert government henchmen.

This is One-Eye from "Valhalla Rising." Think you could
beat a guy who is tied to a post? Think again.

Valhalla Rising – Weird. Violent. Beautiful. Meet One-eye, a slave used to fight other slaves in the Celtic Highlands way back in the day. Chained to a post and sometimes fighting two men at once, One-Eye comes up with creative ways to kill with rope and arrowhead.

Any of the Jason Bourne movies – Yeah, the storylines get a bit unbelievable, but the one-on-one fight scenes are still good.

Eastern Promises – Good flick about the Russian mob featuring Viggo Mortensen. The fight scene in the steam bath is great, and not because Viggo is naked. But the idea having to fight naked on a wet tile floor against two dudes with blades is absolutely horrifying.

Those are the only movies my brain can think of at 9 a.m., but here are a few books:

Anything written by Cormac McCarthy – This is the guy who wrote the apocalyptic tale of survival “The Road” and the narco-thriller “No Country for Old Men.” But these two books, which were made into movies, pale in comparison to his work “Blood Meridian.” If you like blood … lots of blood with top-notch writing, go get this book today. I shouldn’t even call it writing. This book is literature at its finest and yet it’s so chock full of scalpings, beheadings, shootings, neck breakings and skull crushinings, that you don’t go more than five pages without something horrific happening. This story is based upon factual events that transpired in the mid-1800s with a group of scalp hunters commissioned by the Mexican government to rid their land of Indians. Here’s a sample of the McCarthy’s writing from page 4 of “Blood Meridian”: “They fight with fists, with feet, with bottles or knives. All races, all breeds. Men whose speech sounds like the grunting of apes. Men from lands so far and queer that standing over them where they lie bleeding in the mud he feels mankind itself vindicated.”

The Dune Series – The first six books of the Dune series will change your life. If you ever feel like you’re straying from the path of constant training and physical improvement, these books will set you straight. Taking place thousands of years in future, you meet Paul Atreides, heir to House Atreides. In this society full of double crosses, palace intrigue, espionage, traitors, poisons and assassins, danger lurks everywhere. The writer, Frank Herbert wrote the first book in 1965 and spares no details in the relentless physical conditioning and combat training that the main characters undergo to be able to face an attack at any moment. If you are a guy, you’re going to wish that you could be House Atreides swordmaster Duncan Idaho. If you’re a girl, you’re going to wish that you could join The Bene Gesserit and learn their finely tuned killing skills that are matched only by their cunning and physical beauty.

Shogun – this epic novel by James Clavelle takes place in feudal Japan during the heyday of the Samurai. This was a time when Japan was virtually closed off from the rest of the world and the only contact they had with Europeans came by way of Portuguese missionaries, until Blackthorne, an English captain of the sea becomes shipwrecked with his crew. This book is so detailed you’ll learn some Japanese and learn lots about the Samurai. It’s long, around 1,400 pages, and it is very slow in some spots, but if you can power through the lulls you’re rewarded with some sweet sword fights, ninjas, and even some good sex scenes. Seriously, if you like Samurai and their code of honor, this is a must read.
Fight – this book by Eugene Robinson is so well written it’s hard to believe that the writer is also a fighter who has been hit repeatedly on the head. The real title of this book is Fight: everything you ever wanted to know about kicking ass but were afraid to ask because you thought you would get your ass kicked. It is a non-fiction account of Robinson and how he got into fighting through underground boxing clubs, his band Oxbow and the early days of MMA. It also includes interviews with famous fighters, killers and jailhouse assassins. Did I mention that it’s incredibly well written?