'44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shootout'. (1 Viewer)

Did anyone catch this on FX tonight? I've always been facinated by this event and I felt that other than a few instances of heavy handedness, the film did it justice. The film also featured too many needless close-up's of the actors IMO.

The one element of that terrible day that baffles me to this day, is how on earth in all that frenzy of bullets didn't at least ONE cop get off a head shot to take down these two maniacs? They went through weapons training, so I don't get it.

Anyway, I have an HD set but haven't gotten HD yet, was it in HD? The way it was situated on the screen was strange, it was 1.78:1, but it was high up on the screen for some reason. I had to zoom in and then reposition the image down a couple of notches to look right. It would have been nice to hear the movie in DD 5.1 as well, if it indeed was broadcast in 5.1.

I thought it was solid, but nothing great or anything. I could tell the people making it felt that there wasn't enough depth to the characters, so they had to do their own commentary of the events every now and then. I just found that poor. It wasn't as much about the people as the magnitude of the event itself. Just because they have those little video diaries doesn't make me identify with the character any more. I was identifying with them regardless because of that situation they were faced with.

I thought it was an engrossing movie. I remember seeing the footage on the news when it happened. The movie wasn't the best, but it was on TV, free, and kept me glued for it's running time.

The reason they couldn't get off the so important "head shot" was the distance. Handguns are great at close distance, but these guys were 50-75 yards away at times, plus being shot at with an AK47... kind of hard to hold a steady hand when bullets are flying at you.

I thought the movie was pretty good also. I really enjoyed it and thought it was done in a proper way.

I also wondered how nobody was able to get a headshot. And with that and the fact that with all of the shooting and nobody was killed I thought I was watching a episode of the A-Team.

Also, Michael Madsen is awesome. And whomever's idea it was to cancel his show Vengeance Unlimited should be smacked.

FX doesn't broadcast in HD yet, and I think it's audio is limited to stereo. It was nice to see it in OAR, nonetheless. It'll probably come out on DVD in a few months.

Do you guys know anywhere online where I can download the real footage from what happened that day? I haven't been able to locate it, and I never saw it live.

Douglas,

I agree that the gun dialog in the movie was inaccurate and unnecessary and I find it funny that the cop seemed surprised and concerned about the availabilty of semi-auto AR-15's when he was specifically sent to the gun dealer to get that type of weapon!

The obvious political statements aside, I enjoyed the show and from everything I have read about the fight, it was logistically extremely accurate.

Here's a one-minute video on the shooting. Ignore the audio, though. As usual, it's filled with FUD. Just about any rifle round would go through normal police body armor, regardless of the rifle from which it was fired.

This site has the entire police radio traffic recording from the incident. It's $10, though.

For the actual video, you'll probably need to contact the local L.A. news outlets.

KNBC: (818) 840-4444
KABC: (818) 863-7777
KCBS: (323) 460-3553
KTTV: (310) 584-2000
KCOP: (323) 850-2222
KTLA: (323) 460-5500
KCAL: (323) 467-9999

I thought it was an above average made for TV movie. As much as I was familiar with the subject (I happened to have watched the whole thing live on TV when it happened) I still found myself getting emotional throught the show. Livingston and Madsen were particularly good.

Jeff, I think we're of like-mind here. Overall, I liked the movie too. However, the inaccurate dialog just takes me out of the experience and is just plain annoying to those of us out here that know a couple things about firearms.

H-wood's gotten alot better about the technical aspects in recent years (such as in movies like "Heat" and "Way of the Gun"), I should say, but they have a ways to go, IMO.

Does anyone know the name of the actress who played Mario Van Peebles partner??

Lew, FX is definitely not in HD/5.1, yet. There are only 9 cable channels that are either in HD or have announced, as far as I remember (this doesn't count PPV channels):

HBO-HD (now live)
Showtime-HD (now live)
HDnet (now live)
HDnet Movies (now live)
HDnet Entertainment (announced)
Discovery HD Theater (now live)
ESPN-HD (now live)
Cinemax-HD (announced)
Bravo-HD (announced)

Just FYI, there is a 42 minute recording of the police radio traffic available for download here:

http://www.freqofnature.com/sounds/

I only watched it because I wanted to see how they were going to stretch a 44 minute shootout into 120 minutes!

Wow, talk about your mega-commercials. They were like 6 minutes each!

As for the movie, I liked it but I have a ton of questions too. Some that really stick out - Why didn't the robbers shoot at the gas tanks of the squad cars? Why didn't the police surround the property with their squad cars so that they couldn't drive off. - That was just outright silly, IMO.

And it was only 9 AM, so the parking lot wasn't exactly full. They'd at least be able to get an idea of which was their getaway car, if they had one, but I'm sure that I missed something somewhere.

As for the future, wouldn't it be nice if the police could punch up the cameras in the bank? They'd have a much better idea of what they could and could not do.

Glenn

I don't buy the theory that the police were too shaken to get off a head shot and drop these scumbags. The police saw that the only part of their bodies that were vulnerable were the heads, but oddly nobody hit the mark!

They were hitting the shoulder's, legs, torso and arms...but not the heads. Anyone care to give me a plausable reason as to why not? I mean one would think that the law of averages would kick in and at least one bullit would hit the head of at least one of them.

Also, if I remember right, didn't one of the crooks accidentally shoot himself when his gun backfired? The film shows him committ out right suicide. Two scene's that I didn't really buy were the scenes when Ron Livingston and SWAT were on their way to the scene...and got stuck in traffic!? I was practically yelling at the screen "For God sakes man, your SWAT, drive up on the fuckin shoulder! Just get their!"

The other scene was the aftermath when the manager of the bank was outside joking around with that other guy about being open the next day. You mean after the hell he went through, especially him since he was the one the crooks were threatening the most inside the bank, he would be that calm and jubilent!? I don't think so.

With all the lead that the criminals were throwing around, I'm sure they did hit a gas tank or two, but the gas didn't ignite. A 7.62x39 round, the type of ammunition they were firing out of the AK's, is probably around 300°F as it exits the barrel ( this article talks about the 5.56 round temperature, which is used in AR-15 style weapons, among others). I would suppose that the temperature of a 7.62 round would drop precipitously as it leaves the barrel since it would no longer be rubbing against a solid. Low octane fuel has an ignition point of also about 300°F. So, if my presumptions above are correct, he would have to fire point-blank into the tank to even have a chance of causing an explosion.

However, I'm hardly an expert in thermodynamics, so I could be way off.

I might not be remembering correctly, but I think that some SWAT units that were dispatched from police stations did get caught in traffic, while other SWAT members got to the scene directly from their homes. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Douglas,

I guess that sounds about right regarding the headshot issue. However regarding what you said about the cops not knowing they were wearing protection for several minutes, according to the film at least, these same two guys had struck before, and they were wearing protection each time. If Michael Madsen's character was on the scene the whole time, he would have certaintly notified those at the scene that they were wearing protection right from the start of the shooting because he knew the MO of these two particular guy's.

Or did the film miss a step or two with this?