In the action genre, some characters go beyond a mere Gun Struggle. They will intercept an opponent's gun arm, aim it where they please and force their victim to shoot by squeezing the trigger finger.
Usually the objective here is to wipe out the adversary's fellow mooks. There's no time to disarm them conventionally and risking exposure to shots. Another possibility (contrary to the title of the trope) is eliminating the threat of a weapon by firing all its ammunition. Sometimes reducing the gun to pieces, to be absolutely sure. Then the battle can turn into a hand-to-hand fight.
There are several interesting permutations:
- A villain will culminate the murder of his enemy's friends by finally turning the gun on the opponent himself, therefore framing a multiple murder-suicide (or just a suicide, if it's a one on one confrontation). Technically, the victim's hand never left his pistol, so there's no evidence to suggest foul play (so long as the villain wears gloves or wipes his prints off before leaving). Or perhaps he doesn't even care about the frame aspect, but just wants to throw salt in the wounds after making the guy watch his friends die effectively by his own hand. Heroic characters are less likely to do this unless they're outright anti heroes.
- A martial arts enthusiast performs joint locks on the adversary while simultaneously aiming and shooting. He might even break their wrist, shoulder, or trigger finger to allow for a tricky shot. He might then take the gun off them when the peripheral threats have been eliminated. Occasionally the gun fires because of pain compliance, so the joint locks both force the mook's arm to both aim and shoot.
- A sufficiently badass character takes Human Shield to its logical conclusion. Not only is he using the person's body to defend himself against their friends, he's using their arm to attack them as well! Usually this is from the standard "stand behind shielding person's back" but a character who's talented enough will contort themselves and their shield so it can work from practically any position.
Requires Improbable Aiming Skills to correctly land shots on moving targets while forcing a struggling mook to aim their arm. Usually characters are able to kill with a bare minimum of shots using this trope. Popular with The Ace, a Cowboy Cop and/or a character with Success Through Insanity. Sister Trope to Gun Struggle, which might occur before during and/or after the shots are fired. Also see Use Their Own Weapon Against Them.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- One The Punisher / Captain America crossover has Frank throw a knife into an enemy mook, hitting just the right spot for the guard's body to tense and spray on full-auto, killing his comrades.
Film — Animation
- In Incredibles 2, Elastigirl has to fight both Mr. Incredible and Frozone on the ship's bridge since they are still wearing hypno-goggles. She jumps onto Frozone and directs his stream of ice onto Mr. Incredible.
- In The Little Mermaid (1989), Ursula is about to shoot Prince Eric with a blast from King Triton's trident. Ariel grabs Ursula's hair from behind and pulls her backwards, so that her shot hits Flotsam and Jetsam instead. Played for Drama, since Ursula loved her eels like they were her children, and when she sees Ariel and Eric escaping to the surface, she goes on a One-Winged Angel Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- In Pixar's first Toy Story, Woody uses Buzz Lightyear as a Human Shield to escape from Sid's room. To repel Sid's hideous toys, Woody presses a button on Buzz's back that activates Buzz's Karate-Chop Action. This works because Sid's toys are actually not hostile to Woody and Buzz.
Buzz: Hey, hey, hey! How're you doing that?
Film — Live-Action
- In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Batman once again does this in a fight. After using his gadgets to destroy most of the assault rifles being held by the mooks, he grabs one and spins him around so that his wild trigger pulls force the rest of the group to scatter.
- Subverted in Cutters Way (AKA Cutter and Bone) In which Cutter grasps the dying Bone's hand to aid him in aiming his pistol at the murderous upper-class villain.
- The Dark Knight Trilogy:
- Throughout the series, Batman himself does this when he's swatting aside the firearms of mooks. That is, when he's not twisting the barrel irreparably with a hand brace or stripping a shotgun apart in his plain clothes guise. His rationale is to safely discharge the weapon and avoid lethal injuries for everyone involved in a situation.
- In The Dark Knight Rises, Selina Kyle uses this on Daggett's mooks in the bar fight, likely to avoid leaving fingerprints, as she is a wanted criminal.
- In Deadpool, Deadpool uses a mook to shoot the other mook driver in the knee during the car chase sequence.
- In Deadpool 2, Wade makes a mook shoot himself, by putting his hand on the barrel, letting the mook blow a hole through his hand, then grabbing the gun with the hole in his hand to turn it toward the mook's own head as he pulls the trigger again.
- Undercover detective Damien has to get out of a dangerous casino the hard way in District 13. So he pulls off an impressive example of the trope, shooting several mooks from multiple angles by locking up a thug's arm in various ways. He also shoots the thug through his leg. He then grabs another mook's arm and forces him to spray bullets around harmlessly before knocking him out.
- Played for drama in Fury when War Daddy forces Norman to shoot a German POW. He refuses, so War Daddy grips his struggling hand and literally pulls the trigger with Norman's finger.
- During the battle aboard the fishing boat in The Guns of Navarone, Andrea wrestles with a German sailor and twists him around, making him fire his gun, hitting and killing the German patrol boat captain.
- In Invasion U.S.A. (1985), Matt Hunter kills Nikko (The Dragon) by sneaking up to him from behind, yanking Nikko's gun hand up to his temple and pulling the trigger.
- James Bond:
- In Tomorrow Never Dies, James Bond does this to Doctor Kaufman to make his death look like a murder-suicide.
- In the very first scene of The World Is Not Enough, this is how Bond kills a couple mooks.
- In Lethal Weapon, Riggs storms a room full of bad guys to rescue his partner Murtaugh and daughter Rianne. He forces Mr. Larch to shoot a buddy with an arm lock then turns the gun back onto Larch and kills him too.
- In Live Free or Die Hard, John McClane uses this trope to kill the Big Bad who is standing behind him, shooting through his own shoulder in the process. Therefore inverting the Human Shield variant.
- In The Lone Ranger (2013), Tonto hijacks a train and a cavalry soldier opens fire on him with a gatling gun. the Ranger lassos the gun barrel and redirects it towards the soldiers that are trying to apprehend Tonto, forcing them into retreat.
- The Mask of Zorro: In the prologue, Zorro makes his presence known to the crowd when he snags the guns of the firing squad and redirects them at the commander.
- The Matrix series:
- In the opening scene of The Matrix, several police officers try to arrest Trinity and she attacks them. During the fight she grabs one of them and forces him to use his gun to shoot another officer.
- Another example of the "cooperative shooting" variant is in The Matrix Reloaded. While Morpheus and the albino ghost twin are fighting over a gun during the freeway chase, they cooperate to shoot at the Agent who has just torn off the roof of the car they're in. To very little effect.
- Played with in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indiana Jones is wrestling for a gun with a mook. When a second mook gets the order to shoot them both, Indy and his adversary work together to fire off several shots at the second mook.
- Serenity. During River's Bar Brawl, someone pulls a gun with the intent to shoot her. She simply grabs his arm and forces him to aim past her, shooting one of the fighters on her other side.
- Marv does this to thwart an attempted ambush in Sin City.
- Star Trek Beyond: Uhura is actually seen redirecting a weapon one of Kraal's men is firing at another one while they're attempting to board the Enterprise.
- Jake is trying to bring Alonzo (who's currently unarmed) to justice in Training Day. But as he's climbing over a railing, Alonzo gets the drop on him and causes Jake's gun to be discharged into the local projects (the Jungle), thereby turning the confrontation into a fist fight. This act was probably the final straw for the disillusioned people living on that street, considering Alonzo's history of using them for his own needs.
Live-Action TV
- In an episode of Highlander, Duncan and Richie get caught up in a bank robbery. Richie ends up grabbing a female robber from behind. While struggling, she fires her submachinegun and accidentally hits her partner and lover. It turns out that she's Immortal, and he wasn't. And now she blames Richie for his death and wants his head. Luckily, Duncan knows her and trains Richie to counter her signature move.
- Happens in Leverage during "The Lost Heir Job". Elliot disarms somebody, who then pulls a taser on him. Elliot uses his taser against another mook sneaking up behind him.
- Nash Bridges: Not as a part of the central episode story, at the start of "Knockout", a gunman gets distracted, incapacitated, and has his firearm still in his hand while it's being fired at his allies immediately after. That's what Nash does when that gunman tells him to sit tight and wait for a moving bridge to crush his partner cop Joe. From the way the bad guys call them at the moment, it looks like Joe has been exposed as an undercover agent, while Nash hasn't.
- In a fight on Superman & Lois, one of Jordan's opponents is about to fire her eye beams at him, so he grabs and turns her head just in time to make the beams hit his second attacker, instead.
Video Games
- Call of Duty:
- Call of Duty: Black Ops has an example of this where Woods grabs a bad guys shotgun, shoots some other guys with it and then kills him giving the shotgun to Mason. In a later mission, Mason seizes a Vietcong soldier from behind and forces him to fire his own machine gun on more VC in a boat opposite them.
- Call of Duty: Ghosts pulls this on the player; the Player Character takes a gun from the Big Bad, who turns it on one of the Player Character's allies.
- The Last of Us Joel does this early in the game to a Quarantine Zone soldier who just won't let go of his pistol.
- Metal Gear:
- In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker an interactive cutscene occurs wherein Big Boss tries to escape the custody of a squad worth of heavily armed CIA mercs. At one point he pulls the Human Shield variation of the trope. Forcing the guy to fire an M4 rifle one handed, no less. Well, both of their hands are on the gun...
- In the fourth game a cybernetic variant occurs during Raiden's over the top battle with the Gekko mecha. One of the badass moves he pulls is to leap onto a Gekko's head and force its M2 Browning HMG to cut down one of its partner IFVs. Justified by his augmented robotic strength.
Webcomics
- In Schlock Mercenary, after General Xinchub captures his old enemies Captain Tagon and Colonel Jaksmouth, just for fun he has his ship (a battleplate) manipulate Tagon's gun arm with its tractor beams to make him shoot Jaksmouth.
Tagon: Not five minutes ago I wanted to do that. How is it possible for you to suck the fun out of everything?!
- In the finale of the comic, the Pa'anuri have developed a "long gun", capable of sniping targets in the Milky Way... from Andromeda. However, given the distance, it uses wormholes to make this possible - which allows Ennesby to, at a critical moment, swap the coordinates they're firing at to make the long gun fire on - and destroy - itself.
Western Animation
- Archer has Sterling Archer working the grill in Bob's Burgers in a crossover segment (Season 4 Episode 1), since both Sterling Archer and Bob Belcher are voiced by H. Jon Benjamin. Four Russian spies enter the diner, intent on kidnapping Sterling/Bob. As one thug goes for his family, Sterling snags the thug's gun, pulls his arm onto the counter, then wrenches that arm the opposite way. This dislocates the thug's shoulder, and causes the handgun to discharge into the midsection of another thug. Sterling may be a capital jerkass, but he has phenomenal melee combat skills.
- In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Hama has the ability to control other people by bending the water in their bodies. She forces Sokka to draw his blade and attempt to impale Aang (who she's also controlling), forcing Katara to learn blood-bending to make her stop.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
- In "Ambush", Yoda takes down a crowd of B2 super battle droids using one of their own. The Jedi Grand Master lifts one using the Force and forces it to fire Guns Akimbo, picking off half the droids until they destroy their misused comrade.
Battle droid: Get out of the way! All of you! I'm a having a serious malfunction!- In "The Gungan General", Dooku uses the Force to force Turk Falso to shoot his co-conspirator, Barb Mentir, before Force-choking Falso and stealing the now dead pirates' ship.
- In "Crisis at the Heart", when Padmé Amidala attempts to defend herself from Count Dooku with a blaster, he uses the Force to make her shoot Bec Lawise when the Separatist senator protests Dooku's orders to arrest her.
- Star Wars Rebels: Vader almost pulls the forced suicide version when he pins Ezra to a support beam and nearly forces him to decapitate himself with his own lightsaber. Ezra is only saved by Kanan managing to briefly distract Vader at the last minute.
