As the FX channel’s well-crafted series “Justified,” based on an Elmore Leonard short story, winds toward its finale, there has been a boo-boo. Senior citizen crime queen Katherine fought rival gangster’s bodyguard Mikey to mutual destruction. She emptied her revolver into him but didn’t stop him from beating her to death before he died in the arms of his boss.
Thing of it was – and perhaps only a gun geek would notice – she fired one shot more than she could have in real life.
Her revolver was clearly a J-frame Smith & Wesson .38 Special, with an obviously visible five-shot cylinder – a Model 60 Chief Special, it looked like to me – and she shot him six times without reloading.
Things like that make the aficionado roll his or her eyes: it’s like spotting a wristwatch on a character who’s supposed to be playing Robin Hood. Gets in the way of that “willing suspension of disbelief” we all need for enjoyment of fiction.
Sure ain’t the first time something like that has happened. A couple which come to mind:
In “Tombstone,” Val Kilmer’s character starts the central shootout armed with a double barrel shotgun (2 shots), a Colt Single Action Army revolver (would have probably been carried with 5 rounds, but could have held 6) and in the actual gunfight near OK Corral used as backup a Lightning model double action .38 Colt (again likely 5, but 6 tops.) That’d be 15 rounds at most without reloading, but in the movie he gets three shots out of the double barrel, and with a revolver in each hand (he used them sequentially in the actual gunfight) fired over 20 shots total before I lost count.
On AMC’s popular zombie series “Walking Dead,” the firearms foul-ups were so frequent I lost count there, too. I found myself yelling at the screen, “There’s no rear sight on that rifle!” “Get your finger off the trigger, there’s nothing to shoot at!” It was Significant Other’s turn to roll her eyes and say with her patented long-suffering sigh, “You don’t accept a rifle with no rear sight, but you DO accept animated corpses?”
In the pilot episode of “Walking Dead,” the Rick Grimes character tells his brother officers to take off the safeties…on their Glock pistols, which normally don’t HAVE safeties. (Glock has produced the G17-S with manual safety, and I have and like Joe Cominolli’s patented thumb safety retrofit on one of my Glock 17 pistols, but the ones on the show weren’t so equipped.) Another fiction favorite is “I flipped off my revolver’s safety.” MOST revolvers don’t have manual safeties, but I have a left-handed Frank Murabito safety on one of my Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolvers, and the right-handed version works off the cylinder release latch.)
Ah, Hollywood…
Gun people, what is YOUR favorite (or perhaps, most teeth-grinding non-favorite) firearms faux pas on TV and movie screens?
I hate it when they have a revolver with the cylinder opened (swung out) and it clicks when they spin the cylinder.
Andy Griffith, in a old movie from the seventies that he was a bad guy in, claimed his rifle was a 30.06 Magnum.
There’s a movie called Showdown at Area 51. It’s a SyFy type movie. The good guys are shooting at an alien with M16s. The muzzle flash is CGI, and they over-exaggerate the recoil. A lot.
But the best part is the dust covers are closed.
I say AMEN! Brother!!!!
One I always got a laugh out of was in a movie I believe was called “Pure Luck” with Martin Short and Danny Glover.The scene was on the side of a desert road and Glover was holding a pistol on an adversary. When the camera was on Glover, he was holding a 1911 Colt. The scene would switch back and forth between Glover and the bad guy. When showing the bad guy only, what was supposedly Glover’s arm was in the shot, now holding a Beretta 92. The scene switched back and forth several times with the corresponding change of weapons each time. Obviously the director thought their wasn’t any difference, a pistol is a pistol, or Glover wasn’t even present for the shots with the bad guy only and no one noticed the change in weapons being used.
I remember a scene reminiscent of this faux pas in the movie “Red Heat” with Jim Belushi and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Towards the end of the movie, Schwarzenegger shoots the main villain eight times with a Smith & Wesson Model 29 in spite of the 6-shot capacity of the Dirty Harry gun. And this wasn’t a gunfight with a lull here and there where he could have reloaded. He repeatedly fired shot-after-shot until 8 had been fired.
And in spite of this feat, he hands the gun back to Belushi and quips: “I still like Soviet model better.”
Every time – I mean every blessed time (it feels like it, anyway) – anyone appears on screen with a semi-auto pistol, he or she racks the slide before getting to business. Scared homeowners, cops on patrol, soldiers, spies, assassins – NONE of them ever carries with a round in the chamber. Like you should. I swear, if they could rack a revolver they would. That’s by far my number one boo boo, because it’s so intentional, written into the scripts and included in the sound mix. The other things just seem like sloppy/ignorant editing.
My pet peeve in both movies & tv, is the constant racking of the slide on a pump shotgun, or semi automatic pistol. Sometimes, it’s done enough to empty the firearm of ammo before the impending gunfight occurs.
1911s with the hammer down but shooting in the next scene without cocking or racking the slide.
The sound of a hammer being pulled back on a Glock.
Pump shotguns being racked twice and no shell being ejected.
As seen in Brit movies: Magazines being loaded with ammunition that has spent primers.
Gun aimed at the lower body only to be shot and hit the subject in the forehead.
What grinds my gears a touch is wrong guns in some otherwise great older Western films. Winchester 1892 pattern guns in an 1887 setting? ugh… Use a ’73!
Has to be John Ottway’s (Liam Neeson’s) shotgun slug-shooting “rifle,” with which he shoots a supposedly marauding wolf (lucky it wasn’t a zombie wolf!) while guarding oilfield workers in a northern oil patch. I think the tail was wagging the wolf in that shotgun shells were apparently designated in the plot for a specific role for making makeshift weapons in a way in which rifle cartridges might not serve as well, I can’t remember exactly how, during the survival fugue. Talk about the willful suspension of disbelief, my urge to yell something like Bullpuckey! every ten seconds during the movie was only suppressed by the gagging reflex. Maybe an Oscar should be awarded yearly for “most effective portrayal of Bullpuckey.”
Die Hard 2, including, but not limited to, an ejection seat in a transport aircraft with a hard roof, and “undetectable” arms, which clearly couldn’t and didn’t exist at the time of the movie, and which still don’t, AFAIK.
Let us also not forget lighting a trailing stream of jet fuel in snow, with a cigarette lighter, that catches up to the aircraft, causing it to explode.
The movie was riddled with that kinda stuff…
Kurt
My favorite Movie gun boo- boo? In one of the Dirty Harry movies, several hitmen shoot at Harry on a pier. He dodges bullets and hides. The bad guys appproach a wooden storage locker, convinced Harry’s hiding there. One of the bad guys clearly has a pistol pointed at the screen with the slide locked back….
Ah, I remember the revolver safety comment. I irritated my wife about that one too. :). Another pet peeve was when Andrea killed herself with a revolver. They don’t show the scene, the camera just focuses on the door. You hear the shot however, and then the tell tale sound effect of a casing hitting the floor… After it was fired from a revolver.
My favorites are the old B westerns. I think I remember reading in “Roy Rogers: King of the Cowboys” that they used special blank cartridges that could fire multiple times for this purpose.
I have always loved seeing silencers on revolvers.
weaver teacup stance, racking the slide (sometimes multiple times) before an event, using the firearm as an intimidation tool, firing a 1911 with the hammer down (aka double action), decreasing the distance to the threat with the pistol held at arm’s full extension.
on a positive note, finger off the trigger has been much improved, generally portrayed by the professionals (i.e. LE, military, fed agents, spec ops, etc)
“Tombstone” wasn’t the only Costner film which exceeds te ability to ignore improbibility.
In “Open Range” (Costner, Duval) Costner’s character starts the Big Scene gunfight by firing 15 rounds from his Six Shooter without reloading.
I like the actors, I like the story .. but like you I find the inattention to physical possibilities to be disenchanting.
My pet peeve is the “cocking” noise that every Hollywood gun has to make when it’s drawn or holstered. Character draws his Glock or other hammerless polymer pistol to cover a potential bad guy…”cli-click.” Character then decides the target is no threat…”cli-click.”
Not exactly “firearm” but any time someone shoots a LAW recoilless anti tank weapon or an RPG, it “kicks,” and no one standing behind it gets hit with backblast. (Clint Eastwood got that one right.)
A two-fer from an action story book: The hero is in the middle of a gunfight on the deck of a boat in the dark. He picks up a casing, and wonders whether it’s from a 9mm Luger or .38 Special.
1. You can feel the difference, both in length and at the rim.
2. If there’s still shooting, there are higher priorities.
it occurs in countless movies and television shows. The sound of the hammer as well as the physical motion of a hammer being cocked on a Glock or other striker fired pistol. It ruins countless viewings for me.
The biggest foul-up so far? “Jeff Spicoli”/Sean Penn cast as a mercenary sniper!
That clown doesn’t pack the gear to play one of the “Lone Gunmen” nerds on X-Files, never mind an actual soldier or someone with the guts to be a sniper.
Thanks for bringing this topic to the fore. My pet peeve ? A character grabs his/her Glock and brings it into play with the click of a safety being released or a hammer being engaged . Glocks DO NOT click !
With your training, book writing, and lecture schedule, when do you have time to watch tv?
Let’s not forget “silencers”! Aside from the sound, they’re always puny. And don’t forget the water bottle silencer in Shooter.
Years ago I saw a rerun of a PBS tv series starring Sissy Spacek called Verna: ISO Girl. In one scene in the background you could see a line of US soldiers carrying M16s !?
Sons of Katie Elder is one of my favorite movies, but the number of shots John Wayne got out of his revolver in the last scene was amazing.
One firearm…no reloading…over 20 shots.
Sgt. Schulz in Hogans Heroes carries a U.S. Krag throughout the series and modified Thompsons sometimes serve as German sub machine guns, they show a silenced revolver in the movie “The Sting”, bullets hitting people causes them to fly backwards through windows, people die instantly when shot and so on. Too many people through movies and tv with finger on the trigger before danger occurs.
My favorite is when a petite female fires a shotgun, and there’s almost no recoil. However, when the shot hits the bad guy, he gets blown off his feet, thrown backwards six feet, and crashes through a wall!
Second favorite is the old movies and TV shows when a character firing a hand gun thrusts it forward with each shot. As if there’s a lot of recoil, but in the WRONG direction! Maybe the idea is to impart a few more inches/second to the muzzle velocity by having the gun moving forward when the trigger is pulled.
Maybe it’s just the historian in me but I go nuts when I see scenes where the firearm is not period-correct. In the Movie, “55 Days at Peking”, the Marines are armed with ’03 Springfields. Unfortunately, the year was 1900. That’s just one example.
I second the silenced revolver vote.
While there are a couple of directors that strive to get guns and handling right it is after all Hollywood and most just don’t care. There is one pro gunner, Tarin Butler I believe, who works with production companies to mitigate such errors. He certainly has his work cut out for him.
I remember seeing an old Western where the good guy shoots the revolver out of the bad guy’s hand WHILE THE GOOD GUY IS FIRING FROM THE HIP!
Within the last year I was watching a documentary on the American Revolution. Apparently a brave woman had three redcoats in her house, and they were taking her food, or maybe she was their hostage. She grabs a flintlock musket, shoots one of the redcoats, then points it at the other two, as if she had a second shot in there!
Hey, fantasy is better than reality. Reality is boring. Imagine watching actors reload their guns on screen. It wouldn’t be too bad with a semi-auto, but think how boring it would be to watch a cowboy punch out five empty cases from his SAA, then load five more, one at a time! Or would you punch one, load one? I don’t have much experience with SAAs.
Another thing that is exceedingly rare is to see actors on television watching television. Even in “reality” shows, the actors never watch TV.
I’ll bet physicians and nurses notice boo-boos in medical shows, but I can’t.
In The Walking Dead, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) almost invariably holds his Python level with the top of his head, thus making use of the sights impossible.
In the attack on Hershel’s farm in season two, Hershel fights off zombies with an “infinite ammo” shotgun. (I count 25 shots in the following clip before he reloads:
https://youtu.be/Hp0hcqWNjjE
This was off-screen, but was one on the most tragic mistakes. Filming the TV series “Cover Up” in 1984, actor Jon-Erik Hexum was clowning around with his gun. He assumed it was harmless because it was loaded with blanks. Reportedly he said, “You’re supposed to save the last bullet for yourself!”, then he put the muzzle against his temple and fired. He was on life support for a week, but passed away.
In “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” the policemen always have their guns out, fingers on the triggers, and they usually have them pointed at each other. In one scene, the detective points his gun at his own neck. The actor did this deliberately, to see if the director would notice (he didn’t).
As far as actors shoving their guns forward, I recall that being common, back in the series westerns, by Hero’s, and B-Movie Bad Guys alike, when I went to the Saturday Matinees, to watch the next episode of a seemingly never ending series of “Cliff Hanger” endings, to draw you back next Saturday to find out how the Hero managed to escape certain death, that would have befallen any mortal man, but never the series Hero, or it would have ended the series.
Never did figure out why the actors had to try to push their bullets out of their SA Revolvers, but then a kid of my age, back then, most likely wasn’t supposed to either?
MAS,
Stop whining, next you will be complaining about silencers on revolvers and COLT single actions that never have to be reloaded!
You need to watch a real expert like Humphrey BOGART who knew how to increase the stopping power of his COLT 1903 pistol in KEY LARGO by swinging his pistol forward when he fired. Everybody knows that this increases the velocity and thus the lethality!
Jim
I’m with Bobbie…biggest pet peeve is the sound of a slide rack every time a gun is brought to bear.
I recall an episode of JAG that featured a shoot out in a hospital. The hero had gotten a hold of an Uzi, and when it was shot empty, you could hear a clicking noise in full auto.
and by the way…the Evil Princess has a point there…just sayin’
9MM semi auto handgun fired at a car, car explodes and flies up into the air, rolls over several times and is fully engulfed in flames. That appeals to 13 year old kids.
Period western movies, actors carry lever action rifles and in every scene in which something MAY happen they operate the lever but no rounds are ejected from the rifle.
Once again westerns portraying 19th century. Modern automobile tire tracks, everywhere!
I’ve only seen one Contrail in a western movie, director and editors probably thought no one would notice…in a cloudless sky LOL
Mas,
I noticed that the other day too. It’s quite common unfortunately.
One of the worst offenders, in an otherwise great western, was Kevin Costner in Open Range. In the opening fusillade of the final gunfight, Costner fired about 16-20 rounds from his two six-shooters….*sigh*
I try not to count anymore, but old habits die hard.
Best regards,
Joe
My all-time favorite gun boo-boo is the penultimate seen in the Cary Grant/Alfred Hitchcock classic, north by northwest, when the state trooper, standing near the bottom of Mt. Rushmore and using his standard issue revolver, hits Martin Balsam standing atop Lincoln’s head. Hell’va shoot for a wheel gun!!
Speaking of The Walking Dead, I was actually impressed by the first episode in which Rick escapes the Zombie hoard by crawling up into an APC only to find another zombie inside. He dispatches the zombie with his Colt .357 and what happens next was surprising. He was actually knocked senseless and unconscious by the blast in that confined space, just as he should have been. Still, my favorite of all time comes from Charlie’s Angels where, each and every week, one of the angels would fire her .38 caliber service revolver at the range, using the tea cup grip, recoiling about a second too late and wearing no hearing protection.
three things:
1. your Zombie movie won’t reflect reality.
2. your Western movie was designed to sell tickets.
3. your gun is not as good-looking as their gun? girl?.
What do you expect? Most of the people who make these movies hate guns anyway.
Larry Arnold already mentioned mine: anti-tank rockets being fired without backblast. Rambo II made me laugh out loud. Got a lot of funny looks in the theater!
Another pet peeve of mine is actors who squint their eyes shut while firing; I get eyestrain from rolling my eyes all too often while watching tv shows and movies for this reason. The actors don’t have control over what is put into a project in post production, but they sure as blazes do have control over their own actions during filming. It’s sad when an actor can’t be bothered to go for a little training to prep for a roll and it shows so obviously.
Yes, the gun handling by the police in “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, was hilarious. The detective would push his hat brim back with his revolver muzzle, then scratch himself with it, and every time he talked to a uniformed officer he would point his revolver at the officer when punctuating a remark. The director was Ed Wood who was the worst director in Hollywood and had practically no budget for his projects. He was so amazingly incompetent that there was a feature movie made about him where Johnny Depp played Ed Wood. I believe Plan 9 was voted the worst sci-fi movie ever made. It’s so bad it has become a cult classic.
Mas, you and your readers likely remember Oliver Stone’s 1986 film “Platoon” that won the Oscar for Best Picture and an Oscar for Stone as Best Director. I was in contact with the film’s technical advisor, Ret. USMC CPT Dale Dye at the time and we exchanegd messages on the film. In response to my query why the sergeants used Colt 653P carbines instead of the XM177E / CAR-15’s that were available during the film’s 1967 Vietnam combat portrayal period, he replied that the short barrel carbines would not cycle in full auto mode using blanks and so he was forced to use the longer barreled Colt 653P. Since the film only has a budget of around $6 million and was shot in the Phillipines in less than two months, I saw his point. But that error and many other continuity errors in that controversial film still, as a Vietnam combat veteran, rankles me some. As did Stone’s over-use of subliminals to heighten the film’s impact on actual veterans. The famous night ambush scene featuring the so-called “F**k you” lizard due to its call, is one example. There are many others in this influential but IMO flawed film on the Vietnam conflict.
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