Endless Ammunition

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ASBOB

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Feb 8, 2008
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When I grew up in the fifties there were lots of cowboy movies and tv shows. And all of the heroes had amazing guns: they could shoot forever without having to reload. One exception: in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid they had them always reload after six shots, until the last scene; they couldn’t have them do that and maintain the pace of the intense battle scene).

It seems like the equivalent in the modern era is the automatic weapon that runs on full auto for a long time, despite having only a thirty round magazine.

I just saw Red. Enjoyable movie, especially for those of us at a certain age; they don’t try and hide their years in the film. And John Malkovich was a hoot and Helen Mirren quite glamorous.

But the bad guys walk across a lawn firing M4s and MP5s on full auto all along the way, and never reload. (Also, Helen Mirren fires a .50 cal in full auto with no visible recoil).

Has anybody else noticed this? My favorite scenes are in movies where someone has an MP5k with a short, ten round magazine that can fire a lot of bullets.
 
ASBOB said:
Has anybody else noticed this? My favorite scenes are in movies where someone has an MP5k with a short, ten round magazine that can fire a lot of bullets.
Click to expand...

The movie Four Brothers has some pretty amazing HK full autos that hold a couple thousand rounds. The do end up re-loading but every magazine seems to go on forever.

If you want to watch a movie that is close to true when it comes to magazine capacity, try Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis. Of course he does shoot one guy and he flies back 30' through the saloon doors and into the street. Another Hollywood firearm fallacy.
 
I've also noticed that the shooters accuracy has went downhill over the years. In the old movies the good guy riding a horse at full gallop could drop the bad guy out of the saddle/tree with one shot from his revolver; in modern movies no one can seem to hit anyone with that endless magazine full auto weapon.
 
Another movie with realistic reload action was "Way of the Gun", particularly the final scene. Benicio Del Toro dumped that Galil after the mag was empty (always wondered why he didn't carry an extra mag), and Ryan Phillipe reloaded his shotgun at least once during the final shootout.
 
That's one of the reasons why I liked that show Simon and Simon. Watching actors reload revolvers with HKS speedloaders when no other show was doing that always stuck out. And Rick would even put the fake semi-autos on Safe before handing/throwing it to someone. Granted, the actors were both gun enthusiasts but still.
 
I remember a Stargate Atlantis episode where two fellas took a G36 each with no spare mags and somehow managed to down atleast 40 aliens......Maybe they found magazines with unlimited rounds on a planet!
 
My son and I were just talking about this. I've done my share of force-on-force training and being able to control ammo expenditure and doing combat reloads isn't sexy but necessary.

My 12 year old son has been doing "airsoft" with some of his young friends and I must admit, it's a lot of fun and beats the pants of the sticks I used growning up:D What is fun is the full auto, but even if you use these "toys" for training, you lose that sense of reality with "Hollywood" magazine capacity (most will hold 300+ of those little plastic bb's). Regardless, I enjoy practicing and teaching basic tactics to my son. Although we really enjoy backpacking, camping and shooting "real" firearms, having a little airsoft battle is some great father-son time:D My son now actually tries to count rounds fired in movies and criticize the shooters' lack of reloading...I hope I haven't ruined him;)

I do like the idea of banning Hollywood “endless” capacity magazines used in movies!

ROCK6
 
People, you're missing the point. Hollywood can AFFORD endless magazines. They put physical limits on our only to protect our bank book... Can you imagine being at the range with endless amount of ammo already in your gun? Fun at first! But wait until you see your credit card statement.... you won't be laughing then! Hollywood, on the other hand, just pays for it with your movie ticket and dvd money....

THAT is why they can, and we can't.
 
Too many movies ignore reality when it comes to firearms. Ammo capacity, recoil, guys flying 15 feet backwards, etc. Anything with automatic fire are usually the worst. Like in Face/Off, when Travolta is shooting an MP5K he pulls off a dead FBI agent for several minutes. The MP5K fires 115gr ammo at 900 rounds a minute, and holds a 30 round magazine. Do the math, and that's 2 seconds. 2 seconds of sustained fully automatic fire to unload all 30 rounds.

Another peeve is when cops or whoever bust into a room, and then cock their gun, rack the slide, etc. Even worse when it's a gun like a Glock (like in the Matrix) that has no hammer to cock. Or when it's done simply for dramatic effect, like with a shotgun or 1911. I mean, so the whole time you were pointing the gun at me it wasn't ready to fire? Well $%T on me, I'm an idiot!

If we were to make a list of all the gun-related errors in movies, this thread would be 1000 pages long. For example, Black Hawk Down won an Oscar for editing, yet there's several continuity errors when it comes to the guns and how they're handled. Go figure.

As mentioned above, The Way of the Gun has some of the more realistic gunplay in a movie. Anything directed by Michal Mann will be pretty realistic as well. He's pretty anal about this sort of thing.
 
If you'd like to see a movie with magic magazines, check out any of the Underworld flicks. I'm pretty sure every weapon in that movie is fully automatic and there are maybe 3 reloads in all the movies combined.

Underworld_Beretta.jpg


If only I could own two fully-automatic Beretta 92s with infinite ammo...
 
"Accurate" use of guns in movies of any kind is, of course, something that rarely happens. I think the best gun-movies of all time are the films of John Millius (watch "The Wind and the Lion" for some fantastic (and all-correct) firearms scenes, and a damned fine movie on its own merits) as John is an admitted gun nut and hates to see gun mistakes. I mean, there's a brief scene in "Wind and the Lion" where Teddy Roosevelt---played wonderfully by Brian Keith--is getting off his horse at his hunting camp at Yellowstone, and pulls a Kraig carbine sporter out of his saddle scabbard. Listening to the commentary track of the movie, Millius explains that not only was it a Kraig sporter, which Teddy owned several of, but it was actually an original made by one of the same custom rifle makers that Teddy actually dealt with. I mean, THAT'S attention to detail. :)

But, in the case of the particular movie you're speaking of, OP, I think you're missing the point. "Red" is a movie where a guy shoots an RPG in mid-air during a western-type standoff complete with spaghetti western music...it's MEANT to be over the top. EVERYTHING about it is over the top. In fact, the audience I saw it with was laughing at the very scene you mentioned with the four guys' never-ending magazines, and it wasn't like I saw it during an NRA convention, so many of the just plain, average folks of the world fully realize that it was ridiculous that the guns could shoot for so long, and in fact the movie was poking fun at the action movie genre by including such a blatantly ridiculous version of this cliche. Much like the scene in "True Lies" where a SMG is dropped down a flight of stairs, bouncing along and firing continuously, and managing to hit tons of bad guys but miss all the good guys. :D
 
Funny- I was just thinking about this the other day while watching Miller's Crossing.

According to IMDB:
Factual errors: In the scene where Leo uses the Thompson sub-machine gun he should have had to reload at least 6 times. Assuming the gun is a 1928 model the rate of fire is 700 rounds per minute and has a 100 round can of ammunition. The gangster walks into the bedroom and fires for 5 seconds for a total of 58 shots fired, Leo takes his gun and fires at the window for 20 seconds for 233 shots fired, then Leo fires at the car for about 20 more seconds for another 233 shots fired. That is a total of 524 shots fired from one Thompson with no reload.
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But it's still one of my favorite scene's from one of my favorite movies!

[youtube]mAnD9P4ummA[/youtube]
 
I always laugh at the endless ammo scenes. I get a kick out of Doc Holiday shooting a double barrel shotgun three shots before throwing it away in Tombstone... maybe it was a triple barrel:D

As for the Underworld movies, I'll forgo the endless ammo Beretta's if I can have Kate...
 
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