I like how you call out West Side Story where it is one of the rare pieces of media that highlights how dangerous a knife is. The whole lead up to the gang fight they're saying no weapons as knives are a big deal. In the fight, I think only one or two people pull out a knife. And from recollection, once a knife comes out, it moves pretty quickly to someone getting stabbed once/dies/gang fight disperses cause "wholly shit someone's got a knife and killed someone".

Like I understand that yeah there is a lot of dancing in the movie, but once the knife comes out things turn pretty serious. Unlike something like Crocodile Dundee where they're comparing knife sizes.

The difference is that I don't think anybody is supposed to believe that the knife fights in West Side Story are anything other than dance.

Also, I'd bet that the reality for knife fights isn't that one guy gets inside the other's radius and wins, it's probably that both take extremely serious knife wounds but one guy is fully dead and the other is just bleeding out.

Ayo fuck West side. East side is the best