Counting down top 10 thrilling movie shootouts

There are many things that are only fun in the movies and never real life: explosions, tornadoes, radioactive-monster attacks. Chief among them is a good gunfight — devastating in the real world, but one of the essential building blocks of a good popcorn flick.

From Hong Kong to Spaghetti-Western Italy, these 10 movie shootouts are among the most thrilling in all cinema. Remember kids, it’s only fun when the bullets are blanks.

10. ‘Heat’ (1995)

the reign of gangster Al Capone (Robert De Niro), Brian De Palma’s classical crime thriller is loaded with artful touches, none more beautiful and brutal than the Union Station shootout. A gunfight breaks out on the vertiginous steps and a curly-haired baby in a perambulator goes careening down the steps, tommy-gun fire and shotgun blasts bursting over his smiling face in agonizing slow motion. It’s an indelible image pulled from the 1925 Russian movie “Battleship Potemkin” and repurposed to brilliant effect.

6. ‘Inglourious Basterds’ (2009)