This particular post is a request from Hell in a Handbasket, who is responsible for most of my site traffic. I appreciate him linking to me week after week, and so to show my gratitude I have taken over fifty frames for this post, and that's after passing up a ton of other frames because the movie is so dark that the weapons are hard to see.
This week's Movie Guns is on the film Underworld. I have watched this movie dozens of times, but never from the beginning. If you like vampire movies, than this one is for you. If you don't care for werewolves or vampires, than you might be interested in a skin tight, patent leather clad Kate Beckinsale running around with a brace of automatic handguns! This movie no doubt encouraged untold numbers of middle school boys to put on makeup, paint their fingernails black, and don a white ruffled shirt with black leather pants before heading out to the mall, and even if you're not interested in plot (yes, there is a plot) than the amount of deadly hardware wielded in this film will fit the bill.
The plot revolves around a vampire named Selene (Kate Beckinsale) who's career as a "Death Dealer" involves killing Lycans (the werewolves). I'm going in rough order as there are lots of pictures, and I had to skip around a bit. If you want the whole gist of the film than you would be better off watching it first.
The first picture is from the scene at the begining in a subway. The Lycans are chasing a human, and the vampires are chasing the Lycans. A gunbattle breaks out between them, and a large Lycan named Raze (Kevin Grevioux) pulls out a pair of Steyr TMPs and starts firing:
He's definitely right handed as the pistol in his left hand is firing at the ground.
He does a not-so-quick reload, showing the hand-finds-hand concept of why modern handguns are engineered with the magazine in the grip:
Selene responds with some machine pistol fire of her own with this brace of Berettas that look like compensated 92Fs, but may actually be 93Rs that have been built to look like 92Fs:
It has to be said that Kate Beckinsale must have had extensive training for this film as she doesn't flinch a bit. With some of the huge fireballs that come out of the muzzle later on, she squints a little, but for most of the movie she has the guns up at eye level and keeps her eyes open, showing no emotion - like Todd Jarrett in that Crimson Trace commercial on the Outdoor Channel (yes, I'm a dork).
At one point she reloads the Berettas, although I'm not sure anyone can do it that easily:
Here, another Death Dealer is blasting away with a H&K USP Compact, and he quickly gets cut down by a Lycan with a Desert Eagle:
No word on why this guy decided to bring a compact pistol to a fight where everyone else is either firing two weapons on full auto, or are firing rounds that are a half an inch in diameter.
A no-name Death Dealer is seen here reloading his Walther P99:
When Selene runs her Berettas dry, she reaches behind her back and draws a brace of two-tone Walther P99s, which is odd because during the entire film I didn't see one single holster on anyone. Of note is that these pistols are select fire, but I'm not aware of Walther ever making select fire handguns, or any full auto weapons at that:
Here she's doing an decent reload with the Walthers:
And a close up:
Notice the distinct decocker just in front of the rear sight, and I have no idea what that thingie is on the dust cover.
When Raze closes in on her, she throws these ninja star looking things at him and hits him square in the chest:
If you use an extravagant type of weapon, it pays to at least be good with them!
Well, that battle ends, and Selene and Raze live on. Selene heads back to the mansion where she and all the other vampires live, and goes straight to the chief Death Dealer, Kahn (Robbie Gee), at the arms room.
As she's walking in you can get a glimpse of a MG42 LMG and a M134 minigun on the shelves behind Kahn:
Moments later, you can see a H&K PSG1 in between Selene and Kahn, and a few AMD-65s over Kahn's right shoulder:
There is a Steyr TMP, and an H&K MP5 and MP5K on the table.
The whole reason Selene went to see Kahn is to show him the ammunition that the Lycans were using against her in the subway, which have bullets that contain some glowing ultra violet light:
Selene decides to take her angst out at the indoor shooting range, that for some reason has safety glass separating the dudes on the left from stray rounds. Yikes!!
After her range time, she retires to her room and disassembles her Berettas, one of which is shown here next to a Desert Eagle, the two Walthers, and a Benchmade rescue hook:
Later on, Selene takes the human that the Lycans were chasing earlier, named Corvin (Scott Speedman), to a safehouse. The safehouse turns out to not be so safe when Selene returns to pick him up, and finds out that the Lycans have followed her there.
The Lycans don't bother to stack up next to the door, or even take cover for that matter, and Selene shoots through the door and guns them all down with one of her auto Berettas:
Check out the guy at the extreme right flagging his buddy with a pistol!
She runs out of the room, only to see a bunch of werewolves coming at her down the hallway:
I think blasting zombies would be cool, but werewolves are way bigger and much stronger, so I don't think I'd be as confident as Selene when in this sort of situation. She handles it well with some more automatic fire from her twin Berettas:
The no-freaking-way award comes when, without reloading, she fires both pistols into the floor in order to cut an escape route to the floor below:
It sure looks cool though! Look close in the top pic (click to make large) and you can see eight 9mm shell casings in the air!
Selene covers Corvin while he escapes, but not before he was bit by the chief Lycan, named Lucian (Michael Sheen), seen here holding a Franchi SPAS 12 shotgun while talking to his fellow Lycans:
He's planning to use the guy to make a vampire/werewolf hybrid.
Selene is back at the mansion where Kahn is showing here the new anti-Lycan ammunition that is filled with liquid silver, seen here in a H&K USP Match 9mm that he hands her:
You can see in the first picture her Walther P99, as well as a H&K USP. How that bullet is supposed to stay intact while being forced down a steel tube under pressure from an explosion is the question of the day.
Getting toward the end battle, the Lycans are arming themselves with AK47s, H&K G36Ks and H&K G36KEs:
In the back of an armored van, the Lycans have a whole rack of AK47s:
The vampires seem to prefer H&K MP5s, like these MP5Ks and MP5K PDWs:
Kahn is in his armory holding his weapon of choice: a Colt M4 varient with an unknown optic and a big-ass red lens flashlight:
On the gunrack in the vampire safehouse is a Colt M16A2, a L85A2, and a Steyr AUG, as well as a whole rack of AK47s:
I'd love to have an arms room like that!!! Wow!
In the end shootout, one of the vampires pulls out a shiny hand grenade of unknown type, and blows him up some Lycans:
Selene is kicking ass with her select fire Walther P99s:
Everyone else is busy dying because they don't use the sights, fire one handed, hip fire, or run out from behind cover and stand in the middle of the room where everyone can take a shot at them:
There is no possible way anyone can fire a H&K MP5K one handed with any degree of accuracy. Maybe that's why they don't hit anyone in the fight! Something cool I noticed though is that the Lycans taped Surefire flashlights to the front of their H&K G36KEs:
Lucian loads up his Desert Eagle with glowing boooolits, which from the looks of it is the .44 Magnum version, if the magazine is any indicator:
The last fight is between the Head vampire, Viktor (Bill Nighy), and Selene and Corvin.
Selene slices Viktor up nice with his own sword that he dropped while fighting with Corvin, and before he even notices that he's dead, he pulls out two knives from under his faux leather cape:
I won't spoil what happens next because it's really cool, so you will just have to check it out yourself. And that's the show, folks!
Again, Kate Beckinsale was impressive during this movie for her gun handling skills, among other things. She keeps the gun at eye level and maintains a correct grip on the pistol. I do realize that there is no way she could control a full auto pistol firing real ammunition, and I'm not a subscriber to the gun-in-each-hand theory of gunfighting either. It does make for good TV though!
Something I wondered about though was why did the Lycans even bother to arm themselves at the end if they're so much more deadly when they transform into werewolves?
Strange.
Enjoy the post, and thanks again to James form Hell in a Handbasket!
9 comments:
"I do realize that there is no way she could control a full auto pistol firing real ammunition, and I'm not a subscriber to the gun-in-each-hand theory of gunfighting either."
Nor am I, but some of my students want to try it. I suppose they watch too many movies like this.
Most of the instructors I have met call using a gun in each hand the "two gun salute". You really can't hit much, and it is kind of dangerous if you consider it from the standpoint of controlling your firearm. It does a great job of wasting ammo, though.
Good post, as usual. And thanks for the links!
James
Obviously two-handed shooting is a superpower that vampires and werewolves share. Or think they do.
When I tried two-pistol shooting, my patterns were about six feet wide at fifteen yards, so this technique might approach useful accuracy only at across-the room distances (say 5 yards). Reloading two pistols is quite tricky and dangerous without setting down one pistol. Like James points out, movies love this technique simply because it's easier to fit two pistols and the character into the same shot, unlike a rifle/shotgun/SMG which tends to cover up the lower half of your face...
The reason for the Benchmade Rescue Hook beauty shot is quite interesting.
It seems the armorer for Underworld had, on a previous movie, chosen to use some Benchmade knives. They sent him over an assortment of things, the movie was made, and at the end he contacted them about returning the items. They told him he could keep the rescue hooks, among a couple of other things.
He gave one of the hooks to his wife, who put it in her car. Just a few days later she had an accident on an English country road (rolled the car). She was hanging upside down, dazed, seatbelt jammed, and saw the rescue hook. She cut herself free and crawled out of the car to find it smoldering and yes, it wound up going to fully aflame.
Since then, this armorer has a tendency to feature Benchmade when he can and made sure to give the rescue hook a nice place in the next movie he did.
Firing two handguns in each hand is refered to as "Akimbo style" from what I've learned. Fun and cool looking, but pretty impractical. Beretta M93R has a frame safety, 92FS has a decocking safety, so they are definately converted 92FSes.
"firing two guns in each hand" is known as "totally awesome"-- I mean, that's four guns total. I guess you'd operate one set of triggers with your index fingers, and the other with your middle fingers. I guess it's ideal for firing at two very tall targets?
My bad, I meant "Firing one gun in each hand". Two guns in each hand wouldn't even work, the slides would scrape each other, the gun wouldn't even fit in your hands, and they'd likely fall out when firing.
The Walther P99s aren't full auto, they had their triggers modified to be ultra-light, so Kate Beckinsale could fire them very rapidly.
Actually the movies have good action, but in plot and stuff they really sucks, but well it's just entertainment and kate looks sexy in that black suit.
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