Hollywood Lies!

Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies dropping the Mac 10 (I think) and it firing full auto, bouncing down stairs and shooting a bunch of bad guys.

And it isn't restricted to movies. I've read a number of books with steely-eyed detective types "thumbing the safety" or "cocking the hammer" on their Glocks.
 
In "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" (with Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie), there are several times where Jolie's pistol jammed mid-gunfight, but they kept shooting the scene. They just added the muzzle blasts and sound effects in post-production, so if you watch closely, you can see her gun "firing" even though it's not in battery, and no casing is ejected afterward.
 
Hey Glenn, are we even allowed to say "thespian" on this forum? :D

Actually, many decades ago I was young and there was a detective show called "Cannon". In a gunfight the rather rotund detective shot his 1911 dry and tried to fire another shot with the slide locked back. There was no shot, no click, just an empty gun and a guy pulling the trigger and wondering why it didn't fire.

Then he looked at it for a moment and reloaded.

That's actually a description of me on the range more than once, including the rotund part. So there was some firearms accuracy in that show, in the 1970s. I guess not all actors and writers are firearms ninnies.

And the whole "shoot indoors and shoot often without ear protection" idea is soooo common as to be just normal.

I can only remember one really accurate rendition of firearms noise from Hollywood. That was in the movie "Blackhawk Down" where one Ranger is only inches from the muzzle of an M60 machine gun when a burst is fired. After that, it was deafness and ringing ear for that Ranger.

Bart Noir
 
My most recent catch... Was watching Dear John with the girlfriend (don't judge me). At the scene where Tanning Chatum was in Afghanistan and his buddy gets shot, he turns around fires a couple of bursts from his M4. During the firing, the camera zooms in on the ejecting shells, except there is links being discarded and a M249 charging handle. The worse part about that is that they had a former SF soldier as the military coordinator for the movie.
 
Artistic License....

In the rareified air that is Hollywood, producers & prodcos(production companies) call it; "artistic license". ;)

There are a few posts & topics here and on other forums about Hollywood goofs/flubs.
Just remember that most screenwriters, actors, producers, etc are NOT cops, soldiers, NRA board members, etc. John Milius(Dirty Harry) being a rare exception. Lol.

I've posted a few "gems" before but one of the most common gun flaws I see is the loading or chambering of a round. I watched a low budget, "hard R" action film on cable where the main hero carefully approached a building to look for danger. The police detective drew his Glock pistol and loaded a round. Then for some unknown reason, he did it 2 more times as he cleared the bldg! Huh???
I'd like to see a cop show or movie where a live round pops up in the air when they do it. ;)

Clyde
PS; honorable mention goes to shows where somehow good guys or gals can pack N frame revolvers, 12ga shotguns or Desert Eagle pistols concealed with no effort. Even Mad Magazine made fun of that goof-up.
 
The worse part about that is that they had a former SF soldier as the military coordinator for the movie.
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You have to remember that the advisers for a movie production are just that - advisers. They can tell the director the "right" way to do something, or point out flaws all day long, but there are lots of reasons why the director might disregard the advice (cost, expediency, safety, artistic license, etcetera). As such, I don't hold the coordinators / advisers responsible to any real extent.
 
^^^^ Yea I thought about that after I posted and was too lazy to edit the post. That scene came in during the editing process, not during filming.
 
On a show about Police Snipers that aired on either the Military Channel or the History Channel a year or so ago they showed a close up of a Police Sniper (well an actor portraying one) behind the scope ready to take a shot on a guy holding a female hostage. The Bushnell scope on his rifle was exactly like the one I have on an old 10/22, in which I paid $30 for new. No Police Sniper in the world would trust a $30 Bushnell, sorry.
 
Gratuitous sounds effects are just funny. I think the biggest gaffes are in continuity. I can't remember the name of the movie, but a cop checks and holsters his 1911, gets into a gunfight where he draws and fires his Beretta 92, and then goes back to the station where he checks and reloads his 1911.
 
No Police Sniper in the world would trust a $30 Bushnell, sorry.
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....'Course not: if the taxpayer is paying for it, get a Ziess, Leica, or Swarovski! It's not like they are spending their own money!
 
Saving Pvt. Ryan's sniper had a short receiver mounted Alaskan scope at the beach. This morphed into a long Unertl 8 x scope like that used by the USMC. :D
 
Not a movie but a book by an English author that I couldn't even finish reading. He had one of the characters pull out a "silenced Smith & Wesson revolver". wonder how that worked out for him.

I think it may have been the same book that mentioned disengaging the safety on the S&W revolver.
 
My favorite Hollywood idiocy is that every gun makes the same ratcheting sound a SA cowboy revolver makes when the hammer is cocked (and you can hear the cylinder rotate) even if it's a SA/DA semiautomatic.
 
I remember in Saving Private Ryan the Sniper (I forget his name) fired 9 or so rounds from a 1903 Springfield without reloading.
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He never reloaded once during the entire movie despite the fact that the 'O3 only held five rounds. I was disappointed that I did not get to see him do a reload with a five-round stripper clip. It would have added a little something extra to the movie. I also do not remember any reloads done to the M1's. Having used an M1 in Basic and in competion, I know that when firing an M1, you get to reload it a whole lot.
 
How come every time a gun is even moved in a movie it makes a sound? Guy points a gun, sounds like two pieces of metal softly hit together. Guy shoulders rifle, sounds like someones hits a car door.

I can take any of my guns and move them around, shake them, tap on them, but they never really make a noise. If guns really made that much noise when they are moved or aimed there would be no one shot in the back of the head because they would hear the guy coming a mile away. :D

What ever happened to recoil? I have seen very few movies where recoil is even shown. A 105lb blonde shoots a sawed off shotgun with a pistol grip and the thing hardly movies.:confused:
 
1911 with the hammer down firing. Cannot count the number of times I see the weapon fire from that position.
 
Gun Sounds

I think when they edit the films they have maybe three buttons marked gun sound 1, gun sound 2, and gun sound 3. They hit whichever button they think is closest to correct. That's gotta be it! Or maybe they figure that anybody dumb enough to watch their lame movie is too dumb to know the difference. I have had bosses that used a line of reasoning similar.
 
I've long been of the opinion that almost all movies and TV shows are full of crap, but no one person is expert in enough areas to catch all of it. Here we are talking about all the gun mistakes we see; meanwhile, the guys over on the motorcycle forums are talking about how all sporty bikes in movies sound the same (like an inline-four Japanese bike), even the two-cylinder bikes like Ducatis and Buells.

The members on the law forums are complaining about how wrong the various applications of the law are, the cops are shaking their heads at the procedures and processes used, the history buffs are flinching every time they see a fifty-star flag in a movie that's set in the 20s, and so on and so forth.

Just suspend your disbelief and enjoy it, because the more you know, the more it'll drive you crazy if you let it.
 
I do like it when someone is covering a person with a hammer down 1911. Waiting for the person to start whapping 1911 person on the side of the head.

Or a hammer down SAA Colt. Same principle.
 
I saw an episode of Walking Dead where Sheriff Rick Grimes took refuge in a National Guard tank and once locked in one of the soldiers comes to life as a walker and the good sheriff did what he had to do and shoot him with his Colt Python. The concussion inside the enclosed steel tank rocked his world and he passed out. Initially I thought it was a pretty realistic depiction of what happens when shooting with a .357 mag in a tight enclosed space with metal walls and I still do.
Of course I have no way of proving this and I am not going to local National Guard armory and testing it out!
 
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