I was watching Sniper again last night (the first one, the good one), and noticed something damn near hilarious. When Berringer and Mr. Douchebag are hiding out waiting to take their shot, a bunch of apparently bad-ass guys roll up in a crappy Land Rover. When they hop out, the camera guy really focuses on this one fella right here. Probably because his gun has more in common with Dolly Parton than anything else in the scene. I get that night vision scopes are huge, and were even moreso in the glorious nineties. But doesn’t it kinda seem like a waste putting one on an MP5? You know, since the gun was designed to be lightweight and all. And the exact opposite of a sniper rifle. I wonder what was going through the armorer’s head when he was fitting that one out… [Special thanks to IMFDB.org for being awesome]

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22 COMMENTS

  1. When a director says something like: Make Em’ look More Menacing
    , More, More!
    This is what the AD ends up doing.
    And That other guy? He looks like he has a rifle and a shotgun bandoleer!

    • Unless the other guy has a pump action, smoothbore .50, Im pretty sure he has a shotgun.

      But yeah, I agree with your assessment of them trying to make it look more menacing and tacticool.

      • Yep, he has a shotty for sure–but the diameter of his tube looks smaller than the 12 guage shells in his bandolier. And why are his shells scattered all over creation for? Not enough budget to fill it up?

  2. Hollywierd knows that a significant percentage of their audience knows almost nothing about firearms and that few will ever notice how the actors normally rest their index finger on the trigger of the rubber replicas without them ever going off.

  3. Maybe he was thinking, this being the nineties, if you want to shoot at night at all, you will need a device that sees at night, and they are large in that day’s level of technological advancement.

  5. Perhaps the scene called for an HK 40s or 90s series assault rifle but this was all they had?

    By the way, I hate that movie. It was bad – even for the nineties. At least Billy Zane had hair then…

  6. The guy with the night scope is pointing his piece at the nitwit with the bandolier, and the nitwit with the bandolier is pointing his at the director. Which works for me.

    FYI, the director is Peruvian. Peru’s gun laws are somewhat restrictive, but not as bad as Illinois’.

  7. The 90’s. you should have seen the “starlight” scopes from my day. Damn things should have had a wheeled carriege to mount them on.

  9. Well in the 50s and 60s, the US Military had night vision devices mounted to M1 Carbines. The NV gear weighed more than the gun I think.

    Remember, alot of NV gear only let you see 50-100 yards on a very dark night. So you don’t necessarily need alot of range. Plus muzzle flash probably interfered with the ability to see well too.

  10. You could be mistaken. At night it would be quite effective even if it’s over powered. I would rather have a night sight on it than a flashlight.

  11. The movie “The Spartan” had someone using an MP5 as a scoped sniper rifle. The gunfights weren’t all that great, except that they used double taps and fairly realistic firing stances IIRC.

  12. Richard Miller: He wants my eyes?
    Thomas Beckett: Ah, he means antejos, your shooting glasses. Give them to him.
    Richard Miller: Why?
    Thomas Beckett: Because he likes them.

    Classic.

  16. “But doesn’t it kinda seem like a waste putting one on an MP5? You know, since the gun was designed to be lightweight and all.”

    I don’t think the mostly-steel MP5-series weapons were designed to be lightweight, except (perhaps) by late-50s/early-1960s standards. The collapsible-stock variation shown in the photo (probably an MP5A3) would weigh around 6.8 pounds, heavier than the early M-16/M-16A1 rifles. Short? Yes. Light? Not so much.

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