Maddening weapons use in film

Cafe Society
1

I’m pretty sure this has been done before, but my search fu sucks. I just re-watched “A Simple Plan”, as I enjoyed it the first time around. And the movie is old enough to where spoilers aren’t necessary, IMO.

Anyway, the film is nearing the end, and the Sheriff, Bill Paxton, Billy Bob and the fake FBI guy are out in the woods and find the plane. FBI guy shoots the sheriff with his 9 mil and turns the gun towards Paxton. He asks him where the money is, and BP doesn’t answer. FBIG jacks the slide on his semi-auto :smack: and asks him again. BP tells him it’s in the plane and FBIG muscles him over to the plane and tells him to go inside and get it. Cut to FBIG putting the gun to BP’s head, and the hammer is clearly down. :smack:

There was also another scene with a revolver wherein the scene starts with the hammer back and ends with the hammer down. Not as egregious, as whoever had the gun could have eased the hammer forward for some reason, but not likely in that context.

I suppose second viewings aren’t good in that regard, as I didn’t notice this the first time around.

Any notable weapons problems you’ve seen?

2

In one of the Dirty Harry movies, my brother pointed out to me that Clint Eastwood is scared of his .44 magnum. He anticipates the report, and blinks and flinches before the gun fires. Which means that he almost certainly is jerking the trigger, not squeezing it like you are supposed to.

3

Just about any movie with weapons in it that you could name, short of actual training films. This actually goes back farther than the invention of moom pitchers. Stage combat has always been about drama and entertainment rather than realism.

4

Any time an archer uses a bow as a melee weapon and still has a usable bow is kind of annoying to me.

Also using a gun (particularly with a silencer) to knock somebody out by clubbing them in the head. I’m hoping for the day we see somebody do that and ends up bending the silencer, so the gun is now useless for anything BUT a club.

Audible Sharpness.

5

For those of use whose only experience with handguns is via the magic of Hollywood, what’s the implication of this? When he pulls the trigger, nothing will happen? Or, by jacking the slide, the hammer should have been up?

6

Dramatic weapon physics that apparently dictates that anyone hit by any sort of projectile in the movies must fly backwards with great force.

7

Shooting a pistol sideways without [=homeboy side gun sights&filters[primary]=images&filters[secondary]=videos&sort=1&o=0"]these.](Photobucket | Make your memories fun![term)

8

Actually, on a double-action-only semi-automatic, the hammer will be down. However, jacking the slide for emphasis means you either ejected the live round in the chamber(which you don’t see come flying out) or you were threatening with an empty gun.

9

Blazing Saddles, right before the Waco Kid shoots the guns out of multiple hands, you hear the sound of several guns being cocked. When you see the row of single-action revolvers being aimed, the hammers are all down.

10

Yeah, for some reason I’ll give that one a pass.

11

That also happened in my example film: earlier on, someone gets killed with a 12 ga, and not only flies backwards, but is elevated.

I suppose the semi-auto could have been a double action model. I’m not savvy enough to tell the model by looking at it.
I remember a movie from long ago where one of the good guys was required to shoot all of the horses they had. He takes out his 1911 A-1, racks the slide and shoots the first horse. Racks the slide again and shoots the second horse. Continues in this manner for all seven horses. Nice trick, as he would have been out of ammo by horse number four. :rolleyes:

12

From the “grind house” genre film “Planet Terror”…

Good guy’s romantic interest is being threatened by a mutating zombie-esque bad guy, bad guy demands good guy hand over his pistol (a 1911)…

Good guy makes the motion of surrendering his firearm, and changes his grip so the handgrip is facing up and towards him, the gun is upside down, and he is holding onto the slide, with his finger still through the trigger, as bad guy reaches for the gun, good guy fires it, injuring bad guy…

There are multiple problems with this scene;
1; if the gun DID actually fire like this (and it can’t, details below), the very act of firing it would have badly injured his hand, due to the motion of the slide
2; the gun would most likely have “stovepipe” jammed, no follow up shots until the stovepiped case was cleared
3; most importantly, the gun couldn’t have fired anyway, as the grip safety would prevent firing (the hammer would not fall)

1911’s have a lever at the back of the grip called the grip safety, it prevents the hammer from falling unless the shooter’s hand is depressing the lever, this is why a 1911 is safe to carry “cocked and locked” as it will only fire if the thumb safety is off and the grip safety is deactivated by the shooter’s grip

13

I think it would be easier to list movies that got gun usage correct. Terminator 2 wasn’t bad IIRC.

14

While I’d expect someone like Dirty Harry to not flinch when firing his weapon, it is pretty common to do exactly that. In fact, one of the things you do when learning to fire a gun is to have someone load a fake bullet into the magazine in a random spot and then watch you fire each round. From the side, they’ll be able to see if you flinched when you shot the fake one. If you did, you’re reacting to the anticipation of the noise and kickback. When you pull the trigger with the fake round in the chamber, nothing at all should move (gun, hands, arms, facial expression etc).

15

I thought two items was not a list.

:frowning: Opal:(

16

It has been that way since the beginning of time. I remember back in the 60s Mad Magazine did a feature detailing the Hollywood armory, which included such weapons as:

The White Hat Gat - only shoots Bad Guys in the hand (as featured in Rustler’s Rhapsody!)
The Detective’s Special - only shoots the locks off of doors
The Street Cop pistol - only shoots innocent bystanders
The Mook pistol - flat on one side so it can be kicked across the floor easily
and my favorite, The Pioneer Woman’s rifle - when fired into the air with the eyes closed, will kill an Indian on a fast horse 400 yards away.

17

I recall one of the Vietnam movies where, in one firefight scene, they showed one shooter’s M-16 with the bolt locked back (meaning it’s out of ammo); he continues to shoot. In another scene, the shooter’s M-16 has the dust cover closed (meaning it hasn’t been fired) even though he was just peppering the enemy with it.

18

Movies that have Michael Mann directing, usually get most of the details right. Or at least, not so wrong as to be galling. See, Heat (the bank shootout is what gets all the raves, but earlier gun fights looked well staged too), Thief, Collateral ("Yo Homie, That my briefcase? Dumb, but great draw), the episode of Miami Vice where Jim Zubiena (an IPSC Grandmaster) played an Argentinian hit man. I’ve liked Dale Dye’s work as technical adviser for movies like Platoon and Saving Private Ryan.

19

In Men In Black, J’s noisy cricket should never have fired. It contains a dramatic safety that prevents the weapon from discharging in any situation that might prematurely resolve the plot.

Also, if you want to see scary gun handling, watch the detective in Plan 9 From Outer Space. Cringe inducing.

20

I haven’t seen the movie/scene, so I don’t know what make & model 9mm pistol the guy was using. Nevertheless:

In addition to the invisible round (THAT’s why the camera didn’t capture the images ;)) that got ejected when the FBIguy emphatically racked the slide, doing that with most semi-auto pistols (non DAO) will push the hammer to a single-action ready-to-fire position. It will stick out (back) a bit from the slide because it’s held back and awaiting the trigger-pull to release it. That’s why it was noticeable (by knowledgable pistoleers, not cameramen or directors) when the subsequent scene showed the hammer was down while the FBIguy had the pistol close to the victim’s head.

The FBIguy should have known to simply pull the hammer back to emphasize his readiness to kill the other guy. Doing so would have put the hammer in ready-to-fire position (which is slightly faster than double-action firing) and not wasted a round – those invisible ones are expensive and they get lost easily!:smack:

–G!