why so many 9mm guns in movies/tv
 

ive noticed the beretta 92 is overly common in movies but have noticed another standin, the sig p228

the sig is used to replace the 229 a lot, even different calibers

noticed in

24, in the line of fire, the sentinel, eagle eye, xmen, transformers, all secret service have 9mm sig 228s even though its a 357 229 in real life

never seen a 357 or a 40 in a movie /tv

wondering, are 9mm guns easier to convert to blanks or something? why so much usage, besides people liike john woo who wont put reloading in movies

My guess is that 9mm ammo is fairly cheap and Glocks, 92s, and SIGs are just popular guns that most directors and writers are familiar with. Same with AKs and M16s/M4s. To most writers and directors, a gun is a gun.

John Woo and his movies are more of an art form than just a standard shoot'em up movie, with the famous double wielding shooters. John Woo's shooting scenes are his own style. Not realistic, but it's just cool.

9mm guns were easier to convert to blanks at the time for the old gunsmiths in the industry. We did not get in to other calibers until younger fresher minds prevailed. Now we have various calibers in handguns but 9mm is still popular and some handguns like the Beretta 92F and the Glock's have a reputation of never failing when filming. Although I have had both go down while filming they are very reliable. Also I have used a .40 Glock on a TV pilot called Fearless.

This is just nitpicking, but...

(1.) When "In The Line Of Fire" was made (1992-93), the P228 had just been adopted by the Secret Service, so it would have been the correct weapon for the time. They didn't adopt the P229 in .357 SIG until around the late-90s.
(2.) In "Transformers", the Secret Service Agents used the P226. In fact, there seem to be a lot of 90s action movies where Secret Service Agents use the P226 instead of the P228, which is completely wrong (think "Air Force One", "Murder At 1600", etc.)

Pheonixent pretty much summarized the reasons why 9mm guns are so common.

Is it hard to get property masters to take a chance on newer handgun designs? One thing that always strikes me is how so few newer-model firearms appear in movies and TV shows. I feel like the handguns I see in movies are almost always Beretta 92Fs, Glocks, SIG P226s/P228s, S&W autos, and an occasional H&K USP. I pretty much never see newer pistols like the Springfield XD, for instance, even though those are very popular with American shooters nowadays, or the SIG Pro series. I don't even see many FN Five-Sevens, which continues to surprise me because I would have figured that Hollywood would have jumped at the chance to show its action heroes wielding the new, state-of-the-art "matapolicia" the way they got all hyped about the Beretta 92F back in the 80s.

What I liked about Crank was that it had a lot of those guns in it. Perhaps they added these guns for the reasons mentioned. Mix it up a bit.

Well this is only MY opinion based on my own situation:

Well, (a) I always groan when some manufacturer announces yet another new caliber. I'm speaking as someone who has to keep a standing INVENTORY of blanks, the more calibers, the more $$ I have to tie up in large enough stocks of blanks to make it worthwhile. But that's only specific to anyone who stocks blanks.
(b) though it may NOT be cool and hip to always use the older 9mm guns, I like it when 99% of my pistol orders are for 9mm guns, I always worry since I don't keep a large stock of the other calibers and if someone (especially NOW) asked for thousands of rounds of something like .357 SIG, I would be in trouble.
(c) Guns are getting more and more and more expensive. Gun rental rates have to go up, at the time when productions are trying to low ball everyone. Spending thousands of $$ on more capital guns to put in inventory is not economically wise in a time when 'shoot em ups' are increasingly being shot outside of the U.S. and using foreign armorers. I have tons of weapons in inventory that have not yet paid for themselves in rentals (an issue everyone in the biz is painfully aware of).
(d) Directors pick the guns. Many of them know nothing about guns. So they pick what they've seen in other action movies. End of story.....

I'm sure there are more industry specific issues, but these will do for now ;)

The FN Five-Sevens there is a weapon that is giving everyone fits in the industry including me. The two stage blowback with a bottleneck cartridge just creates a whole list of problems. Another armory converted them and at the end of the show they were just junk. I am trying to figure a different way to covert them right now but it's not a high priority item so I can take my time. We have some new handguns in the pipe line right now so you should see then on shows in the near future.

Hmmm, well, I guess I should have figured. I remember an interview with Andrew Fletcher where he mentioned how difficult it was to convert the P90 to blanks when they were working on "The World Is Not Enough". I guess it makes sense that the Five-Seven would be a whole lot worse...

What you're saying makes sense. One other thing, though...do actors prefer 9mm to the larger calibers due to lesser recoil?

Blank firing pistols have very slight recoil. I can't remember if I can tell the difference between a 9mm and a .45 ACP just on recoil alone, but Blanks have a fraction of the recoil of a real live round. Recoil, especially when talking about BLANKS, is not an issue at all.

why doesnt anyone use revolvers in movies or tv anymore? theyd need no work to convert to blanks and are very common in use. i guess tehre just not considered cool

Eh, revolvers are still common enough. Sometimes people just prefer autos though.

i just havent seen many wheelguns in recent movies, i personally like them, i like the rounded grip and they balance well

At least you have more of a variety now. In the fifties and sixties all you saw were Lugers and P38s. In the thirties and forties, until after WWII all you saw were Lugers. In the seventies you started to see S&W autos, H&K P9S's and VP70s. The big 9mm of the 80s and early to mid 90s was the H&K P7, but I haven't seen of of those in a while.

What I find curious is that you rarely saw Browning Hi-Powers, and when you did it was almost always a background actor with one. The only 60s show I can remember with a Hi-Power as the hero's weapon was "Man In A Suitcase". Wasn't that a British show? I wonder why they didn't get featured in U.S. shows. The movie, "The Usual Suspects" made up for that though. Even pistols that were not Hi-Powers turned into them after the main actors got them! :eek:

David.

Hmmm, I've definitely seen the Browning HP in plenty of 70s movies - "McQ", "Serpico", "The French Connection II", etc. Don't think I've ever seen the VP70 in anything made before the 80s, though...

Also, what do you mean that the P7 was the "big 9mm" of the 80s and early to mid 90s? Wouldn't that title be much more appropriate if given to the Beretta 92F?

I remember it in "McQ", the Duke bought it in the gunshop where he borrowed the Ingram. You would have thought he would have gone for a Colt Government model. I unfortunately haven't seen "Serpico", or any of the French Connection movies.

In the 80's the P7 was the flavor of the day, and so was in a lot of tv shows and movies usually used by the villain, but there were a few shows that didn't make it where the hero used one. I saw the VP70s in shows during the late 70s, like "A Man Called Sloane", but the P9S was more popular. It really stood out to me in "Endangered Species".

I really don't remember the Beretta being as prominent as the P7. But that could be that, as a south paw the P7 interested me very much. I could just never afford one.

I read an article in the 90s that said that most of the Berettas that you saw in movies and tv show were actually Taurus PT92s. Robert Urich's Beretta in Spenser: For Hire was a Taurus with Beretta grips on it.

David.

Hmmm, yeah, I guess I haven't seen enough movies and shows from the 80s. I have seen the P9S in lots of stuff from that era, though...

Yes, this is correct. I don't know if the majority were, but a very large percentage of guns mistaken for the Beretta 92F in cinema/TV are actually Taurus PT92s. Many IMFDB editors didn't even know how to tell the difference between the two guns before I joined this site (and the main reason I know the difference is because I used to own a PT92).

Some times I'm either TOO into my work or too busy to pay attention so I've made that error more than once, notabley when working on The Boondock Saints, but MT2008 was there to save the day.

It's the safety position on the Taurus that gives it away. The one that will confuses most is the 92SB with it's round triggerguard

Exactly. Even from a distance, I usually find it easy to tell because with the 92F, the slide-mounted safety tends to interrupt the smooth, flowing lines of the slide and stands out like a pair of "ears". On a PT92, the top of the slide is perfectly smooth and un-interrupted.

Then there's also the fact that the shape of the PT92's trigger guard is a little bit different than that of the 92F (it's more "flared" rather than squared, like on the 92F), but that's a difference that won't be as obvious from far away.

Wow i noticed about every fired handgun in 24 is a 9mm. why! I want to see one cool guy taking out terrorists with a good old 45 or 357. Sig 228, usp, glock 19...ugh.

You have to understand from the Propmasters point of view. They might have a crew that's maybe versed in firearms but not very experienced so it is a lot easier for them if the handguns use all the same ammo. The show is about the story if you are noticing only the firearms maybe the show is not that great. Several here like myself have taken care of shows with multiple caliber weapons with no problem. But it does make it easier on us or the prop crew having a single type of pistol ammo to deal with.

That's what I've always hated about blank guns. They don't have recoil like a real gun, so the realism is cut down in the film even more. I like how people like Clint Eastwood fake the recoil, which is something I always thought was cool about him.

One question for the armorers, how come M60s in all those 80s films like Rambo: First Blood and Platoon had recoil when firing? Did the 7.62 bottleneck rounds produce kick somehow?

Blanks don't have kick. In large guns, it's the motion of the bolt carrier that rattles the gun back and forth.

I know blanks don't have kick, so that's what confused me about the M60. Now I understand.

I just watched that movie tonight (finally). Man, it was, um, absurd...

Yeah, it was an insanely... insane movie but good on guns. The DVD quality is incredible too, the caps I took are almost like Blu Ray!

In most cases, if Jason Statham is in a movie, don't expect it to be an oscar winner. In fact, don't expect anything, just shut your brain off and enjoy the crazy stuff that never happens in real life.

I was mostly referring to the scene where he bangs his GF in the middle of Chinatown, especially while a whole bus full of naive Chinese schoolgirls were watching. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard at a sex scene in a movie.

As far as gunplay goes, it was neat seeing the Springfield XD in action. So far, this is the first movie or TV show in which I've seen that gun appear.

Yeah, that's what usually comes to mind when I think of how crazy the movie is. :eek:

There's actually a sequel coming out in a few months. It was confirmed it has another public sex scene.

Oh, Jesus...:eek: :rolleyes:

That makes me feel sorry for Jason Statham. Dude's a talented actor, so I find annoying that he only seems to get cast in low-budget, brain-dead action franchises like "Crank" and "The Transporter". He needs to make more movies like "The Bank Job" (a really good crime caper, BTW).

Crank: High Voltage. Now energy drinks aren't enough because I guess his heart is missing or something, so he has to electrically boost himself. I see him grab eletronic generators in the movie, good way to melt into a puddle of nothing.

I'll still probably cap it though, since it will inevitably be popular to the public.

I see the idea of him having a heart keeping organs running but that fall would make his brain mush and break his bones so he can't run.

What do you mean by "popular"? Jason Statham's movies mostly seem to make money because they tend to have small budgets. IMDB says "Crank" made $27 million domestic box office on a $12 million budget. So it was a success, but not exactly "popular" with the public in the same way as...say, "The Dark Knight".

Guilty. :(:p

I've done this several times, either through simple inattention or just being unable to tell clearly. Same with the Beretta 92FS/92SB deal. To my credit though, I did get it right with Quantum of Solace, and try to with Wanted (imagine my surprise when I saw that it was a 92S...)

No worries, it's a very common mistake. More often than not, it's a mistake that the armorers want you to make; sometimes the PT92 is used because the Beretta simply wasn't available for a particular scene. In "The Boondock Saints", for instance, it looks like they couldn't get Berettas for the poker game shooting scene, so the Taurus was used instead.

Also, I just added screencaps this weekend to my page for the 90s TV show "Viper". There's an episode in that show where the bad guys, who are supposed to be rogue U.S. Army intelligence officers, are all armed with Taurus PT92s even though they should have Berettas (they also use Diemaco C7s, standing in for the M16A2).

It's actually pretty obvious that they want you to think they are Berettas, they put Beretta grips on them, like in The Boondock Saints and The Matrix.