DetritusMaximus wrote:It's not a flub or blooper, just a little bit of 'makes no sense'...why, if you're laying on the ground with your knee cap blown off, do you keep stretching for the shotgun just out of reach when you have a nice revolver strapped to your shoulder? I know, I know, somebody out there will say, "Well that shotgun would be much better at taking down the guy on the bike". Great point. Except that the shotgun is out of reach and the revolver is right there on your shoulder. A gun in the hand is worth two out of reach.
Totally agree, and this scene setup and execution is one of the big issues I have with MM1.
First, the scene. There is a straight road with egress at point 1 and point 2. Max chases the 3 bikers from point one. He stops to see Johnny's wreck. No sign of the other two. Then, from where he just came at point 1, the two bikers appear!? Where were they hiding? How could he not notice them in the knee deep grassy field and fence line? Okay, let's move past that.
Bubby sets up and fires, from a seated position, a snub nose revolver from a distance that had prevented Max from seeing them in his field of vision until the last second. A snub nose revolver has an effective range of probably 30 yards/meters, and a maximum effective range of perhaps 100-200 meters, with wild inaccuracy at that distance. If you think of this, Bubba's and TC setup would be quite a distance away to go unnoticed. Perhaps and quite likely well outside the range of a snub nose revolver. Okay, for purposes of moving the movie forward, let's ignore that Max drove right past them and fell for the ambush, and they managed to set up and make a miracle shot with the snub nose revolver, pushing it to the limit of feasible.
Max goes down and drops his shotgun. People get injured all the time, and don't realize the extent of their injuries - I've seen interviews with amputees or Soldiers who lost limbs or had serious wounds who had no idea of the seriousness of their wounds (call it fog of war, shock, mental denial, etc.). Perhaps Max, having been hit and fell, didn't know what hit him or how bad it was. I've accepted that he probably had to choose (in an unexpected turn of events and an instant) to go with the shotgun or handgun and misjudged the distance or his injury and inability to immediately retrieve the 12 gauge (which also secures it from the bad guys, which would have been very important). Like any trained Soldier, if you drop your weapon you retrieve it immediately. His sidearm appears to be a .357 or .44 magnum revolver. It would have definitely been effective. But he chose in that instant to go with the shotgun.
He gets the shotgun and kills Bubba. It's unclear why he doesn't take a close shot at the TC or Johnny. He has at least 1 more barrel in the shotgun, a loaded revolver, and probably reloads on his person.
Oh well. I love MM1 and still give it an A+ or 5/5 stars. It's just that this scene wasn't well thought through and could have been done more intelligently.