That title, of course, is a little tongue-in-cheek, since actors have no say whatsoever what the prop department yanks out of the studio warehouse. What they slap in a fake superspy’s palm has more to do with fantasy and projecting the correct image than any practical utility. “Better than nothing” is not a compliment.

The veracity of weapons in action movie history is notoriously sketchy. For every whisper-quiet “silencer,” there are stories of actors and actresses training to make their action scenes as believable as possible. Before we dip into the action hall of shame, we should point out that there are some stars who don’t shy away from the gritty details, and know a decent weapon from a Nerf gun. Egged on by his Collateral director (not that he ever needed encouragement), Tom Cruise lost himself in the role of a contract hitman. Keanu Reeves gets extra credit for firearm training, mastering the mechanics of a modern-day gunslinger. According to Val Kilmer, one of the stars of the 1995 crime flick Heat, a certain scene of him reloading a rifle was so impressive that the U.S. Marine Corps would show it to new recruits to demonstrate the speed that is expected in drills.

Not everyone can be John Wick. The average actor has about as much first-hand skill with a gun as the Girl Scout who sold them a box of over-priced Thin Mints. The villians don’t fare much better.

Hope Dirty Harry Saved the Receipt

In a more realistic world, Detective Harry Callahan would be dead in about four seconds, the approximate time it takes for the .44 Auto Mag Pistol to jam. His massive gun, as seen in the Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact, has a bad reputation. He should have stuck with his trusty revolver instead of the AMP. Even gun nuts despise the thing with a passion. There’s a reason this thing went out of production and the company went out of business. All the good press and free marketing in the world was not enough to save this turd from the dustbin of history. It’s got the weight and ergonomics of a blender, and about as effective at fifty yards.

Almost as famous as Dirty Harry’s .44 magnum is James Bond’s pistol. Taking aim squarely at the suavest secret agent who ever lived, Pulitzer-winning journalist and crime author Stephen Hunter criticized none other than Bond for his choice of sidearm. In his Washington Post piece, Hunter was bewildered by Bond’s favorite gun, the iconic Walther PPK, mocking the pistol for its terrible sights, jarring recoil, gritty trigger, and tendency to gouge up the shooter’s hands with sharp pointy edges. In 007’s defense, he had it thrust upon him. Maybe it was better in the fifties when Ian Fleming wrote his novels, we’ll never be sure if it was purely aesthetics. Bond always was a snob. Makes sense he’d like German craftsmanship. Good thing a license to kill comes with NHS coverage.

Related: Sean Connery’s James Bond Gun from Dr. No Goes Up for Auction

“That Belongs in a Museum!”
Sony Pictures Television

Modern action-movie viewers might recognize the Sten MK II, better known as simply the Sten, as the face of the British infantry during WWII. Later it became the go-to bad-guy gun, seen in countless James Bond movies and the Austin Powers films. In Allied, it is depicted as a precise weapon ideal for special ops. It’s more likely that any British commando would ditch it immediately for a German gun, seeing how they both used the exact same ammo and magazines. In the most daring commando operation in the whole of WWII, Anthropoid, the Sten failed in dramatic fashion, jamming like a rusty stapler.

The Sten was a last-ditch machine gun, designed to be as cheap and easy to produce as possible to replace more reliable and expensive guns. It was pieced together so awkwardly, soldiers never knew exactly how to grip it. It was constructed together with all the grace of a kid mashing Lego pieces together. The weight distribution and ease of handling were notorious, with the extra bonus of accidentally discharging if a soldier ever dropped it as consequence of its very basic blow-back firing system. In an ironic twist, the pernicious movie cliché of guns firing when dropped likely originated with this piece of janky hardware, earning the Sten that much more scorn. No one would ever opt for this outdated hunk of junk if they had the choice, especially an evil super genius like Dr. Evil.

Related: John Wick Director Weighs in on the Rust Shooting Incident and Guns on Movie Sets

Even if you know nothing about history or firearms, you’re also familiar with the Mauser C96, often affectionately called the “broomhandle” for its grip that looks curiously out of place. Evidently it was so cool that George Lucas’ British prop team repurposed the archaic German-made C96 as Han Solo’s blaster in Star Wars. There’s a reason you see this in WWII films and in period pieces like Indiana Jones films, westerns, and Peaky Blinders; it’s absolutely ancient, predating the Model T by several years. Now imagine Dom Torretto bringing a Model T to a street race against a modern Ferrarri, and you begin to see the issue. It simply doesn’t make much sense why an international crime lord in Lethal Weapon 2 would use it, let alone a guy in a post-apocalyptic Australia as in Fury Road, but that just might be a call back by George Miller to one of the goons in the original Mad Max film in 1979, another firearm-related scene which made no sense in context.

Sticking it to the Bad Guy
United Artists

Firearms are relatively easy to rate, a long history of warfare to gauge their reliability. How do you evaluate the viability of a bowler hat with a razor blade? Going by Oddjob’s final outcome in Goldfinger, not very well.

Of all the impromptu weapons in pop culture, nailguns seem to pop up often, best exemplified in the nailgun scene from The Equalizer. This obviously wouldn’t work for a number of reasons. Besides the inability to fire a nail unless it is held against a hard surface to fire, the average nail from a pneumatic nail-gun fires below the speed of a BB gun. That’s enough to pierce skin or shoot your eye out up close, but not nearly enough to kill. Ask Werner Herzog. To say nothing of the tumbling effect of a nail over distance. Home Depot will not address your home defense needs. Kudos to Lethal Weapon for getting it right.

Sci-fi is another story. Sorry Trekkies, jury’s still out on the Bat’leth. Not much hard data on that made-up Klingon dueling weapon. It does have the appearance of something you would buy at the mall, and doesn’t have much range, so not looking good. We’re going to assume that was ceremonial. As far as outrageous futuristic sci-fi gear goes, it’s got nothing on the ZF 1 from The Fifth Element.