Hollywood gun goofs

GKC said:
It always amuses me when in a movie or TV show, the police are getting ready to enter a building or whatever, and they all pull their Glocks and you hear the sounds of them being cocked. Not the slide being racked, but a distinct cocking sound, like you'd hear with a revolver or a DA semi with a hammer.

As mentioned, there are the guns who never have to be reloaded. Like in "Open Range", where Kevin Costner shot 14 times from a single 6-shot revolver. In an interview, he later said he knew it wasn't correct, but felt that stopping to reload would have ruined the continuity of the scene.

Something that gives me the dry gripes is when the shooter runs out of ammo in his gun, he throws his gun at his opponent. This used to be standard fare in old westerns and detective movies, but not so much anymore. It was funny in Casino Royale (the Daniel Craig version) when the bomb maker threw his gun at Bond, and Bond caught it and threw it back. :p

I also find it irritating when a writer can't get the basics right in a book. I like to read certain kinds of crime fiction, like John Sandford's "Prey" series, and Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" series. Both authors have had their characters taking off the safeties on Glocks. I made mention of it on Sandford's Facebook page, and Sandford himself posted an article about my comment...explaining how it comes to happen. Basically, he said that sometimes he would start out with the character having one type of gun, and then later change his mind and have the character carry a different type of gun. He would go back and edit the name of the gun, but missed the "safety" reference. In other words, he knew the difference, and it was simply a mistake in the writing process, not a lack of knowledge about guns. (I got hundreds of angry messages from his fans, basically calling for me to be drawn and quartered...I was sure glad I didn't have my specific address listed, for I felt sure a caravan of crazed Sandford fans would have been heading my way if they knew where to find me! :eek: )

The other thing that always seems to happen is that the bad guys are incredibly bad shots, missing repeatedly, but the good guy always hits several bad guys with one shot. ;)
Click to expand...

I agree most with your first point. On Castle, the cops draw their Glocks and you hear click-clack of a hammer being cocked. Agh - there isn't any hammer!
 
Did you hear 24 is making a comeback!?!!! I think it is some time in May if I'm not mistaken. And it seems like there are always mistakes in movies, a LOT of them. My favorite because it is so blatent, is from "The Other Guys" with Mark Wahlberg, and Will Ferrel. In the scene where Samuel L. Jackson and "The Rock" are telling everyone about their awesome car chase and explosion, it pans on them (and "the rock" has a beautiful 1911 in a shoulder rig) pans away and back (the 1911 is gone and the shoulder rig is empty) pans away and back (the 1911 magically reappears and has the hammer cocked back). So far that is my favorite one!
 
If you have ever had the opportunity to take someone to the range who has never fired a gun, possibly never held a gun prior to the range visit, but has seen an untold number of movies and TV shows, it can be hilarious. They are conditioned to believe that it is easy to hit a target dead center at long distances with little or no effort. Invariably (in my experience) they are stunned at how demanding it is to accurately fire a handgun. With kids who have played many first-person shooter games it is even worse. They have been used to pointing a virtual gun at a bad guy (or monster, or zombie, etc) just in the general direction and of course they hit the target on the video screen.

A few times I have deliberately set up the initial target 50 ft or more away from the firing position, given them very basic instruction, and seen their surprise when they cannot even hit the entire target. When they later start to show some reasonable accuracy with shorter distances as they become more accustomed to shooting, the sense of accomplishment and pride becomes more meaningful. And most understand that even with practice it is highly unlikely that they will be able to shoot the bad guy 50 yards away while he is running and they are using a snubbie while riding on their horse, no matter how many times they have seen it "done" in a movie!
 
Why is it when an actor does actually run out of ammo they immediately throw the gun down as if is disposable?
 
Some Hollywood products are mercifully relatively free of this kind of blunder--"Band Of Brothers" comes to mind, though they aren't altogether clean. I did notice a couple of M1911-A1's with three-dot sights and/or hammers down, for example. For the most part the cast seemed to have had some good coaching in WWII weapons.
 
A minor point, but in most WW-2 movies M-1 Carbines will have bayonet lugs. Wasn't that a Korean War era retrofit?
 
shouldazagged said:
Some Hollywood products are mercifully relatively free of this kind of blunder--"Band Of Brothers" comes to mind, though they aren't altogether clean. I did notice a couple of M1911-A1's with three-dot sights and/or hammers down, for example. For the most part the cast seemed to have had some good coaching in WWII weapons.
Click to expand...

Fun fact, the cast went through I think 2 weeks of boot camp being trained and yelled at all hours of the day by the historian types to get them to think feel act and move like they're ww2 soldiers. So when the cameras started filming, they acted like soldiers. The footage of their boot camp experience is on the special features disk nobody pays attention to, but I browsed through it once.

the original point and click interface, by Smith & Wesson
 
italiansport said:
I believe the reason they do this is to create a sense of "action". Ever notice that when a Thompson SMG is used in a movie the bolt always has to be racked back before it can be fired. Anyway that's my opinion.
Jim
Click to expand...

And any time they pick up a shotgun, they always pump it for that sound effect.

the original point and click interface, by Smith & Wesson
 
The worst I can ever remember was in an old "Avengers" TV show episode. the good guy is being shot at by a guy on a rifle range. the good guy finds an unfired rifle cartridge, sticks it thru a hole in the fence or target backstop, hits the primer with a rock and kills the guy at 100 yards...I swear I'm not making this up!
 
raljr1 said:
The worst I can ever remember was in an old "Avengers" TV show episode. the good guy is being shot at by a guy on a rifle range. the good guy finds an unfired rifle cartridge, sticks it thru a hole in the fence or target backstop, hits the primer with a rock and kills the guy at 100 yards...I swear I'm not making this up!
Click to expand...

Sounds reasonable enough to me.
 
thebeamanater107 said:
Fun fact, the cast went through I think 2 weeks of boot camp being trained and yelled at all hours of the day by the historian types to get them to think feel act and move like they're ww2 soldiers. So when the cameras started filming, they acted like soldiers. The footage of their boot camp experience is on the special features disk nobody pays attention to, but I browsed through it once.

the original point and click interface, by Smith & Wesson
Click to expand...

I had heard that somewhere, and it showed.

Even the Brits playing GI's (there were a number of them) moved very realistically.
 
raljr1 said:
The worst I can ever remember was in an old "Avengers" TV show episode. the good guy is being shot at by a guy on a rifle range. the good guy finds an unfired rifle cartridge, sticks it thru a hole in the fence or target backstop, hits the primer with a rock and kills the guy at 100 yards...I swear I'm not making this up!
Click to expand...

Ya, but John Steed can do anything, it says so on his spy license. :D (or was it Emma?)
 
That beats my favorite.

Phantasm.

The kid is locked in the room. Among the stuff in the room is a claw hammer, a shotgun shell, a roll of tape and a thumbtack.

Tapes the tack to the shell's primer, then tapes the shell/tack combo to the face of the hammer.

Swings the hammer at the doorknob, which, when it hits, drives the tack into the primer, exploding the shell and shooting the lock off the door.
 
In The Big Chill, we see Bogart during a shoot-out hunkered down reloading his revolver (DS?) from a pocket or dump pouch. More realistic than the usual 36-shot snubby.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I believe that was an Official Police. If it's the scene I'm thinking of, he took the Dick Special out of the hidey-hole in the car (3rd picture), went into the house, was held up with the Pocket Hammerless 32, and the Dick Special was taken away. He later got away, went outside to his car, opened the hidey-hole again and got the OP.

And that's the Big Sleep, not the Big Chill, which was some hippy movie in the 80s.

Big Sleep, The - Internet Movie Firearms Database - Guns in Movies, TV and Video Games
 
Why do bullets ricochet and even make a spark when hitting glass, even bullet proof glass?
 
I remember watching a movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis many years ago (I think it was "Blue Steel"), and the opening scene was someone loading cartridges into a revolver - and all of them had dimpled primers...

John
 
Yep. I still got that on VHS. Got no way to play it, but I still got it. :p
 
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