Sylvester Stallone has spent decades portraying action heroes and handling firearms on screen. His career took off after writing the script for 1976’s “Rocky”, but it was in the 1980s, with movies like “First Blood”, that he truly became a leading action star. The “Rambo” franchise, which began with that first film, went on to rival “Rocky” in popularity.
In 1985’s “Rambo: First Blood Part II”, Stallone’s character, John Rambo, finds himself in a situation where he returns to a mission’s command center after being abandoned while trying to rescue US prisoners of war. He then proceeds to take revenge by destroying the computer room using a high-caliber machine gun from a helicopter.
However, as per Insider’s “How Real Is It?” series, Stallone’s gun technique in this iconic scene has been called into question by a firearms expert. Patrick McNamara, a former US Army special operations veteran, rated the accuracy of Stallone’s actions at just four out of ten. McNamara pointed out that shooting from the hip, as Stallone did, is ineffective with anything other than a pistol. He explained that for a weapon like the M60-E3 Stallone was using, it’s necessary to have the bipod down and fire in specific round bursts.
“You’re not going to be able to fire that thing from the hip. You could fire a pistol from the hip. Whatever it is, where you’re just bringing it in tight to your body you need that bipod down, because you have to fire in those seven to nine round bursts. He did pretty good at making it look real, you could tell. I mean, those muscles were tense,” said McNamara.
- Moreover, McNamara stated that it’s unrealistic to expect the M60-E3 to fire so many rounds without malfunctioning in the way Stallone did. While Stallone wrapped the ammo belt around his free arm to prevent kinking, McNamara suggested that using the original ammo can, which can clip onto the weapon, would be a better approach for proper feeding and to avoid issues like the belt twisting or binding.
“The other thing that you have to suspend reality on is that a M60-E3 model can fire that many rounds without malfunctioning. He wraps the belt around his arm. It’s to make sure the thing isn’t dangling. You know, you don’t want that belt to dangle and to kink, because then you’re going to have a failure to feed immediately. If you don’t have an AG, assistant gunner, is just use the ammo can itself. And the ammo can on a lot of these will just clip onto the side of the apparatus, on the machine gun itself, and that way it’s fed properly. It just feeds in nice and straight, and that belt won’t twist, bind, kink up,” McNamara added.
Despite McNamara’s critique of Stallone’s weapons handling skills in this scene, Stallone’s legacy remains intertwined with the high-powered action that made John Rambo an iconic Hollywood character. Even in later movies such as “The Expendables” franchise and 2020’s “Ramo: Last Blood”, Stallone continued to embrace big guns and stylized action. The image of Rambo firing his machine gun from the hip, while perhaps not accurate from a technical standpoint, will always be a memorable part of Stallone’s action-hero legacy.
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