Matrix Code - Weapon Lesson

So that nobody has to spend all that time going all they way over to MH I have decided to copy and paste the weapon related posts since somebody had asked about them.

As the movie opens, we see Trinity sitting at a desk in front of a laptop when a bunch of cops bust in. These cops are armed with Glock 17 automatic pistols chambered for the standard 9mm Parabellum cartridge. This is a good choice as these guns are about as generic as you can get. They are also probably one of if not the most common police sidearm. Glock holds 50% of the US Police market while all other makers are fighting for the rest. SIG, S&W, and Beretta are the other biggies in the Law Enforcement market, but Glock is king... an average King, but king none the less. Even if I didn't vote for them. High capacity magazines, high level of reliability, and acceptable accuracy make it a perfect choice for these cops. Also note the use of the "Harries Technique" with the flashlights. The Harries Technique is most often taught in your average police academies to your police recruit. To sum it up, these guys walk into the scene as little more than cannon fodder. We see Glocks again after these street cops chase Trinity up to the roof, but they are not fired. I may be wrong about the Glock model number, but all Glocks look the same and the only differences are the lengths of the slides and grip-frames. Internally you can also have different calibers, but based upon the illustrated capacity of the magazines I'm making an educated guess on the 9mm variant making the gun the model 17. The Glock 17 was also the first commercially available Glock for US buyers. This makes the 17 the most common Glock model to be found.

Accompanied by the street cops is an Agent. They are the movie's super villains. They of course are armed with a much more sinister pistol than the Glock. The Desert Eagle is perhaps one of the most over played handguns in Hollywood. I'm not sure why that is exactly, but I guess it's because the D.E. looks good on film in the mind of a gun ignorant Director. It is a very large and heavy pistol designed to fire some of the most powerful cartridges available. From a scene later in the film we see a cartridge being fed into the chamber and it looks like the relatively new .50AE cartridge. Given unlimited resources of these Agents, I guess the .50AE would be the caliber of choice for your Desert Eagle. However I doubt the D.E. would be the gun of choice. These guns have a number of good points... Weight perhaps is number one. They are so heavy that they absorb so much recoil energy as to tame even the hottest loads. This makes firing powerful .44 magnum loads actually enjoyable instead of just painful. The design also uses a fixed barrel giving the pistol enhanced accuracy. This makes it popular among folks who like the challenge of handgun hunting. The downsides of the D.E. is that the pistol is ammo sensitive and has questionable reliability. Accuracy and power are both good, but reliability is a much more critical for a fighting gun. This is why the Desert Eagle pistols are actually rare on the firing ranges, and are never used by any fighting force... police, military or special ops. Yet you'll see it in movies about all the above. Go figure. Some folks have them and think highly of them, but I'm not one who does. At best the D.E. is a curiosity... an interesting pistol to play with, but impractical in any real world setting. If you like yours, more power to you. However for this movie, I think virtually any other pistol would have been a better choice for an agent's sidearm... but perhaps virtually no other pistol would have had the commanding visual authority that Desert Eagle pistol brings to the screen. If I was to second guess the Director here, I would have selected the H&K Mk-23 SOCOM pistol.

We see the agent firing his Desert Eagle at Trinity who performs a spectacular jump through a window. Inside the window she rolls out and draws a pair of Beretta Cheetahs. Specifically they are the Model 84FS. The 84 and 85 are very similar, but the 84 has a double stacked magazine while the 85 is a single. These are seriously cool little guns. They look just like the Beretta 92 series of pistols but are much smaller. This gives you the visual impact of the Beretta 92, but is more "to scale" in the lovely and petite hands of Trinity. This was a perfect choice for the film makers because the Beretta 92's are one of the sexiest pistols ever designed... Yet they would have looked grossly over sized in Trinity's hands. Accurate and reliable... they are just not very powerful. The Cheetah is chambered for the .380 cartridge, also called the 9mm Kurtz. Kurtz meaning "short" and it is just what it sounds... A shorter 9mm cartridge. Shorter means less case volume for the gun powder. Less powder = less power. If you like these little Berettas, you can load them up with the hot Pro-Load ammunition which is about as hot as you could get or want in a blow back pistol design. This would make a good backup piece to a full sized 92FS or similar.

It seems like Neo’s preferred handgun is the Beretta 92FS. This is a solid choice due to the guns inherent accuracy and reliability. It also holds a potent stash of full power 9MM ammunition. This is the perfect choice for emptying whole clips at agents. He uses a pair of 92FS pistols in the lobby battle, then one in the elevator shaft, and then a pair up on the roof top. If I was to face an armed adversary, a 92FS would be my choice as well.

After Apoch says "I hope the Oracle gave you some good news" he hands Neo his personal backup gun, a SIG SAUER pistol of some sort. A P228. This is another high capacity 9mm that is one of the best handguns you can get. Some have said that this looks like a SIG P226, which is the 9MM version of the classic SIG P220 pistol. The P228 is much the same, but it's shorter in barrel/slide length. You can see a good glimpse of this when he is inside the wall and fires some shots to drive back the SWAT guy that discovers them.

Micro Uzi. Neo and Trinity both use Micro Uzis when they are doing the Lobby Scene. Trinity walks in to lobby and hoses the security guard calling for help with a Micro. You will note the gun’s extreme high rate of fire. This makes the gun very hard to control one handed. It’s meant to be used either as a regular handgun, or to be attached to a folding stock providing a more stable support for automatic fire. Good thing Trinity is really firing blanks or her gun would have been pointing at the ceiling before she let off the trigger. You can fire one full auto, but it takes a great deal of strength to control it that way, and even then it takes both hands. Neo uses a pair of them at the end of the lobby scene, just before he kicks the last guard to death with a boot to the head.

During the Lobby scene, and before Neo does his “Pick up the M-16 Cartwheel” he pulls out a pair of Czech made Skorpions. These are small, compact SMGs originally chambered for the even smaller .32ACP cartridge. The smallest caliber used in the film. They can be had in a couple other small calibers, but we can see the empty casing from the blanks ejecting and they look like .32 brass not .380... hence my assumption. I might be wrong. Hey, there is nothing wrong with them being .32ACP, but you wouldn’t know it what with all the .223 brass dropping to the floor making it look like the gun is firing .223. (same as the 5.56MM Nato) Please note that almost all automatic guns eject casings away from the shooter... they don't drop the casings at your feet. Small complaint, because all that brass hitting the floor looked sweet. Neo's Skorpions are wearing a barrel shroud of some sort... perhaps they are suppressors that have been burnt out. Hard to tell. But the guns look great on film, didn't they? Just because it’s small, doesn’t mean it can’t put out a good volume of fire. As underpowered as the cartridges are, it makes up in quantity what it lacks in quality. They have large magazine capacities with a high rate of fire, yet they are very controllable and you can fire a mag full in sustained fire and easily keep all the shots in a man’s chest sized target at reasonable SMG ranges.

Switch uses a slicked up Browning Hi-Power that seems to be in .40 caliber based on the look from the muzzle end when she calls Neo "copper top". It looks like a satin nickel finish. This gun is an updated version of the classical P35 that John Moses Browning designed before he died. Some would argue that this was JMB's best or most advanced design. Probably is. But that's not the point of my correspondence here. This shows Switch isn't just a gunslinger, but also uniquely endowed with a good sense of taste when it comes to her guns. She is different from the others in this regard...she wears all white when everyone else is in black. The Hi-Power was designed by Browning per request from FN for a high capacity 9mm. It's a single action design similar to the 1911 in some ways such as it being a single action trigger and uses a similar barrel tilting action, but from there I guess the similarities end. Most noticeable difference is the lack of a grip safety, but Browning still wanted an additional level of safety so he make something called a "magazine safety". This locks the trigger to prevent firing should the magazine be removed. Personally, I'd rather have a Grip Safety. This Browning is a contrast to the other guns in this film... A contrast that works well for Switch's character and a good choice all around. The Hi-Power is one of the – if not the most prolific handgun the world over. There are more Hi Powers out there then any other automatic pistol. Classic pistol. Love it.

Let's move on to Mouse. Mouse breaks out an odd pair of guns when the Agents cut the hard line after Neo sees the same cat twice. These guns are in a crate filled with .50BMG rounds... making some believe these guns are .50 calibers. This isn't true as that would be impossible. Those are awesome... Electric drive 12 guages... BADASS!

HK MP5K These guns appear all over this flick. “What do you need?” “Guns. Lots of guns.” The huge weapon racks slide in and Neo picks up an MP5K and does the classic “HK Slap”. Then in the lobby scene, when the guard sees all the guns and says “Holy…” and Neo punches him into next week, he then pulls out a pair of MP5K’s and goes to work. HK came up with a brilliant design in the MP5. It’s universally recognized as The SMG. It’s used around the world by police and military units… and those that fight them. The Matrix seems to prefer the short MP5K variant, but any of them are fine guns.

Apoch carries an Ingram MAC-10 with a barrel shroud. This, like most other guns in The Matrix, is a 9MM. It has a super high rate of fire that is most impressive. Oddly enough, for an SMG of this type, it's very controllable, reliable and even surprisingly accurate in burst fire. A perfect choice for spraying fire at Agents while your buddies get away. Apoch is a MAC Man.

Back in the lobby scene we see these guards come rushing out wearing armor, helmets and packing some big guns. Most buildings always have the stupid guards out front and visible with a squad of heavily armed goons just around the corner. Just look in any downtown building. Okay, maybe not. But this was a “Military Controlled Building” right? Anyways, the first guy that yells “FREEZE” is packing a SPAS-12. This is a unique 12 gauge shotgun that allows the user to select pump action or semi-auto action. It’s a good solid shotgun that offers high capacity, good reliability, a folding stock, and respectable accuracy when throwing slugs. The downside is that it’s a rather clunky and heavy and a just plain clumsy design. This is perhaps my least favorite tactical shotgun, but it’s popular with wannabe SWAT-pups and collectors... and evidently movie makers. The better gun for these guards to have used would have been the faster cycling Benelli M1. Of course the SPAS looks much cooler. Had the guards have been using them in Semi Mode instead of Pump… Trinity might have been blasted to bits. No, maybe not. But the Chink-Ker-Chunk sound effect was a cooler effect for the screen. If they wanted to use just a pump gun… in my opinion the Benelli Nova Special Purpose would have looked cooler and would have been faster handling. I think the SPAS-12 is a bit too much. This gun was also used in Jurassic Park to pathetic effect. I think a couple of SPAS-12’s loaded with the right shells would have handily cleared the island of pesky hungry dinos. These guards in the Matrix didn’t do any better with them… but Trinity did when she kicked one away from a guard and blasted him in half with it.

Some other guards use the M-16A1. You can easily tell they are A1, because they are fully automatic. Looking closer you can see the handgrips and rear sight are of the A1 style. A2’s fire semi or 3 round bursts and have different hand guards and rear sight, but I wont go into obvious details.. This rifle is everywhere in one variation or another. It’s been the standard issued rifle for over 33 years now making it one the oldest continuously used military rifles since Britain’s Brown Bess musket. It’s even older than the AK-47 because the Soviets kept changing the AK to the AKM and then the AK-74 and now the AN-94… Us? We make a slight change to the M-16 and just rename it. A2, A3, M-4, whatever… they are all just M-16’s to me. In my opinion, the M-16 is a piece of shiat. It is self polluting, defecates where it eats, under powered, too delicate, and way too complicated. The M-16 isn’t one of my choices. I think a FAMAS would have looked cooler in these scenes, but since the Federal Government practically gave away A1 rifles to police departments and various agencies… Most likely these guys would have had them. Poor saps.

GE Mini-Gun. The Big Dog. This is the huge gun mounted on the helicopter. Yes, it really is that badass and it really can fire that fast. It’s that good. Scary isn’t it? It can fire 6,000 rounds per minute. That means it is spitting 100 rounds a second. Hellacious firepower. These guns are electric powered gatling guns used by the US Military on Helicopters as shown. We used them back in Viet Nam and we have used them ever since. The gatling concept goes all the way back to the Wild West days, when these guns were mounted on small wagons or caissons and fired by turning a hand crank that spun the barrels. The gun fires only one barrel at a time. The spinning cycles barrels around the action allowing the gun to load, fire, and extract each shell and give the barrels some airflow to help cool them between shots. Similar electric driven gatling guns are also used on some of fighter aircraft, most notably is the A-10 Warthog. The A-10 boasts the biggest version of the gatling that I know of, a 30MM. I have witnessed A-10 use it's gun to good effect. Some say that it sounds like a motorcycle when it fires. That's not quite right... it sounds like a really evil fucking motorcycle when it fires. The A-10 actually looses airspeed when it fires it's gun due to the recoil forces pushing against the aircraft. It's truly amazing.