Favorite Movie Gun Goofs

[Dowter]

I guess this thread could also include book goofs too.

I saw two recently that really amused me.

1.  Opening scene of _The Fifth Element_ - Luke Perry (or one of the guys from 90210) fires a broom handle mauser accidently and it's FULLY AUTOMATIC.

2. _The Producers_  (This movie is incredibly funny.  Mel Brooks hasn't done anything this good since.)  A nazi who has written a play "Springtime for Hitler" tries to kill the producers of his play by firing his luger at them because the play wasn't being taken seriously and gets talked into killing himself instead.  He puts the Luger to his head and *click* - nothing.  The gun is empty.  He must of had one of those rare Luger's that don't toggle open when fired til empty.  

[ErikW]

Dude, half the guns in the movies click just by unholstering/unlimbering them and presenting them. Especially the semi-autos, which make an action-racking sound with the user's hands firmly on the grips.

[grassy knoll]

I recently saw O Brother Where Art Thou, with George Clooney, there is a scene when a mob tries to burn a barn and then a truck with guns and ammo catches fire and the tommy guns inside go full auto and the ammo inside starts shooting up the truck, I have never tried it but I don't think that would happen

[EricW]

GK,

OK the tommy gun thing is probably bogus, but my buddy who was a grunt in Vietnam had a great story on a similar bent.  On the Huey gunships with fixed guns, part of the standard flying equipment used to include a long steel rod.  It was used to break the ammo belts that fed the guns - b/c the chambers would get so hot the rounds would fire spontaneously.  Jamming the rod into the belt feed mechanism and breaking a link was the only way to make them stop.  

Just something to think about the next time you're cruising 100 ft over the jungle canopy...  

E

[spook]

I find it very amusing that, when watching an everyday run of the mill action movie, where the good guy is confronted with a gun totin' bad guy, the gun just clicks when he aims it at the good guy. And then the good guy will say something to p!ss the bad guy off and it will click again (even glocks do this)when he raises it again. I've seen scenes in which this happened up to four times.

[grassy knoll]

Full Metal Jacket ; the scene in the head in which Private Gomer Pyle shoots Gunnery Sergeant Hartman and then himself, neither shot leaves a bullet hole in the wall.

(Edited by grassy knoll at 11:34 am on Jan. 16, 2002)

[38supPat]

Dowter...there are full auto Brommhandles. First machine pistol.

Martin Short and Danny Glover in Pure Luck.

Danny Glover is holding a guy at gun point, when the camera faces Danny..its a 1911, when it faces the bad guy..its a Beretta..switches back and forth three or four times.

True story..I did some work for the film Never Talk to Strangers..starring Antonio Bandaras The scene I helped on, Antonio is supposed to be teaching the girl in the movie how to shoot a pistol...the director thought it would be a good Idea to film real bullets goint through a target..so the girl is shooting a blank firing gun, I'm a couple of positions over, firing a real gun (Colt 9mm AR-15 carbine w/10" barrel..on semi..to produce 9mm size holes) I know someone is asking why use a rifle?...Well they wanted the cameraman to be DOWNRANGE...thats right, they wanted me to shoot past him into the backstop!!..They wanted the view from the back of the target as the bullets passed through!..No they didn't have a remote camera....I asked. They were not pleased when I said no way!...Thats why they hired an expert shot I was told...they couldn't see the problem with it...wel I refused, and told them no one else would do it, so they had to film the bullets going through the target from the front...which is how the scene appeared in the movie. Sometimes true life IS stranger than fiction...next time you see a cool scene in a movie, think of what wierd ideas they had that didn't make it to print...

Pat

[Al Capizzo]

One truly trivial thing which always amused me.  In the beginning of the T.V. show "Homicide" there is a still shot of a S&W revolver on a table or something, pointing to the right.  And the cylinder latch is now on the right side.

While we're playin' this, should we bring up crazy things gun writers have said ?

[Dowter]

Doh!  I knew if I opened my mouth about the mauser that I would be wrong.

Al Capizzo - Movies, Literature and Music.  10 pts for anyone that can find a mistake in a song.  

[j1b]

Not a goof - but arguably the greatest gun battle on the big screen

The HEAT battle scene.

Epic!

JB

[jhgtyre]

In Stephen King and Peter Straub's new book Black House the character Dale refers to a handgun as both an automatic and a revolver in the same paragraph.  It is later stated that the handgun is a Ruger semi-automatic.

My favorite generalized movie goof is when I see some guy screwing a silencer (and they never call them supressors in a movie) onto a revolver.  I haven't tried this but I am thinking that the blast from the cylinder gap would sort of foul up this plan.

[EricW]

j1b,

Ditto on Heat.  Love that movie.  

My gripe on gun goofs are the giant daytime muzzle flashes.  Check out Ronin:  It's a bright, sunny day on a street corner in Southern France, and you see three foot long flames coming out of the end of a Jean Reno's Beretta.  Look close:  they're painted in on the film frame.

I know it's theatrical, but good grief, think subtlety.

(Otherwise, I like Ronin - a lot.  A very close second to Heat in my list of fave action movies.  Subtle, smart and very well executed.)

E

[ErikW]

For you guys who loved Heat and its Andy McNab gun scenes, check out the movie Bravo Two Zero. It's based on his book about his SAS experience in Iraq. The BBC producers seem to have spent most of their budget on M249s, M16s, M203s, AKMs, a BTR, a BMP, and a shitload of blanks.

[Nik Habicht]

---

Quote: from EricW on 12:48 pm on Jan. 17, 2002

 

My gripe on gun goofs are the giant daytime muzzle flashes.  Check out Ronin:  It's a bright, sunny day on a street corner in Southern France, and you see three foot long flames coming out of the end of a Jean Reno's Beretta.  Look close:  they're painted in on the film frame.

I know it's theatrical, but good grief, think subtlety.

---

Maybe they just took reloading lessons from Pat "Flameboy" Harrison?  

[Julien Boit]

Ever noticed that bad guys ammos can't go through a wood panel when good guys ammos make cars explode ?

Or when people fire ten or twelwe shots with a revolver ?

My local gunsmith can't find those guns and ammos .

Damn, I'll be such a great shooter with those items !

DVC

Julien :-)

[benos]

j1b,

Yea, that was a great scene! Especially the very beginning when he unslings the AR and just starts cranking - no hesitation whatsoever.

The greatest action movie ever (just ask Tarran Butler or Travis T) - Terminator II. One gun goof - Scene where Arnold whips out a 45 on the two jocks the boy screams for when he thinks Arnold is going to hurt him. The hammer switches between cocked and hammer down between consecutive scenes.

be

[DBChaffin]

Here's a decent list of gun goofs:

http://www.recguns.com/MovieGuns.html

[John Heiter]

My personal favorite has always been the "pump" shotgun.  I can't begin to count the number of times I've seen someone take down a door with a well placed kick (whole other issue, I know) and THEN chamber a round after they're in a room full of bad guys.  Hollywood always has the gun pointed at someone BEFORE the round goes in the chamber.  I'm no cop but this just seems wrong to me.  

[kellyn]

Hey Brian, I'm the one that told you about the mysteriously cocked and then uncocked 1911 in terminator.  Don't give Travis or Taran credit for my mastery of the trivial.

[Flexmoney]

Guy Richie (Mr. Madona) movie were the shooter is holding his Desert Eagle .50 caliber on it side, one handed, homeboy style...just tapping away.  No recoil.

[bluemeanie]

Ahhhhh, "Heat". Wonder who trained those guys? I tried Val Kilmer's bolt release technique after a mag change. Met with limited success and didn't look nearly as cool.

[Duane Thomas]

We all know it's a bad to have your finger on the trigger when you're not shooting. We all bitch about people doing things WRONG in gun movies. What I've noticed in some movies - and this drives me crazy - is characters who should have NO gun safety training, doing things right. Check out the Tom Berenger movie THE SUBSTITUTE, the scene where the stupid gangbanger/student is threatening a woman in a classroom. She's kneeling on the floor, he's standing above her, terrorizing her with a Beretta 92....with his finger properly indexed on the side of the gun's frame, above the trigger guard, off the trigger. Yeah, they give great gun safety training in those street gangs, don't they.

[EricW]

[blasphemy Mode ON]

OK, I've got one from Blackhawk Down.  Remember the two guys the Humvee convoy left behind - the one guy had the SAW?  Well, look close at the ammo belt running into the SAW and you can clearly see that the rounds are blanks.  

It didn't detract from the movie, but was very noticable.  I was surprised given Ridley Scott's usual attention to detail.

By the way, if you go to see Blackhawk Down, BRING EARPLUGS.  My ears are still ringing.  That hurt!!

Eric

[Duane Thomas]

Then of course you've got the scene in the second Rambo movie where Sly's shooting up the computers in the US command post after returning from his mission. Look at the close-ups on the M60 as it's firing. You can clearly see the cartridges in the belt feeding into the gun are blanks. When the view switches to the oppostie side of the gun, a split second later the shells spitting out of the gun are empty live ammo casings. Pretty impressive I say.

There's a low-budget horror movie out there called, if memory serves me correctly, SCARECROWS. A team of very professional armed robbers using paramilitary weapons and tactics makes a major score and flies off in a hijacked military transport plane. The plane crash lands in the middle of nowhere and the bad guys come across a deserted house surrounded by disturbingly lifelike scarecrows that appear they might actually be....moving. It's a decent flick. But the thing that absolutely drove me nuts was the scene where the head BG is first going into the house. He kicks the door open and lets off a long full auto burst from a CAR-15 just to clear out any potential problems inside. And then when we see him stepping over the shell casings on the floor afterward, they are clearly blank casings. What really drove me wild was the friend watching the movie with me, who's never been in the military and never fired .223 blanks on training exercises, looking at the scene after we rewound it, after I bitched about it, and saying, "I don't see that." Because he couldn't tell the difference between a standard expended shell casing and a fired blank, he didn't believe me when I told him, and even described the differences. Jesus wept.

Then there's the scene in Robert Rodriguez' first movie, EL MARIACHI. The opening scene in the Mexican jail has an Uzi firing in a cell block. And the shell casings skittering across the floor are CLEARLY .38 Specials. Wow, pretty impressive, an Uzi modified to fire .38 Special. What'll those Mexicans think of next? Obviously the shot was gotten by having someone just to the side of the camera throw a handful of .38 Special casings in front of it - and no one knew the Uzi is a 9mm. If you're a gun nut, this one's right up there with Ed Wood using burning paper plates as crashing flying saucers in PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE for on-screen absurdity. I almost died laughing.

[benos]

kellyn,

Man, I thought it was TT. I guess you just don't rate. Sorry dude.

Anybody -

I hated the ending in Heat - it was stupid. Of course that's just because it didn't end like I wanted it to.

be