Okay, so we’ve had several threads about goofy mistakes in some movies. Now, how about the movies that were the most accurate?
If you’ve seen a movie that has extremely accurate technical details in an area you know something about, tell us! That way we can enjoy a good movie and learn something at the same time.
Here are a couple of candidates from me:
“Rounders” - This movie is deadly accurate down to the smallest details. The atmosphere of underground poker clubs, the way the game is played, even the technical details about cheating are all very accurate. If you want to know what it’s like to be a professional poker player, watch this movie.
“Thief” - The technical details of safecracking and firearms use are dead-on in this movie. The producers hired some ex safe crackers as technical experts, and even put them in the movie as actors. Most of the tools James Caan uses were real tools supplied by the safe crackers. Even the details of safe construction, metallurgy, etc. were dead on.
Other details, such as the electronics for sweeping bugs and finding telephone lines were accurate right down to the voltages displayed on the meters.
As for the firearms work - the production hired Jeff Cooper, a world-famous shooter, to teach James Caan how to shoot and to make sure that every detail from grip, shooting stance, clip ejection and replacement, house clearing methods, etc. were all perfect.
mk9, check out http://us.imdb.com/Details?0083190 for SD and details on that and any movie ever made. I couldn’t find the Cooper’s name in the credits but I’ll be browsing the video store for it soon for that reason. He may often be a bit long winded and refers to himself in the plural but he knows his business when it comes to shooting. Years of reading his commentaries kept me from “spraying and praying” at a subgun match last weekend. It’s great to have friends who let you use their expensive toys.
The technical detail in Thief really comes across on the DVD if you listen to the commentary track. That’s where James Caan and Michael Mann talk about all this stuff. Caan mentions how much time he spent with Cooper learning how to clear rooms, how to hold the gun properly, etc.
I love movies that spend the time to get the small details right. A lesser movie would have just had the actor do something ‘cool’ like roll through doors or whatever. These guys spent the time and money to do it right.
I know that Hollywood has an attitude that such details are a waste of time, but I don’t think they are. Even if you don’t know anything about shooting or safecracking, the small details have a way of making you really believe that what you’re seeing is what would really happen.
Rent it. It’s a great movie, and didn’t get nearly the recognition it should have.
I think it came out somewhere around 1980-1985 or so.
I always get Return of the Dragon confused with Enter the Dragon . . . the one with the line “because the word ahe (pronounced AH-hay) does not exist” and not featuring Chuck Norris is the one I vastly prefer. I think it’s Return of the Dragon . . . anyway, Bruce Lee was the principal choreographer in that movie, which explains the excellence of the fight scenes.
I’ve been told that the air combat portions of “Memphis Belle” are extremly accurate by a family member who was in the Army Air Crps in England during WWII.
The one that sprang to mind immediately was Apollo 13. The inaccuracies that I recall Lovell describing on the DVD were:
-His Corvette was the wrong color.
-He didn’t remember his daughter being that upset about the Beatles break-up.
-The tense scenes (Swigert’s docking and the argument scene in the LM) were exaggerated for dramatic effect.
-They left out some of the engine burns for time purposes, and the final burn was shown in the wrong direction (it was out into space, not toward the earth) for effect.
Plus I think Morgan Freeman’s race is largely sidestepped in Unforgiven, which strikes me as largely anachronistic, given the time and place in which the (admittedly fine) movie is set.
As for 2001, I only assume Zenster’s making a joke.
It’s kind of funny that the movie Thief would come up in a thread about accurate movies, because while the technical aspects are very good (to the best of my knowledge), it differs dramatically from the autobiography that it’s supposed to be based on – The Home Invaders, the autobiography of Frank Hohimer (later re-released as Thief, a movie tie-in paperback). Hohimer is credited as co-author, but his book provides little more than the germ of the idea that Mann runs with.
The most striking difference is that Hohimer was not a safecracker at all – he was a cat burglar. I don’t mean a cinematic cat burglar, with ropes and skin-tight black leather. As professional thieves define it, cat burglary is the practice of going into a house while people are still in it, stealing, and leaving unnoticed. Hohimer never used any safecracking techniques other than to wake up the occupants of the house, put a gun on them, and make them open the safe (when people had to be woken up in this manner, either to open a safe or because it would be otherwise impossible to get a piece of jewelery off of them, it was no longer considered a cat burglary, but was refered to as a home invasion).
If you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t tell you how it ends, but I’ll just say that the actual Frank Hohimer’s efforts to leave the outfit involved going into hiding and turning state’s evidence.
Well, to be fair to the movie, many of the things listed on nitpickers were explained away (e.g. the tiger tanks), or were very minor. Overall, it’s a pretty damn accurate film (like actually firing the weapons in question at the appropriate ranges to get the sound, that sorta thing).
Rod Stewart is said to have stormed out of the theatre complaining that he thought it was supposed to be funny. I never thought it was a comedy. Thought it was a drama about funny dumb people.
I give themovie version of “High Fidelity” the vinyl geek stamp of approval. I was quite impressed. Whoever designed the sets and costumes must have spent a lot of time hanging around record stores, because everything looked right to me.
I was also thrilled to hear Vintage Vinyl mentioned, because I shop there when I’m in Chicago.
It’s great to have friends who let you use their expensive toys.