Movie Guns XXXIII - Super Post!!

I had no intentions of this being a Super Post, but after I got started in what I thought was going to be a short post, I realized that I had taken almost forty pictures in the first twenty minutes of film. Overall I captured seventy seven frames, but all of them will not be in this post. You'll just have to go browsing through the Photobucket folder.

This post is full of old meets new in terms of the guns involved. There's a little something for everyone; if you're a revolver guy, it's there. ARs? Got them in spades. Mall ninja gear? Oh yeah.

The movie, of course, is 3,000 Miles to Graceland. I've been trying to find this movie for about six months, to no avail. My wife found it bought it for me for Christmas. Since I've seen the movie several times already, I'd figured that that was less time needed to do this post, but considering that I don't get more than ten minutes of uninterrupted time alone, that hope was short lived.

With so many pictures to cover, I'm gonna leave the storyline to your imagination. For the start of the movie we have our main character, Murphy (Kevin Costner) and friends - Zane (Kurt Russell), Hanson (Christian Slater), Franklin (Bokeem Woodbine), and Gus (David Arquette) - dressed up as Elvis in order to get inside of a Vegas casino and steal the money, which they do. Murphy is carrying a Franchi SPAS12 shotgun, which he uses to fire the first shot at the guards who are following them out of the casino, and when he hits the first guard, he goes flying six feet backwards:


Yeah, there's plenty of that in this movie too.

This is when all hell breaks loose. Hanson is firing a modified AR type carbine - it's pieced together from a bunch of different parts - one handed at the guards:


We get to see the awesome power of the mighty .223 Remington as the poor guards closest to Hanson get knocked clean off their feet by the little 50 grain bullets:

Sweetness!

Murphy reloads his SPAS12 with birdshot before firing it empty again:


Murphy then pulls two nickel plated pearl handled 1911s and starts blasting people in slow motion, because that's how he rolls:





He does a reload from cover before blowing another guard off his feet and into a slot machine:



To be fair, I think that it does look cool when the victim gets the snot knocked out of him, despite the lack of realism. How cheezy would it be if the victim just crumpled from the bullet hitting something vital? No fun, huh?

All of this gunfighting is going on to the backdrop of an Elvis impersonator singing amongst half naked dancing woman:

Woooohoooo!!

Back in the fight, one of the guards is firing none other than a Beretta 92F from behind a good deal of cover while another is firing a Remington 870 without cover. Guess who lives:



None of them seem to have ever held a weapon in their lives:


To add to the cool factor, Gus is blazing away with a Smith & Wesson Model 29. and even does a reload for your viewing pleasure:



He would have been better off if he hadn't broke cover before his reload, but we won't knock him too hard.

Franklin and Gus start getting their work done with short barreled (Short Barreled Rifle - SBR)ARs of unknown make. I've seen a similar model as these are, with the high top upper receiver, but can't remember who makes it:




Notice that they're using the 100 round Beta C-Mag magazines in the SBRs, and none of them are wearing hearing protection. I don't have any personal experience with rifles with barrels less than 14.5", but I'm sure that those little 8 1/2" barrels are LOUD!! If they would just put the gun up to their shoulder and use the sights they would be much more successful at taking out the opposition.

Anyways, Gus switches to a Beretta 93R which he fires dry, and is then seen reloading a Walther P99:



This whole time Zane is in an elevator that he's rewiring in order to make it go to the roof. He pulls a piecemeal AR from a guitar case - notice it has the A1 sight and no forward assist or shell deflector:

That's a strange looking pistol grip as well.

When the elevator door opens next to the raging gunbattle, Zane smashes a guard in the face with the buttstock. Look close and you can see the buttstock is made of rubber:


For some odd reason, he spends an entire magazine shooting the glass out of a ceiling to make it drop on three guards instead of just shooting them:


Murphy, Zane, Hanson, Gus, and Franklin jump into the elevator just as a plain clothes Vegas PD officer comes running around the corner with his Sig P228 in full song. The Sig changed to a Sig from a 1911 for just a moment. He manages to hit Franklin before getting a slug from Murphy's 1911 in the forhead:


The rhinestone cowboys make their way to the roof where they're supposed to get picked up by a helicopter. Murphy kneels down and gets ready to ambush the guards when they come through the door, and he actually puts the gun up to his shoulder and looks down the sights, which enables him to get two kills with four shots:



The guards have upgraded to Ruger Mini 14s, but they don't get any more hits on the robbers, nor do they manage to hit the helicopter that's right in front of them:


After the gunfight, the guys take shelter inside of a motel to count their cash. Hanson and Murphy have a disagreement on how the cash is split up, and Hanson pulls a nickel plated S&W Model 27 out and points it at Murphy, who has both of his 1911s in a custom double shoulder holster, as well as an unknown make pistol in a small of the back holster:




Murphy draws one of his now suppressed 1911s and kills Hanson, after which we get a glimpse of Gus' S&W Model 29 in it's vertical shoulder holster:



Moving right along, Murphy kills Gus, and thinks he kills Zane, but Zane was wearing a kevlar vest and survives. Zane goes back to the motel and finds out that a girl who he's been sleeping with, Cybil (Courtney Cox Arquette), her son has taken the money and stashed it. Zane is seen here pointing a S&W Model 5946 at her:


Soemwhere along the line I caught a glimpse of Murphy's Cold Steel Voyager:


There's a big gap in the shooting to make way for a plot, so later on in the film we have Murphy getting pulled over by Idaho Highway Patrol, who is itching for a gunfight with the notorious criminal. The cop has a nickel plated Colt Single Action Army (do you even need to ask the caliber?), which for some reason he decides to open the loading gate, spin the cylinder, and then thumb the hammer back until the cylinder stops. I'm no expert on single action guns, but I do think that that's a good way to ruin the lock:



Do note the lack of a front sight. I've read that old time gunfighters would file the sight off to make for a smoother draw, as they generally didn't use the sights anyways.

As the two fire rounds at each other the rounds pass by one another mid flight, and the scene shows this to the viewer:


I'll let you watch to see how the fight went down, but the victor is obviously Murphy, or we wouldn't have the rest of the movie to bother with.

Before I skip to the end gunbattle, I thought I'd show this unknown police officer's S&W Model 27 in blued steel as he points it at Zane:


Now for more shooting action.

Murphy meets with a friend named Jack to get guns and gear for the final showdown. Murphy gets another 1911, as well as a modified Mossberg 500:



Jack has hired the help of Hamilton (Ice-T) who is supposed to be as good as "a couple of guys." Hamilton walks up while playing with a Microtech Halo:

That's a kick ass knife, but a little spendy.

Zane shows up and gets the drop on Jack who is fondling a S&W Model 686:


What happens next is blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah, starts shooting it out with the Seattle SWAT team and Federal Marshals, who are all armed with H&K MP5s of some shape or form.

Murphy starts it out with his Mossberg, but Hamilton hands him a SBR type AR with one of those Beta C-Mags, which he starts hammering away with:



Jack is using a Sig P228, and this Ruger MP9 to shoot the cops:


SWAT answers back with the MP5Ns:



Hamilton decides to get his hand-to-hand on by skewering a cop with this big ass knife:

You can see the Microtech Halo in a kydex holster on his left shoulder.

And then. . . . .and then. . . .Hamilton, in an act of incredible ludicrousness, went above and beyond the call of stupidity by chaining himself upside down and flying out away from cover while spinning wildly in the air with a FN P90 firing in each hand:


Naturally, all of the cops find him to be easy pickings and promtly shoot him full of holes for his troubles:


Murphy picks up a FN M249 Minimi SAW and starts going buck wild; blowing up cars, fuel tanks, buildings; all the while he's killing SWAT cops like crazy:

Aledgedly, he's the son of Elvis. I don't recall reading anything about Elvis being a gunfighter or a badass, so I don't see the point.

At one point he appears to use the sights, and decides that the weapon is way more controllable with the fold out stock planted in his shoulder:



Sadly, he becomes SWAT fodder as they have H&Ks, which trump FNs no matter how many rounds they hold:


Plus, they all have lasers, and Murphy doesn't. So sad.

Well that about wraps it up. Check this movie out if you like action flicks, or if you like sparky bullets; there's lot's of those in this movie. With all of the money spent on ammo, it's no wonder why the actors didn't get any training and fired every weapon from the hip. Also note that this is the second movie that I've covered with Christian Slater trying to be like Elvis. I find that odd.

Enjoy.

Update: MT2008 points out in comments that the Sig used by the Vegas PD officer to whack Franklin is actually a P226, not a P228. Good catch!

Update: Hell in a Handbasket dropped me some valuable information that is worth your time:

"You mentioned a state trooper in the film who tries to use his Colt Single Action Army in a Western holster to outdraw Kevin Costner, who is using a 1911 in a shoulder holster. That guy was a famed stunt man named Alex Green, one of the oldest performers that still are willing to take a fall. He is also one of the few people still around who know how to use a whip, and he teaches fancy Western style gun handling tricks." "Check out his profile. It seems that he has been in just about every TV show or movie that called for an action sequence since 1970."

http://www.stuntscanada.com/low/memberprofile.php?m=22

Cool stuff. Green has played in a ton of films and shows, and yet I never noticed. These days the shows that we see on TV are full of gun ignorance (CSI comes to mind). We need more people like him to keep things right for correctness, otherwise people will keep being influanced by erroneous gun handling. Also cool is that he's a knife and tomahawk thrower!

Thanks James!