In the upcoming Sleepless, Jamie Foxx is back in an action role, playing Vincent, a Las Vegas cop who once worked undercover in a robbery ring.
From what we can tell from the trailers and the scant information released by the studio, Vincent’s cover gets blown during an assignment and years later, it comes back to get him when some bad guys attack Vincent and his young son in their car, kidnapping the boy. Its up to Vincent and his partner Sean, played by rapper T.I., to get his son back.
Check out the trailer below:
From the quick-cut footage, we can see a few guns, mostly in the hands of bad guys.
While assumedly undercover, we see several masked men surround a vehicle and hijack it. During a struggle, one of the men holding a Remington 870 with a pistol grip and a sawed-off barrel has his masked ripped off, and it’s revealed to be Vincent.
Here we see Foxx in uniform firing a pistol, but he’s moving too much to see what it is. Since police officers in Las Vegas are permitted to choose from Glock, Heckler & Koch, SIG-Sauer, Smith & Wesson, or Springfield—and they can choose 9mm, .40 S&W or .45 ACP chamberings—it really could be anything.
Several gunmen in the trailer are armed with M4A1 carbines. At least one looks to be military stock with an integrated carry handle and an ACOG sight mounted atop it.
At another point in the flashy cuts we see a man in a gas mask toting an M16A4 fitted with an M203 grenade launcher. The military began mounting the M203, which is a single-shot 40mm launcher that can fire various exploding projectiles, bot lethal and non-lethal, under rifles so that the grenadier in a given squad could also serve as a rifleman. It replaced the standalone M79 break-action launcher, which fired the same rounds, though standalone version of the M203 do exist.
Currently the M203 is being replaced by the M320 launcher made by Heckler & Koch, which is more reliable, ergonomic, accurate, and safe, but still fires 40mm ammunition. The unit can either be attached to a rifle or carbine under the barrel, or it can be dismounted and used with a stock attached as a standalone.
Though that’s all we see of Foxx in the trailer, a couple other handguns can be identified. Rob Novak (Scoot McNairy) uses what appears to be a Ruger Super Redhawk Alaskan revolver. The real gun comes in .44 Magnum, .454 Casull, and .45 Long Colt, and we don’t get nearly close enough a look in the trailer to tell which this one is.
Sleepless premiers today in theaters worldwide.
Collateral (2004)
We also see Internal Affairs Detective Doug Dennison (David Harbour) running down a hallway and pointing a Glock 17 pistol, possibly a Gen 2 model. A Glock is another permitted choice for Las Vegas police.
While Foxx had been acting in movies since 1996, he didn’t pick up a gun on screen until 2004’s Collateral when he played an innocent Los Angeles cab driver who is taken hostage and forced to do a hitman’s bidding.
Here we see Foxx as Max with Vincent’s (Tom Cruise) H&K USP45 pistol. He uses it to shoot Vincent in a nighttime showdown on a commuter train as the lights flicker, getting the better of the seasoned assassin by pure chance. While Cruise got the majority of trigger time in Collateral, Foxx went on to some seriously gun heavy roles.
Jarhead (2005)
In 2005 Foxx had a memorable supporting role in the psychological war movie Jarhead as Marine Staff Sgt. Sykes, the fast talking, hard nosed commander of Jake Gyllenhaal’s Anthony Swofford. The film was based on the real U.S. Marine Anthony Swofford’s 2003 memoir with the same title that detailed Swofford’s experiences after joining the Marine Corps in 1989.
In the film, Swofford doesn’t feel like he fits in the Marines and has a difficult time when stationed at Camp Pendleton, often feigning illness to avoid responsibilities. Sykes (Foxx) takes not of the Marine’s potential and orders him to attend his Scout Sniper course.
Once they get to Kuwait to fight in Desert Storm, Foxx gets his hands on a number of military arms of the time, including an M16A2, and, in a famous scene, fires an M60E3 machine gun into the air by firelight as the troops celebrate the end of the conflict. In a flash-forward, as Swofford is delivering his monologue at the end of the film, we see now Master Sgt. Sykes serving in Iraq armed with an M4A1 carbine fitted with an ACOG scope and RIS foregrip.
Miami Vice (2006)
In 2006, Foxx took on a pure action role with Michael Mann’s highly stylized adaptation of the TV show Miami Vice. Foxx plays Ricardo Tubbs opposite Colin Farrell as Sonny Crockett as two Miami-Dade undercover detectives who find themselves working with the FBI on a case involving drug trafficking between white supremacists and the Colombian cartel.
For his main sidearm, Tubbs carries a SIG-Sauer P220R pistol.
He’s also seen checking the cylinder of a Smith & Wesson Model 642 Airweight, which he might keep on him at all times as a backup gun.
When it comes to long guns, Tubbs often uses a Benelli M4 Super 90, especially during the final firefight.
Tubbs also uses a Heckler & Koch HK69A1 Grenade Launcher with the M576 buckshot round, which he uses to blow the lock off a door at the drug warehouse. He also uses it to blow a rather large hole in Yero’s (John Ortiz) chest at the end of the movie.
According to the audio commentary on the film, Michael Mann got the idea of using the grenade load from a Vietnam vet, who, like many American grenadiers who used the M79 grenade launcher often removed the plastic explosive (Comp A5) and P.I.B.D. (Point Initiating Base Detonating Fuze) detonating mechanism out of the 40mm projectiles and replacing it with buckshot, which effectively turned it into 12 gauge shotgun for close encounters with soft targets.
The Kingdom (2007)
2007 saw Foxx in a serious action role in The Kingdom, an action thriller directed by Peter Berg set in Saudi Arabia. The story is loosely based on the 1996 bombing of the Khobar housing complex and the 2003 bombing of the Riyadh compound.
As a hardcore operator instead of a regular soldier, Foxx got his hands on a bunch of cool guns in this flick, including a custom AKMS rifle with a vertical foregrip and an AK47-style muzzle brake that he picks up in the climactic gun battle and carries for the rest of the movie.
Foxx’s main weapon as FBI Special Agent Ronald Fleury, and that of the other agents, is the Heckler & Koch HK91A2 rifles. The guns in the film have been designed to look like the H&K G3SG/1, fitted with a folding bipod, and converted to full-auto.
Django Unchained (2012)
Undoubtedly Foxx’s coolest gun-heavy roll came in 2007 when he took the titular role in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. While also a nod to a pulpy western film series from the ’70s, it also takes place in the deep south before the Civil War, causing Tarantino to dub it a Southern.
Django is a slave who is taken on as a companion by Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a bounty hunter who buys his freedom and teaches him how to be a gunfighter.
Django turns out to be a natural shot, taking out a moving target on horseback during their first bounty hunt together at long range with Schultz’s Sharps 1874 Buffalo rifle, which is a pretty big anachronism, since the gun wasn’t introduced until 20 years after the film’s time period.
One of Schultz’s other cool weapons is a Cobra “Big Bore” derringer in .38 Special, which he keeps attached to drawer slides in his sleeves for a super surprise quick draw a la Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. The derringer is polished steel with pearl grips. Django uses it when he approaches two of the Brittle brothers while they’re whipping a slave. The derringer is another anachronistic gun, as they didn’t become popular until after the Civil War.
Django is an excellent shot with a pistol, especially after a whole winter of training with Schultz, who carries what looks to be a Remington 1858 New Army pistol, which you can ID from its distinctive fin under the barrel. In the shootout at Candyland, Django duel-wields revolvers, one of which is an 1858 New Army. The other is a Colt 1851 Navy.
At the end of the film, Django uses another Remington 1858 New Army .44 caliber revolver. As he assumedly steals it from the Candyland mansion while it’s empty, it’s a big fancier than the other guns we’ve seen, featuring a gleaming brass frame.
Although he takes a very sweet-looking Remington 1858 New Army “Cattleman’s Carbine” with a long barrel and a permanent buttstock from the slave traders during his escape, and is seen carrying it on horseback, he never actually uses it on screen.
White House Down (2013)
Foxx’s most recent gun role came in the very action heavy, but not-so-smart flick White House Down, which felt more like an intended Die Hard sequel than anything else.
Foxx plays U.S. President James Sawyer, who is on the run in the White House when a heavily armed group of paramilitary invaders take control of the building and the whole area.
Foxx is first seen carrying a Springfield Armory XD-45 Tactical taken from Vadim (Anatoly Zinoviev) to defend himself as he and Cale (Channing Tatum) flee through the White House catacombs.
Later in the film, as the action heats up, President Sawyer fires a Brügger & Thornet MP9 submachine gun after taking it from a downed mercenary.
In one of the more outlandish scenes, President Sawyer is being chased in the presidential limousine when he takes out a custom rocket launcher that looks like an Airtronic RPG-7D paratrooper model fitted with an M4-style stock and RIS rails. The launcher can be taken down into two pieces. The movie launcher appears to be loaded with a rocket featuring a chromed warhead, probably for aesthetic purposes.
Sleepless hits theaters worldwide today!