It sometimes seems to me the safest place to be in a movie is being alone with another person and having a gun pointed at you. Usually, there will be some sort of dialogue and exposition but I don’t seem to recall many instances in which the scene ends up with the person being shot.
Sure, people are shot a lot when they’re surprised by a gun or a shot comes out completely from left field but not when they know a gun is being pointed at them.
Can anyone think of any counter-examples?
There’s a Mexican standoff in Reservoir Dogs that ends with all three parties being shot and eventually dying.
Wasn’t a movie, but the Ivan episode of Magnum PI featured that sort of thing.
Well, Colonel Strausser probably wishes he’d put down that phone (Casablanca).
Payback has a pretty good scene where Mel Gibson is pointing a gun at some crime boss who looks fairly certain that he won’t get show.
Until he does.
“American Gangster” uses the scenario you describe to great surprising effect.
Very few people are shot without a gun being pointed at them, if that helps at all.
edit: I suppose Paul Giamatti in Shoot 'Em Up would qualify.
And I bet Skinny DuBois probably wishes he hadn’t decorated his saloon with the body of William Munny’s friend (Unforgiven).
One of my favorite scenes in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is when the habitual loser played by Robert Downey, Jr. is holding a gun on a hired killer whom he’s just seen murder a girl. Killer starts in with the, “You don’t have the guts to shoot a man,” speech, but doesn’t get more than a few words into it before Downey emptys the gun into him.
One of my favourite scenes in that movie is the bad math Russian roulette, which also ends up with someone getting shot.
Perry: What did you just do?
Harry: I just put in one bullet, didn’t I?
Perry: You put a live round in that gun?
Harry: Well yeah, there was like an eight percent chance.
Perry: Eight? Who taught you math!
Stranger
Pulp Fiction counts, surely? The minor-league drug dealer shot by Jules.
Batman (the Tim Burton one) has several people shot after a gun is ostentatiously pointed at them, most notably Bruce wayne’s parents, and Bruce Wayne himself.
Serpico begins with the titular Serpico getting shot (just as in real life)
Yellow, the HBO movie with Kirk Douglas and his son Eric, where Eric is on the receiving end of a firing squad.
And these are just cases where a major character gets shot after being at the barrel of the gun for a long time.
In Bruges, where Ralph Fiennes’ character shoots Brendan Gleeson’s character in the bell tower.
And how many times does one guy point a gun at another, and only sometime later does he rack the slide, revealing that there wasn’t a round in the chamber, and his victim could well have disarmed him?
I saw Unforgiven last night: lots of people died after having guns pointed at them.
*Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it. *
Thelma & Louise.
Thank you for reminding me of that. I need to see this movie again.
The start of Casino Royale
“The second one is ea…”
BANG!
Near the end of Saving Private Ryan. The cowardly American soldier who’s not fighting ends up having a small group of nazis surrender at gunpoint. The groups leader recognizes the American as the coward, smiles, and says something in german to the others, and “POW” the American shoots him dead.