Pitch Perfect Pistol Product Placement

For many years, I thought that no actor could ever do a better job of providing a movie endorsement for a pistol than Clint Eastwood did for the Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum in the film, Dirty Harry. (“I know what you’re thinking, punk. Did he shoot five times, or was it six? To tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I don’t know myself. But seeing how this is the .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, if I got one left, it’s gonna take your head clean off, so you gotta be asking yourself: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”) I wonder if the board at Smith & Wesson sends Mr. Eastwood Christmas cards.

Shortly before the turn of the previous century, the Israelis manufactured a new pistol called the “Desert Eagle .50” that fires a gargantuan round of immense impact, but dubious practicality. The recoil from firing a single round just might break the shooter’s wrist. In 2000, Vinnie Jones, a former soccer player, appeared in a film called Snatch, in which he plays a character named Bullet-Tooth Tony. He is sitting in a pub, sipping a beer and sitting on a suitcase full of contraband when three young men who are wearing ski masks approach him, waving pistols in his face and demanding that he hand over the suitcase. Bullet-Tooth Tony takes a sip of his beer, then calmly explains to the fearsome-looking trio that there are two kinds of cojones. Guys with little one carry pistols that have “replica” printed on their sides, and guys with big ones carry pistols engraved with “Desert Eagle .50.” He then points his fifty-caliber at them and says, “F*** off.” The trio of would-be thieves vacates the premises post-haste.