Things I'm Sick of - Action Movie Cliche #39

[Atticus_of_Amber]

Calm under fire

I don't really hate much since I go to see action movies in order to see silly violence and stuipid one liners. But the slow motion thing is gettng annoyingly overdone.

As for the bad guys always miss problem, well it may annoy poeple but it seems to accurately model reality. I don't know how many shoot outs I see reported on the news end result hundreds of rounds of ammo fired, one guy shot in the leg. Wierdly enough if you consider us(american/UN forces) the good guys and the stats were right about that incident in samolia for black hawk down, 19 americans were killed over 1,000 samalians were killed. So, it may annoy you that bad guys' guns never seem to hit their target, but aparently the reality of gun fighting seems to be everyone always misses once anyone else is shooting back at them, you just win through numbers of bullets and blind luck that something eventually hits. I think the complaint should more be that the hero always hits, not that the villans always miss.

I remember reading something by a guy who had actually been in a number of gunfights with untrained opponents. I *think* it was an account of an undercover cop planted in the mob. His biggest break came when he was with the people he was trying to infiltrate and they were attacked by a rival gang. His military and police training meant that he was much calmer under fire. It impressed the guys he was trying to infiltrate so much, they employed him.

Thei guy was saying that, against untrained opponents, the best stratergy is to stand up out of cover, calmly take aim, fire, then return to cover. Sure, the other guy gets off at least one shot first, but he's so scared, he almost always misses.

Come to think of it, that's pertty much what the Edward Woodward character from "The Equalizer" at the end of almost every episode.

Basically, what this guy was saying is that being calm under fire is the pre-requisite to winning a gunfight. Only if both sides have that, does skill come in to play.

The reason so many of the Somalis died in the Black Hawk incident was probably partly this "calm under fire" ability of the hightly trained US troops and partly the superior technology the troops had available to them. Also, I think the trenches of Galipoli in WWI proved the difficulty of attacking a trained enemy armed with automatic weapons (in that case, early machine guns) and entrenched in cover.

 

[S'mon]

My least favorite movie cliche is that the bad guy is almost always a businessman.

Why can't the bad guy ever be an environmentalist, an animal rights activist, or a civil rights lawyer?

Defense lawyers make good villains in cop dramas or 'Law & Order', not sure about an action movie.


a) Animal-rights or b) environmentalist terrorists would make good villains, however as their main victims are a) scientists and b) blue-collar workers, and the perpetrators are the offspring of (or friends of the offspring of) the Hollywood people who make or greenlight the movies, it's not likely to happen.

 

[S'mon]

As for the bad guys always miss problem, well it may annoy poeple but it seems to accurately model reality...

While there's a lot of truth in this, what grates is when the hero is just standing there 5' away from, say, 6 baddies all firing automatic weapons at him, getting off maybe 200 rounds, and _none hit_ - this happened a lot in Desperado. The Die Hard movies weren't guilty of this, AIR - when the bad guys missed it was always plausible.

Hitting in close-quarters fighting despite being unable to aim is the reason for automatic weapons - in regular battlefield combat automatic fire is pretty useless except as suppressive fire by belt-fed weapons. Western troops are trained _not_ to use automatic fire in most situations. Certainly in the British army, we are. You only go to full auto when assaulting through a position.

 

[Numion]

I don't know if this should apply in movies, but in warfare the ratio bullets/dead has come up exponentially, despite better weapons. If it was something like 100 / killed enemy in WW1, it was around 100,000 / dead in Vietnam. The numbers are from memory, you'd better check on the web if you can find the site.

 

[Pielorinho]

a) Animal-rights or b) environmentalist terrorists would make good villains, however as their main victims are a) scientists and b) blue-collar workers, and the perpetrators are the offspring of (or friends of the offspring of) the Hollywood people who make or greenlight the movies, it's not likely to happen.

Poison Ivy was an eco-villain, right? And Twelve Monkeys had animal-rights terrorists.

Problem is, however, that animal-rights and environmental criminals are way into the property-destruction crimes. And it's hard to see Schwarzenegger really getting worked into a gun-toting tiff because a ski lodge got burnt to the ground.

Now, I could imagine Bruckheimer or his kin making a movie in which the animal-rights criminals start assassinating scientists -- he's got no problems moving into the realm of fantasy. I think the real reason such a movie won't get made, however, is that it touches on to many hot-button political issues, and action movies aren't supposed to stir up political controversy. For the same reason, you won't see an action movie made in which the bad guy is blowing up abortion clinics or gay nightclubs.

Daniel

 

[Fade]

Ok, so maybe the bad guys shouldn't be hitting. But the good guys certainly shouldn't be, considering the conditions many of the shots are made in!

 

[SableWyvern]

While there's a lot of truth in this, what grates is when the hero is just standing there 5' away from, say, 6 baddies all firing automatic weapons at him, getting off maybe 200 rounds, and _none hit_ - this happened a lot in Desperado. The Die Hard movies weren't guilty of this, AIR - when the bad guys missed it was always plausible.

THANKYOU! You've just reminded me of one of my biggest gripes ever.

Die Hard 2. Not only does Mr McLane not realise that the enemy are firing blanks at him, he doesn't even realise when he himself is firing blanks. Then, to top it all off, someone throws a live mag onto a weapon that was just firing blanks and lets loose.

You can hear the difference between live and blank ammo. You can feel the difference between live and blank ammon. And in order to fire an automatic or semi-automatic weapon using blank ammunition you need to stick an attachement on the end of the barrel to trap the gas that recocks the weapon. If you fire live ammo with this on, your weapon's going to explode.

I think the whole Die Hard 2 was pretty crap, but that was the absolute pinnacle of BS.

 

[Wicht]

I remember one real life story about two "cowboys" having a gunfight in a hallway in the second story of a hotel/saloon. Said hallway was very narrow, only wide enough for a single person to walk through. The gunmen were 5-10 feet from each other. The gunfight ended when both emptied their guns and one jumped out a window. Neither were hit.

 

[S'mon]

THANKYOU! You've just reminded me of one of my biggest gripes ever.

Die Hard 2. Not only does Mr McLane not realise that the enemy are firing blanks at him, he doesn't even realise when he himself is firing blanks. Then, to top it all off, someone throws a live mag onto a weapon that was just firing blanks and lets loose.

You can hear the difference between live and blank ammo. You can feel the difference between live and blank ammon. And in order to fire an automatic or semi-automatic weapon using blank ammunition you need to stick an attachement on the end of the barrel to trap the gas that recocks the weapon. If you fire live ammo with this on, your weapon's going to explode.

I think the whole Die Hard 2 was pretty crap, but that was the absolute pinnacle of BS.

*D'oh*

You are SO right.

How could I have forgotten that 'I didn't realise I was firing blanks' bull? I guess maybe because when I saw the movie I'd never fired either blanks or real bullets, but now I've fired both. The difference, of course, is huge, leaving aside the whole need for a blank firing attachment.

 

[S'mon]

I don't know if this should apply in movies, but in warfare the ratio bullets/dead has come up exponentially, despite better weapons. If it was something like 100 / killed enemy in WW1, it was around 100,000 / dead in Vietnam. The numbers are from memory, you'd better check on the web if you can find the site.

WW1 predates the concept of 'suppressive fire' - people were supposed to just walk straight at the machineguns...

Admittedly, modern/recent Soviet infantry tactics also involved walking straight at the enemy, but at least it's 'walking while firing your AK47 or AK74 on full auto'.