Pro-Gun Movies

[PavePusher]

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Don't have time to scan the whole thread, so if no-one has mentioned "Silverado", I sentance you all to fire 50 rounds from a M-N 91/30, off-hand, bayonet mounted.



:celebrate

 

[okboomer]

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scene? : John Wayne in Rooster Cogburn, "Windage and elevation"

 

[Overtaxed]

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hopnpop wrote:

KBCraig wrote:

hopnpop wrote:

Romancing the Stone (Douglas vs. BGs)

In the first shootout, Douglas takes a short-barreled 870 (3 round tube), and fires 20 shots while only reloading a single round.

And yeah... Kathleen Turner is smokin'!

That IS funny and always either cracks me up or preturbs me, depending on the movie, when a movie gun has a seemingly endless supply of ammo.  How many others on this thread, myself included, COUNT SHOTS FIRED per magazine/per reload?  I've even rewound movies to count shots...and usually end up saying something like "HA!  15 shots from a six-shooter without reloading - that's impressive!" - or something like that.  There are some really poorly done gun scenes out there.  It makes the better, more realistic scenes that much better.  Folks actually having to find/use cover to reload, etc.

I'm a huge Sopranos fan and I'm not happy with the guns they ued in that series.  They always went bang, usually had muzzle flash (but not always)...but none of the actions/slides moved on the autos, nor did they produce any recoil.  Just looked poorly done to me, especially for a gangster/mob type of show.  Actually, for THE gangster/mob show IMO.  But I digress...

Back to Romancing the Stone....yeah, Kathleen Turner was smokin in those flicks.  I could listen to that woman talk for hours, she's got the sexiest voice.  Anyway, carry on...

I know the criteria for this thread has been laid out but I have to add one of my fav lines related to arms in cinema...

We Were Soldiers, probably part of a two-way tie for my fav Nam flick (with Hamburger Hill), with Mel Gibson and Sam Elliot.  Elliot's a hard-ass who only carries his 1911...

Gibson to Elliot: "Round trip for chopper, 30 minutes, that means the first 60 men on the ground will be there a half hour alone.  Son of a bitch.  Think maybe you ought to get yourself an M16."

Elliot replies: "Time comes I need one, sir, there'll be plenty of 'em lyin' on the ground."

...And boy was he right.

Biggest movie peeve: action locks open on a semiauto pistol, and in the next shot, the weapon's slide is closed, with no obvious or even implied release of the slide stop.

I LOVED the Sopranos, but didn't watch especially closely for gun-related detail.

However, my favorite scene in the whole series is quite early on, when Meadow is sneaking into the house after staying out past curfew. Hearing noises and thinking that it might be an intruder, Carmela goes to a kitchen cabinet for an AK-47, cocks the charging handle confidently, and checks it out. It really gave me the hots for her, but also crystalized the show itself for me, the idea of an outwardly normal family that is anything but normal.

 

[Tomahawk]

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Overtaxed wrote:

However, my favorite scene in the whole series is quite early on, when Meadow is sneaking into the house after staying out past curfew. Hearing noises and thinking that it might be an intruder, Carmela goes to a kitchen cabinet for an AK-47, cocks the charging handle confidently, and checks it out.

In New Jersey, mind you.

 

[marshaul]

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PT111 wrote:

KBCraig wrote:

hopnpop wrote:

Romancing the Stone (Douglas vs. BGs)

Heh. I just watched it on Netflix instant view, for the first time in probably 20 years.

In the first shootout, Douglas takes a short-barreled 870 (3 round tube), and fires 20 shots while only reloading a single round.

And yeah... Kathleen Turner is smokin'!

You fellows watch movies for realism and I watch them for entertainment and fantasy.  I really don't care that Roy Rogers could fire 24 rounds from his six-shooter without reloading, that is a perk for being the good guy.  If I want realism then I will watch the History Channel and Gunney.  Do you really think that Kathleen Turner could slide down a mountain and not even get her makeup smeared? Unfortunately there are too many people that equate movies, and video games, with real life.

That's fine, but as someone who knows something about film production, it always irks me when I see poorly executed gun scenes in films.

Why? Pretty simple, really.

Say you're watching a film, and someone throws a punch, and it looks cheesy as all hell. OK, you might say, they don't have a fight choreographer. No reason to afford one. It's not that kind of movie. You forget about it at the film goes on.

Say you're watching Ong Bok, and the fights are awesome. Well, now you know there's a fight choreographer, and every dollar of his salary appeared on-screen, right there for the audience to see.

But what about guns? Every movie with even a single discharged round has an armorer. Armorers are well-paid dudes who customize weapons to fire blanks, handload blanks, and generally use their knowledge of guns to pick up slack left by gun-ignorance of the rest of the production team.

In addition to basic safety (training and supervision), the armorer has the job of pointing out when gun use doesn't make sense (using a shotgun at 300 yards vs a guy on a roof), advising which guns do make sense, and how their operation works and looks.

So, any time you see a film with NO attempt made for shot counts (to be fair, scenes where the slide locks back after 3 rounds don't strictly count, as it's common to give noob actors exactly the number of rounds a given shot calls for, so that the slide locking back is their cue to act, and the gun is left a little safer), no attempt made at recoil, and no attempt made at proper handling/technique (these are all jobs of the armorer), you know that somewhere out there a guy is being paid for a cool collection of guns, but otherwise he's sitting on his ass. Those dollars are NOT appearing on-screen.

So, for me, someone without anywhere near like enough experience to work as an armorer, what I see is not competition waiting to be out-competed, but a monopoly of clowns I have to break into, where their inability to work with the crew and put their salaries on-screen is probably the one break I'm going to get. And in the meantime I have to watch silly gunfights knowing the dollars that WERE spent on that scene could have gone to someone with dedication (like myself), rendering the gunfights awesome.

It's not about strict realism, at all. It's about production value, dollars burned onto recording media.

 

[marshaul]

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Overtaxed wrote:

Biggest movie peeve: action locks open on a semiauto pistol, and in the next shot, the weapon's slide is closed, with no obvious or even implied release of the slide stop.

Like I said, this is one of the few justifiable mistakes (or if not justifiable, at least there's a sensible reason). However, I agree it looks pretty damn silly. If it were me I would work with the director as much as possible to ensure that such instances were minimized in their visual evidence, or explained by a subsequent shot ("give me a mag!").

Alternatively, actors who can't trusted with a gun longer than the amount of time it takes to discharge a set number of blanks could perhaps be dealt with by following up the final live round with a dummy. This would require the noob actors to count (oh noes, not like they don't have to pay attention to countless cues and marks anyway), rather than just telling them "fire until the slide locks back!", but it would at least look normal.

Edit: At some level, if you really want shot-perfect reloads, and not just a good approximation of realistic gun handling, it's going to have to be up to the director, unfortunately. Movies like "The Way of the Gun" were probably storyboarded with shot counts written in the margins.

 

[marshaul]

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Am I literally the only American who finds the mafia so reprehensible so as not to make for suitable protagonists of any sort?

 

[Tomahawk]

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marshaul wrote:

Am I literally the only American who finds the mafia so reprehensible so as not to make for suitable protagonists of any sort?

I'm not sure whatyou mean. The word "protagonist" has an entirely different meaning than "good guy".

Tony Soprano certainly was a sociopathic murderer and not the guy you'd want to have any dealings with...but the story was about him and his family vs. other sociopaths, including the FBI agents (I love the way they were portrayed in that show), so when there is a conflict, you identify with or view it from Tony's side.

I don't have HBO, so to watch the show I waited until each season was over and then watch the DVDs en masse. After several episodes in a row I felt like I needed to take a shower for rooting for such evil people.

ETA: What is the difference between a mafia and a government? Don't they both demand respect and protection money at gunpoint?

As for pet peeves, I have several, including the unlimited ammo trick, and in some older films the way guys would shoot their pistols by sort of "throwing" the bullets out as they fired, kind of like a stable gun.

But lately I've noticed that in sci fi movies all astronauts have lights inside their space helmets shining right in their faces...would be kind hard to see that way.

 

[Overtaxed]

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marshaul wrote:

Am I literally the only American who finds the mafia so reprehensible so as not to make for suitable protagonists of any sort?

I've heard other people make the same point, so no, you're not the only one but clearly in a minority.
Not a knock against you in any way... But I think that's what makes the show so entertaining - we want to like them because they are still everyday, normal people up to a point. But then they stretch that point and exceed it by a wide margin every now and then. Sometimes those reminders are quite brutal. And no, I never completely forget that people like that are parasites on society. But charismatic performances and intriguing situations can push those thoughts to the back of the viewer's mind.

The Shield is a bit like that - Vic Mackey's Strike Team does really effective police work, but their sometimes extreme tactics and corrupt behavior remind us that they should be rotting in jail cells, not putting people in them.

 

[Overtaxed]

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Tomahawk wrote:

marshaul wrote:

Am I literally the only American who finds the mafia so reprehensible so as not to make for suitable protagonists of any sort?

I'm not sure what you mean. The word "protagonist" has an entirely different meaning than "good guy".

Tony Soprano certainly was a sociopathic murderer and not the guy you'd want to have any dealings with...but the story was about him and his family vs. other sociopaths, including the FBI agents (I love the way they were portrayed in that show), so when there is a conflict, you identify with or view it from Tony's side.

I don't have HBO, so to watch the show I waited until each season was over and then watch the DVDs en masse. After several episodes in a row I felt like I needed to take a shower for rooting for such evil people.

ETA: What is the difference between a mafia and a government? Don't they both demand respect and protection money at gunpoint?

As for pet peeves, I have several, including the unlimited ammo trick, and in some older films the way guys would shoot their pistols by sort of "throwing" the bullets out as they fired, kind of like a stable gun.

But lately I've noticed that in sci fi movies all astronauts have lights inside their space helmets shining right in their faces...would be kind hard to see that way.

Perhaps that is another part of the appeal - watching characters that have the smarts and the power to challenge the "government mafia."

And as for helmet lights - where have you been lately? The "lights inside the helmet" thing started at least as far back as Outland (1981)

 

[marshaul]

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Tomahawk wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean. The word "protagonist" has an entirely different meaning than "good guy".

Wow, Tomahawk, I thought you'd give me a little more credit than that. Here I am pontificating to the open air about lens makers and film armorers, yet I'm still ignorant of the definition of "protagonist"?

Tony Soprano certainly was a sociopathic murderer and not the guy you'd want to have any dealings with...but the story was about him and his family vs. other sociopaths, including the FBI agents (I love the way they were portrayed in that show), so when there is a conflict, you identify with or view it from Tony's side.

Right, and that's exactly the problem. I'm supposed to identify with someone whom in reality I want nothing more than to see fail, be destroyed, or at least end up in jail.

After several episodes in a row I felt like I needed to take a shower for rooting for such evil people.

Exactly my reaction, and exactly why I don't see the fascination with mafia as protagonists. I don't like feeling dirty for the sake of shallow entertainment.

ETA: What is the difference between a mafia and a government? Don't they both demand respect and protection money at gunpoint?

I can differentiate. The government makes no distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum,but they side with the "law", generally. Mafia similarly makes no distinction, but they always side against the law. Two evils, one the greater.

Besides, I don't think government makes for a fine protagonist either. I generally dislike pro-state films of every stripe.

But lately I've noticed that in sci fi movies all astronauts have lights inside their space helmets shining right in their faces...would be kind hard to see that way.

Yes, but the alternative is inscrutable mirrors instead of faces.

Some realism will ALWAYS give way to the technical necessity of lighting actors' faces.

 

[marshaul]

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Overtaxed wrote:

Perhaps that is another part of the appeal - watching characters that have the smarts and the power to challenge the "government mafia.

This would have appeal if they weren't murdering, robbing, and raping along the way.

Instead, it reads like an advocacy group for the existence of a state.

 

[Tomahawk]

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marshaul wrote:

Yes, but the alternative is inscrutable mirrors instead of faces.

Some realism will ALWAYS give way to the technical necessity of lighting actors' faces.

But it looks so stupid. Just like Tom Cruise flying around with his oxygen mask off in Top Gun so we can see his pretty face. No pilots do that, especially not in combat.

 

[Tomahawk]

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marshaul wrote:

Overtaxed wrote:

Perhaps that is another part of the appeal - watching characters that have the smarts and the power to challenge the "government mafia.

This would have appeal if they weren't murdering, robbing, and raping along the way.

Instead, it reads like an advocacy group for the existence of a state.

No, the appeal of a ganster is that you can do anything you want regardless of the law. Every boy who grows up fantasizing about being a pirate understands this.

That's the appeal of games like Grand Theft Auto, the escapist fantasy of doing whatever you want for a while with no guilt. Of course you have to come back to reality, but it's fun for the two hours you are watching the movie, and it's only a movie.

How many of us love to watch Darth Vader choke someone through the phone?

 

[marshaul]

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And do you feel the need to take a shower after you watch Darth Vader choke someone through the phone?

 

[Tomahawk]

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marshaul wrote:

And do you feel the need to take a shower after you watch Darth Vader choke someone through the phone?

I don't understand where this is coming from. Are you saying I'm somehow in the wrong because I like to watch a good gangster flick? What's up with that? Next thing you know you'll be telling me to watch Steel Magnolias or something...

 

[marshaul]

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Tomahawk wrote:

marshaul wrote:

Yes, but the alternative is inscrutable mirrors instead of faces.

Some realism will ALWAYS give way to the technical necessity of lighting actors' faces.

But it looks so stupid. Just like Tom Cruise flying around with his oxygen mask off in Top Gun so we can see his pretty face. No pilots do that, especially not in combat.

Another one in that vein is actresses with their hair down.

Please tell me just what the heck this is about (that's a rhetorical question, folks):

But boy does it ever make me laugh! :lol:

 

[marshaul]

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Tomahawk wrote:

marshaul wrote:

And do you feel the need to take a shower after you watch Darth Vader choke someone through the phone?

I don't understand where this is coming from. Are you saying I'm somehow in the wrong because I like to watch a good gangster flick? What's up with that? Next thing you know you'll be telling me to watch Steel Magnolias or something...

Not really, I just don't understand where the fascination comes from. I can't empathize with the likes of Tony Soprano. It's kind of like watching the O2 network, except with killing, and the O2 network doesn't make me feel like I need to bathe.

Nothing wrong with you. To each his own. I just find the massive popularity of the Sopranos mystifying.

 

[KBCraig]

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Tomahawk wrote:

marshaul wrote:

Overtaxed wrote:

Perhaps that is another part of the appeal - watching characters that have the smarts and the power to challenge the "government mafia.

This would have appeal if they weren't murdering, robbing, and raping along the way.

Instead, it reads like an advocacy group for the existence of a state.

No, the appeal of a ganster is that you can do anything you want regardless of the law. Every boy who grows up fantasizing about being a pirate understands this.

And now we have a generation fantasizing about growing up to be cops, and for the same reason.

 

[Tomahawk]

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KBCraig wrote:

Tomahawk wrote:

marshaul wrote:

Overtaxed wrote:

Perhaps that is another part of the appeal - watching characters that have the smarts and the power to challenge the "government mafia.

This would have appeal if they weren't murdering, robbing, and raping along the way.

Instead, it reads like an advocacy group for the existence of a state.

No, the appeal of a ganster is that you can do anything you want regardless of the law. Every boy who grows up fantasizing about being a pirate understands this.

And now we have a generation fantasizing about growing up to be cops, and for the same reason.

Nice.