In Le Cercle Rouge, the leader of the jewelry store heist figures out that all the display case locks in the store are controlled by a single electrical console, located behind a locked gate. His solution: hire a sharpshooter to fire a single bullet through a gap in the gate and into the console’s keyhole, thus activating the console and unlocking the cases. The sharpshooter later explains that he used a special bullet made from a “light, soft, low-density alloy” of lead, antimony and tin, which molded the tumblers as it flattened against the lock on impact.
Is there any way this method could work in real life?
(Disclaimers: IANA thief; don’t need answer fast)
No expertise here, but sounds nonsensical. Does the soft metal slug push all the tumblers back as far as they’ll go? I don’t think that’s how keys work.
Wouldn’t the slug fill up random vacant spaces in the lock, and jam the mechanism?
Keys also generally have to be turned to be activated. That’s how the lock determines if all of the tumblers are in the correct position. I’d like to know how the bullet accomplished that.
Depending on how the “electric lock” worked, you might be able to short out a connection with the metal in the bullet, and thereby open the locks. A lock could be made that way… but a lock made in that way would be really easy to defeat in many other ways, without needing sharpshooting, so it’d be unlikely to be used in an actual high-security setting.