The movie trading places comes to mind. At one point in the move , Dan Ackroyd wishes to commit sucide with either a nine mil or a colt 1911. Pulls the hammer back , and the weapon goes click , obviously no round chambered. He then throws the weapon off to the side , which then discharges a round that was jacked after the weapon was dry fired.
Meh , only problem is that I am not sure if the second part was accurate for a weapons discharge.
Declan
The Big Lebowski did this too. When Walter makes Smokey mark a frame zero at gunpoint after he steps over the line (it was a league game), he removes the clip and takes the round out of the chamber afterward (and they did enter the next round robin, did they not?).
Did you mean this as an example of a weapon NOT working right? Pulling the trigger on a 1911 does not ‘jack another round’. If you put a fresh clip in a 1911, the only way to put a round in the chamber is to manually pull the slide back. And if you throw a 1911, it won’t go off because it has a grip safety.
I meant they “officially” got them.
But yes, I understand they did pick up a few rifles at a nearby shop during the battle. I don’t know if any of them were M-16s, however.
I always thought the way that Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon handled his gun was pretty good.
That sounds dirty.
The opposite end of the spectrum, in the movie Clay Pidgeons opens with two drunk guys shooting beer bottles. It bothered me so much to see improper gun handling that I nearly shut off the movie. I didn’t. I soldiered on and found it to be an excellent indy film. YMMV.
Except for the near suicide scene. That was creepy.
My stuntman friend Paul handles guns often during his work on TV and movie sets. He says that all of the guns used in the industry today are real, bona fide weapons, with ammunition and blanks kept under very strict security. While the leads may get their gunhandling incorrect, almost everyone else handling a gun on set (like Cop #2 in Movie of the Week) knows how to use a firearm properly.
Except for the fact that he flinched every time he fired.
Since learning how to use an MG and an automatic rifle, I find it annoying in movies when you see someone open it up all the way and just continuing to fire. From what I’ve learned one couldn’t hit anythign that way, your accuracy would go to hell. Short bursts are more effective.
Not quite on topic, but I had to get that little miny rant out.
Slight hijack…
Bob (Captain Kangaroo) Keeshan WAS in the Marines Corps in 1945, but he was still in boot camp when the Japanese surrendered. So, he never saw any combat during World War 2.
Keeshan had to tell people this over and over and over, because urban legends abound that he and Lee Marvin served together at the battle of Iwo Jima. I’ve seen countless bogus transcripts of a “Tonight” Show episode in which Lee Marvin is supposed to have told Johnny Carson that Bob Keeshan was the most heroic Marine he ever met.
As Keeshan told it, his parents wouldn’t let him enlist in the Marines until his 18th birthday. He turned 18 in June of 1945… which meant, of course, that the fighting in Europe was already over by the time he could enlist, and the War in the Pacific was nearing a close. The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki well before Keeshan could have shipped out.
To his credit, Keeshan never claimed to be a war hero, just as he never claimed to be a Dartmouth graduate… but he’s cited as both on a regular basis!
Don’t forget the sun setting in the east in the final scene…
But, depending on a lot of factors, full auto fire can be accurate. An H&K MP5 with an integral silencer, shooting subsonic rounds, will fire an entire magizine with very little, if any muzzle rise.
Even an AK-47/74 with a specific muzzle brake will fail to rise much during full auto fire. By diverting the gases up and back, that particular muzzle brake makes shooting the gun almost torture to the ears of the shooter and bystanders, but it works.
Huh. In my VERY limited experience, I thought they often used guns that accepted no known caliber of bullet, so that you coudn’t possibly load it and shoot someone. There were blanks made in this odd size, but not bullets.
No?
A few things:
One: Want to destroy the experience of anyone watching a move that include gunplay? Ask them, “where is the brass?” Most cheap movies forget to include the little “ting!” of the brass cartridge casing falling onto the ground - and you won’t see the brass shooting up from the ejector port and falling on the good guys’ hat, or hot brass down the shirt (ouch!) or in anybody’s eye…a few spend the extra money but they are rare.
There are a lot of prop “guns” on the set that throw what looks like brass, but is really plastic. They have enough of a powder charge to rack the slide and throw out the little brass “casing” but the barrel is blocked.
I recall cleaning one and getting a little too much oil on the slide. I test-fired one and had the whole magazine go off, in a pretty arc of “brass” that described a neat parabola away from the “gun.”
Two: If you want a pretty contrast/comparison between actors who know guns and those who don’t, take a look at Zulu (1964).
In one scene, watch both Stanley Baker (who didn’t know guns) and Michael Caine (who did. The man had fought in Korea before ever making a living as an actor – bodies hanging on the barbed wire and the full combat experience).
Mr. Baker can be seen “throwing bullets,” i.e., firing while shaking the gun in the direction of the Zulus in the time-honored Tom Mix western tradition. In the same scene Mr. Caine can be seen with the same model Webley (great gun!) traversing with the pistol, tracking a single target…and not moving the gun at all while he drops the hammer. Who had actually fired at people who can fire back?
To actually get around to answering the OP, however, Ronin had a good gun trainer. The lead player, Sam treats the guns like a professional would. “It’s a toolbox. You put the tools for the job in the box.” When they do fire…if you’re going to hit a guy a long way away with a 1911 (the Flying Ashtray), you’d better have a rock to brace your wrist while you aim, dammit, aim!
Even better, Ronin had none of the following silly points:
[ul]no pulling the hammer back on a 1911 with no round in the chamber.[/ul]
[ul]no “click!” of someone releasing the safety catch on a Glock (it hasn’t got one!)[/ul]
[ul]nobody being thrown by the impact of a bullet.[/ul]
But my favorite thing about Ronin is that it’s not about the war, it’s about the warriors. (Spoiler follows!)
You never find out what’s in The Case, (although it’s pretty obvious it’s one of those suitcase nukes that went missing from the Soviet arsenal after the fall). It’s not about that. It’s about trust, and the loneliness of people who have nobody else who understands them except people in their line of work.
Nah, what’s is the case is the briefcase from Pulp Fiction!
(I agree with you though, Ronin is a great movie.)
Yeah, but they had their Latitude and Longitude coordinates wrong. 
I think he’s one of the ones who likes to point a handgun sideways and all gangsta-like, at least in his more recent movies. However, to cover another poster’s point, they did a great job of getting the sound of the brass hitting the deck in Under Siege.
Speaking of sound effects, Saving Private Ryan seemed awesome in this regard. It didn’t take long before you could tell what was being fired just from the sound.
Unforgiven gets a nod from me too:
“All right now, I’m comin’ out. Any man I see out there, I’m gonna kill 'im. Any sonofabitch takes a shot at me, I’m not only gonna kill him, I’m gonna kill his wife, all his friends. Burn his damn house down.”
One of my favorite faux pas is in Rambo. There are many throughout the movie, but at the end they show a close up (maybe slow motion even) of our hero emptying out a M-60 machine gun in a hanger. The close up clearly shows blanks being ejected. M-60 blanks have (had?) a unique shape.
Maybe another day I’ll start a thread about one of my biggest movie pet peeves. Why the hell do most of the explosions look like there was at least 20 gallons of gas involved? No, a Claymore mine does not make a huge fireball.
Yeah, but his knife handling left a bit to be desired… he stuck the knife into the grave and pinned his coat to the ground…
Sam Stone, thanks for the mini review of Thief, I’ll have to rent it. It may be the closest I get to getting training from Coop at Gunsite. 
Some can. Here’s a breakdown of most major types of semi autos and revolvers. Sorry for the long, geeky, knowitall rant but there’s no short and correct answer.
[ul][li]Single action semi auto - Colt 1911, Browning High Power - The hammer must be cocked before the gun can be fired. This is generally accomplished by racking the slide back to chamber the first round. Every time the gun is fired the action of gthe slide moving back in recoil cocks the hammer again. If someone does cock the hammer by hand it shows that A) they had a around fail to fire and are attempting a second strike or B) they lowered the hammer on a live round which is improper for this type of gun or C) are just dry firing for practice. On these guns the safety selector keeps the trigger from being pulled and with some it prevents the slide from being racked. [/li]
The usual movie gaffe with these guns is to manually cock the hammer to fire a second shot as was done in Stand By Me as the hammer would have already been cocked from firing the first shot.
Single action semi autos do not all have a conventional hammer. Some, like most .25 caliber automatics and some potmetal 9mms, are fired by an inline striker in the slide that for most purposes functions as a hammer.
[li]Double action semi auto - Beretta 92/M9 like the US military now uses - This is normally carried with the hammer down on a live round. Most guns of this type have a decocking type safety which lowers the hammer. Some such as the CZ-75 have no decocker and the hammer must be lowered by hand. Pulling the trigger for the first shot cocks and releases the hammer. This requires more force, sometimes ten pounds or more, and can hinder accuracy. After every shot it functions as a single action. Optionally the hammer can be manually cocked for the first shot as this may improve accuracy. Safeties can be a decocking type such as the Beretta uses or one more similar to a single action gun as on the CZ-75 or a hybrid of both as Taurus now uses. [/li][li]Double action only semi auto - variations of other guns such as the Beretta 92 - The hammer cannot be manually cocked. When the action is cycled the hammer rests in the lowered positionl. On every shot the trigger cocks and releases the hammer. These guns generally have no manual safety, only passive safeties that don’t let the weapon fire unless the trigger is pulled. [/li]
Revolvers generally don’t have a manual safety of any kind. Any reference to a “safety catch” in movies is probably bogus. Most modern revolvers have passive safety designs that prevent firing unless the trigger is pulled, either a transfer bar over the firing pin or a rebounding hammer.
[li]Single action revolver - Colt SAA, Walker - The hammer must be manually cocked before each shot. Original Colt revolvers and most reproductions have only one safety feature, an empty chamber under the hammer. This does not prevent fast shooting as cocking the hammer on a revolver also rotates the cylinder so that the next chamber, presumably a loaded one, is under the hammer. [/li][li]Double action revolver - S&W Model 29 (Dirty Harry gun) - Can be fired in single action by cocking the hammer manually or double action where the trigger cocks the hammer and releases it. [/li][li]Double action only revolver - various concealment S&W models - a double action revolver that can only be fired double action. Some have modified hammers that cannot be cocked for single action or like the S&W Centennial model have an internal hammer that is designed to only function that way. [/li]
[li]“safe action” semi auto - This neither fish nor fowl category was popularized by Glock. It uses a striker but behaves more like a double action only mechanism but with a somewhat lighter trigger pull. The Glock cannot be decocked and lacks second strike capability. The only thing possible if a round fails to fire is to rack the slide and chamber a new round. [/li]
The Walther P99 - James Bond’s new gun - is a hybrid of the Glock and double action semi auto[/ul]
The Dan Akroyd suicide attempt in Trading Places is a bit fuzzy. The 1911 has a grip safety but pre series 80 guns could go off when dropped in some circumstances. It takes a really hard impact on the muzzle but with enough force the inertial firing pin can move against the return spring and fire the round. It’s extremly unlikely that a 1911 could fail to fire when the hammer drops but fire when dropped. All Colts 1911s for the past few decades and a few of the clones and most other types of modern semi autos have a mechanism that prevents the firing pin from moving unless the trigger is pulled.
And sometimes they go overboard with the sound effects. In Beverly Hills Cop 2, when Brigitte Nielsen is at the firing range, you can hear the tinkle of falling brass. From her REVOLVER.