For fun; Favorite hollywierd gun gaffs

[txinvestigator]

Lots seriousness on the board lately, so I thought a little levity would be fun.

What is/are you favorite hollywood gun gaff(s).

Some of mine;

1. Guns that don't recoil. Little 100 pound people shooting 12 gauges, etc, with no recoil.

2. People who get shot and fly back or get knocked off of their feet.

3. Guns that are cocked multiple times in one scene, or have the slides worked for no reason.

4. Bad Guys who hold guns on people while the safety is on, or a 1911 with the hammer down and they are close enough for the good guy to touch.

5. Perpetually loaded guns

6. Unsafe handling (last week Mariska Harigtay entered a room with her left thumb up and on top of the slide!)


I could go on and on....................

Some of them getting it right;

1. Martin Riggs in the original Lethal Weapon never fired more than 14 rounds from a magazine.

2. In SWAT the movements and gun handling were mostly spot one.

3. The Unit always gets it right.

[Wildscar]

Ill bite. There was a scene in the first season of HEROES where Parkman(The mind Reader) was holding a gun on Claries(The indestructable one) Family. You could tell he was a gun enthusiast. He kept his finger off the Trigger. Don’t know why that stick out but that’s that.

There are also times where I’ll be watching something and see them rack the slide when in reality it should have been done along time ago.

Also when they do the close up of a revolver that the actor is staring down and you can see the cylinders are empty when in fact its suppose to be a loaded weapon.

And my all time favorite. The times where even sci-fi movies get it wrong. In the movie Aliens. Early in the movie Ripley asks “Lieutenant, What do those pulse rifles fire?� His reply is “10 mm explosive tip case less standard light armor piercing rounds. Why?� however in the scene where they are escaping thought the duct work you can see spent casings bouncing all over the place as Vasquez shoots back at the Aliens. Gotta love the movies that contradict themselves.

[anygunanywhere]

1. The A-Team's full auto Mini-14s shooting thousands of rounds each show and no-one ever was shot.

2. Racking slides and cocking hammers. You know that when they do that they mean bidness.

3. A movie hero or heroette uses a firearm to save herself or another, kills the bad guy, then looks at the gun like it is covered in revolting vulture barf and throws the firearm away in disgust.

The best one of all time.........drum roll........

Superman lets bullets bounce off his chest but has to dodge the handgun thrown at him.

Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry almost always did it right. No unlimited number of rounds in the revolvers. Lots of reload action with speedloaders.

NIce thread, TXI.

Anygun.

[smyrna]

I remember sitting in a movie theater watching trailers for soon to be released films and this Mario Van Peebles (I think) preview comes on. This must have been the early 90s, and anyway, as the trailer cuts to different scences from the movie, there is this animation of bullets flying across the screen complete with the sound effects of gunfire (think slide animation in power point). It would have been cool too except...the CASES were attached to the bullets. I laughed out loud. Evidently, I was the only gun enthusiast in the theater because everyone just stared at me as if to say, "What's so funny?"

[Mike1951]

Tom Selleck is always great in anything!

But when he handles a 1911 in Las Vegas, you can tell he's done it before.

[rm9792]

Tom Selleck is always great in anything!

But when he handles a 1911 in Las Vegas, you can tell he's done it before.

He carried one for years in Magnum PI.

[rm9792]

One of my favorites, the cocking sound of a Glock? Usually happens when they are swinging up to point at someone.

[Liko81]

People who get shot and fly back or get knocked off of their feet

It's actually a real human response to being shot. A gunshot carries about the same force as a good punch, albeit with far less surface area affected. The natural human reaction to an impact is to move in the same direction in an attempt to absorb the blow and avoid future blows. It doesn't work for gunshots; the bullet's made its hole long before your natural reaction kicks in, but it's still instinct. There's also a psychological element; there are thousands of movies and TV shows that subconsciously educate viewers about what you're supposed to do when shot, perpetuating the cycle; it happens in real life so they show it on TV. And finally, it really does happen. Incapacitate someone by pain, blood loss or nervous system disruption and their knees give way. Knees bend in front of them, pushing center of mass behind, and voila they're on their back. Couple that with the impulse imparted on the body by the bullet, however small, and if the person was standing upright and not moving they'll crumple onto their back.

[flintknapper]

Sparks flying off the surface of a vehicle being shot.

Ricochet sounds (several seconds long) inside a building.

Person holding gun has both index fingers in the trigger (there's an operator for ya).

30-40 rounds fired from a 1911 with nary a reload.

Funny thing I have noticed in most movies though, KNIVES are seemingly much more deadly than firearms. Anyone ever notice that a stab or slash from a knife is IMMEDIATELY fatal (like turning off a light)?

[Xander]

TXI, I thought for sure I'd see a "porcelain Glock 7" somewhere in your list.

To add to your number 2,

People who get shot and fly back or get knocked off of their feet.

it personally delights me to see people flying backwards through plate glass windows.

I also enjoy the "aimed shot at the gas tank" trick that can turn any car or truck into a fifty-foot fireball.

A tiny, insignificant inaccuracy that particularly pleased me was in "The Sentinel" during the crime scene investigation after a Secret Service agent had been killed, when they were examining his gun and another agent declared that he must have been ambushed because "the safety was still on" and then proceeded to enlighten the local PD detective by informing him that "Secret Service agents are taught to draw and disengage the safety in a single motion." Since USSS agents carry Sig P229s that don't have a manual safety, that must be an interesting day in the firearms training course.

The accuracy that some actors can achieve with fully automatic pistols can also be quite impressive, as can the inaccuracy of any of their opponents with *any* firearm at any range.

[MrsFosforos]

The other night on the Sarah Conner Chronicles: the bad guy was shooting at her and she used an overturned recliner for cover. You could see the bullets hit the chair, but none went through it.

[NcongruNt]

My biggest beefs are racking the slide on a pistol multiple times. I believe I was watching US Marshalls the other day, where Wesley Snipes' character does this.

There were also several technical issues I had when watching this movie, especially when the lesser Marshalls clear rooms by entering with pistol extended forward in front while coming around a corner.

There's also the finger always on the trigger issue. This is the classic mistake in nearly every shooting movie ever made.

In The A-Team, I recall a scene where Hannibal shoots the hat off of a bad guy with an AK... from the hip, never mind that it was done with 3 rounds in full auto.

Then there's The Matrix movies, where the Agents easily conceal Desert Eagles in their government suits. They also shoot multiple holes clean through Neo in the final scene, evidenced by the blood spatter on the wall behind him. What's missing is the .50 cal holes that should be there as well. That, and that healed-up Neo immediately after seems to have something more along the lines of 9mm healed holes in his chest. Switch also enters battle situations with her Hi-Power uncocked.

The worst yet gun handling I've seen, was scarily enough not in a movie, but on Cops. This was an episode shot in El Paso, and the first section of the show involved a drug bust operation. They entered a residence with a no-knock warrant when it certainly appeared that it was unnecessary to do so. They knew where the drugs were - a van in a closed off garage area, and the person responsible for them was known not to be there. The van was loaded with what looked like several hundred pounds of pot, and that certainly wasn't going to get destroyed in the few seconds it took to announce themselves. They busted in wearing black ski masks on to a middle-aged man and woman who offered absolutely no resistance. The officers entered with guns drawn and moving around, covering the officers around them with apparently no plan of action in regard to positioning or systematic clearing of rooms. It was like a herd of guys with poor gun handling skills meandering in multiple directions, gun barrels sweeping each other. The best of the bunch held his gun near his head pointing at an upward angle, as was popular in posters of shoot-em-up films in the 80s. See this image for what I mean:



I haven't critically analyzed the gun handling in that many films yet, but it seems to me that Tommy Lee Jones certainly knows his way around a pistol. At least one Texas boy in Hollywood to make us proud.

[Liko81]

Matrix Revolutions - Trinity points a gun (I believe a Beretta, it's been a while) at the Merovingian's head and dialogue ensues. She then cocks the hammer keeping her finger on the trigger, the rest of her grip stable, and the muzzle never leaving the target. She's the bomb; I have not yet been able to do that with your average 20-lb. hammer spring.

American History X - 24 shots fired from a Ruger P89 with flush magazine during the AWB period. Max capacity of a P-series 9mm is 15 rounds in factory mags. At least the gun recoiled (blanks, which shoot a wad of flash paper out the end, have far less recoil due to Newton's Third Law).

Gun Sounds. Anyone who has ever shot a gun at a range knows that the POW you get from the gun in real life is nothing like any sound effect ever used in a game, movie or TV show. Saving Private Ryan won an Oscar for "best sound", and the sound used for the M1 Garand was more akin to a paintball marker or air rifle; the sound of the clip popping out is definitely not that loud in comparison to the report and the gun does not make a "pfft" sound when firing. The Thompson and BAR were a little better. And video games? Don't get me started. A burst from an MP5 without earplugs would deafen you at least temporarily, and by the end of the game the main character wouldn't be able to hear a grenade going off, much less the footsteps of the guy sneaking up behind him.

American Beauty - Lester was shot in the back of the head at point-blank range. What's left of his face is going to be anything but "beautiful".

[WildBill]

I also enjoy the "aimed shot at the gas tank" trick that can turn any car or truck into a fifty-foot fireball.

You mean that's not true???

That reminds me of the old Western, Rio Bravo when Stumpy [Walter Brennan] throws sticks of dynamite and Sheriff John T. Chance [John Wayne] hits them in the air and they explode.

You really hit a homerun on this one TXi!!!

[Keith B]

I've seen so many of these goofs, that I can't really remember where and what (more than anyone hasn't already mentioned.)

However, my wife and daughter get really mad at me for pointing out errors and bloopers in movies. I think it is funny, but it really gets their blood boiling as they say it ruins the movie for them.