The mid 2000s on saw Samuel L. Jackson experimenting with a number of different roles and a variety of genres. Some experiments were more successful than others, but there’s only one complete dud on this list, and oddly enough, it has some of the most bizarre guns in any of Jackson’s movies. This era also saw him get a major part in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Nick Fury in some of the most successful box office movies of the decade.
Check out all the guns Jackson has used on screen from 2006 to 2012 below.
For the rest of Samuel L. Jackson’s movie guns, go here.
Snakes on a Plane (2006)
This intensely goofy, but extremely entertaining movie gave Jackson a bit of a career resurgence and exposed him to a much younger audience as it gained a lot of momentum on the Internet due to the casting, ridiculous premise, super direct title, and the trailer.
The movie acts like its a serious action movie, with a genuine set-up and everything. Basically, a man named Sean Jones witnesses a brutal murder in Hawaii and identifies California-based gang boss Eddie Kim as the perpetrator.
FBI agent Neville Flynn (Jackson) is assigned to protect Jones and get him to Los Angeles safely.
So, instead of assassinating Jones, Kim decides to kill the entire plane full of people to get to Jones. Does he do this by putting a bomb on the plane? No no. The authorities are ready for that. Instead, he has the cargo area of the plane loaded with containers of various breeds of poisonous snakes.
He then has the lays given to the passengers sprayed with a pheromone that makes the snakes violent and crazy. When the plane is well over the Pacific, the cages full of snakes automatically open, and the entire plane has to battle a horde of vicious poisonous snakes.
And thus we were given the immortal line of dialog: “Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfu//ing snakes on this motherfu//ing plane!”
Despite the huge Internet buzz, the campy movie didn’t do very well at the box office (most people went to see it just to see Jackson say the line above).
Beretta 92FS Inox
Agent Flynn (Jackson) carries a Beretta 92FS Inox pistol throughout the movie and uses it three times. As an FBI agent, there’s pretty much no way Flynn would be carrying the Beretta.
Even though the FBI changed its duty pistol a bunch of times through the 90s and 2000s, it never came close to the 92FS. A SIG P226 or a Glock would have been much more appropriate—but this is Snakes of a Plane.
Flynn actually draws his pistol just to deliver the much famed line, and then just puts it away for no apparent reason.
Lakeview Terrace (2008)
Lakeview Terrace is a crime thriller with an excellent, an frankly, low-key frightening performance from Jackson as a prejudiced LAPD officer who terroriszed his new next door neighbors, mostly because they are an interracial married couple. The title is a reference to the ethnically-mixed middle class LA neighborhood of Lake View Terrace.
Chris and Lisa Mattson (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) are the neighbors who slowly realize their neighbor, officer Abel Turner, is a lot more hostile than he seems.
Beretta 92FS
Turner’s duty pistols is a Beretta 92FS, a gun Jackson should be quite familiar with by now. It is also an appropriate firearms, as the LAPD issued the Beretta for a number of years, though Abel’s partner, Javier Villareal (Jay Hernandez), carries a Glock 17, the current LAPD sidearm. Often when a large police force changes its firearms, older officers are allowed to continue using the gun they are comfortable with if they choose.
Smith & Wesson 6906
Turner’s off-duty pistols is a Smith & Wesson 6906, a very similar gun to the one used in The Man. He most notably uses this gun to dispatch a criminal in the Mattson’s home in a particularly traumatizing event.
Later in the movie, Chriss Mattson (Wilson) takes the gun and uses it to defend himself.
Smith & Wesson Model 36
As any long time duty cop would, Turney also carries a small backup pistol: a Smith & Wesson Model 36—another gun Jackson has some previous on-screen experience with.
He uses this small five-shot revolver during the film’s climax.
The Spirit (2008)
After the success of Frank Miller’s Sin City in 2005 and its innovative digital style of filming that looked remarkable like the graphic novel it was based on, filmmakers tried to catch lightning in a bottle a few more times. They followed it up with 2008’s The Spirit, based on a newspaper comic strip of the same name. Frank Miller wrote and directed the movie, so it has a similar visual style to Sin City, and that’s about it.
To put a simple term to it, the movie tanked. It did very poorly at the box office and right now holds an approval rating of 14% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 3.58/10. The critical consensus on the site reads, “Though its visuals are unique, The Spirit’s plot is almost incomprehensible, the dialogue is ludicrously mannered, and the characters are unmemorable.”
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film one out of four stars and said, “There is not a trace of human emotion in it. To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material.”
Smith & Wesson Model 500
Jackson does get to use a host of bizarrely and increasingly large guns, always duel wielded, as The Octopus, a former coroner turned psychotic supervillain. who plans to bring all of Central City to its knees and who kills without discretion.
The Octopus also wears some elaborate costumes, a different one in almost every scene, including a samurai robe with a wig, a full Nazi SS uniform, a Western duster influenced outfit with a crazy huge cowboy hat, and a bunch more.
Let’s start with the handguns. The first ludicrously huge pair of guns The Octopus uses is a set of massive 4-inch Smith & Wesson Model 500 revolvers with custom barrel shrouds. The shrouds were made of matching brushed satins stainless steel and the gun’s cylinders were re-machined.
Desert Eagle Mark XIX
The next pair of ludicrously huge guns The Octopus uses are twin stainless IMI Desert Eagle Mark XIX pistols in .50 AE, the largest model they make.
Short-Barreled O/U Shotguns
We can still call these pistols. The Octopus wields a pair of short-barreled O/U shotguns built from a pair of CZ Redhead 12 gauge sporting guns, according to imfdb.org. He also has a really nice and warm looking coat and hat.
Quad Guns
Giant O/U shotgun pistols were not enough.
The Octopus had to upgrade to an unconventional pair of “Quad Guns” made of two sets of short-barreled shotguns per firearm. The character mentions while holding these two cannons that he likes to use “eight of everything.”
Most likely, these were only props that had muzzle flash added later in post.
Cluster Guns
Then we move on to the really absurd. The Octopus duel wields a pair of giant machine guns that look like something out of a bad anime. They are clusters of real firearms that have been attached to each other—and upon closer inspection, are likely a bunch of airsoft guns attached to each other. That would at least make it feasible for the actor to lift these gigantic things.
We see a lot in here, including M4 carbines, Springfield Model 11s with fake suppressors, an H&K UMP with face suppressor, lots of Aimpoint sights, rails, and foregrips plys flashlights and some 12 gauge shell holders on the sides. There’s also a SPAS 12 shotgun in there.
Iron Man 2 (2010)
While Jackson made brief appearances as Nick Fury in earlier Marvel movies, he didn’t get a real scene until Iron Man 2. Fun fact, the comic artists over at Marvel gave Nick Fury an updated appearance before the movies ever came out and they used Jackson’s likeness (without permission) for the new Fury.
Instead of being angry about it, Jackson was flattered, and was more than willing to take up the part when it was offered to him. So Nick Fury in the comics and the movies has matched for quite a while.
Glock 17
This is also the first time we see Nick Fury with a firearm of any kind. He appears to be carrying a Glock 17 in a black leather shoulder holster.
In the early Marvel Phase 1 movies, the Glock 17 was the standard sidearm of S.H.I.E.L.D. before being replaced by the Smith & Wesson M&P9 in later movies.
The Other Guys (2010)
This wasn’t a very popular one and you may have missed it, but if you saw it, and you got it, then you’re with me. This movie just kills me for some reason. Its flat out hilarious, and the first act pretty much makes fun of all buddy cop movie cliches right off the bat, including pairing Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson as the uber cops of the NYPD, kind of like Riggs and Murtaugh on steroids (pun intended).
It opens with an absurd car chase causing millions in damage on a New York City street, and miraculously, even with cars crashing through buses, no innocent civilians are hurt.
Colt Python .357 Magnum
In what is probably a dig at the Dirty Harry series, Det. P.K. Highsmith (Jackson) carries a Colt Python .357 Magnum long barreled revolver in a Galco shoulder holsters as his primary firearm.
During the car chase he fires it from moving vehicles and even uses it to blow off the hinges on the hood of his car when it flips up and blocks the windshield on the vintage muscle car that he uses for police work. He even says something about just getting the car last week when it gets mangled.
Glock 19
In the movie, the standard carry pistol for the NYPD is the Glock 19. Will Ferrel’s character is hilariously given a wooden version used for ceremonies to replace his sidearm after his “desk pop” incident.
Highsmith carries one of these as well as his Python, and he fires both through the windshield of his car as it sails through the air after being ejected from the bus it was stuck in and gets flung into a building—yeah, I’m pretty sure this whole segment is meant to make fun of Michael Bay.
Meeting Evil (2012)
This is an under-the-radar, direct to video thriller with a serious creep factor. John Felton (Luke Wilson) is a down on his luck real estate agent who was fired on his birthday and his house has gone into foreclosure, exacerbating tensions in a marriage rapidly going downhill. His wife leaves with the kids after an argument, and the, a mysterious stranger (Jackson) knocks on his door asking for help. He says his name is Richie and that he’s having car problems.
John helps him push it, but hurts his leg in the process. Richie takes John to the hospital, but its revealed that Richie is actually a psychotic serial killer who is working to frame John for his crimes, and possibly go after John’s wife and kids.
Single Action Army in .22LR
The psycho Richie carries a Single Action Army revolver, which from looking at the muzzle, is chambered in .22LR.
John briefly gets a hold of the revolver, but drops it.The gun is later recovered by Frank and Latisha at the farmhouse.
S&W Military & Police
Richie also takes a Smith & Wesson M&P revolver from a deputy, along with his uniform. He then carries the double action revolver for a good portion of the film.
Double Barrel Shotgun
The Avengers (2012)
While the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have similar gear when it comes to uniforms and gunbelts, they all carry different sidearms depending on the movie, and the main characters who are also a part of the organization carry pretty much whatever they prefer.
Their leader, Nick Fury (Jackson), carries a Smith & Wesson M&P in 9mm. In the spinoff show Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., all agents carry the M&P, while most agents in the movies use Glock 17s, but not all.
Smith & Wesson M&P9
In his first appearance of any significance at the end of Iron Man 2, Fury carried a Glock 17 in a shoulder holster
In subsequent appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Fury carries one S&W M&P9 in a drop leg holster on his right side. A gun in his left hand wouldn’t do much good, since he’s missing an eye on that side. The pistol is featured prominent in publicity stills and posters and was fairly new when the movie was made.
The M&P is a striker fired polymer framed handgun platform that is now available in several configurations and calibers, including .380 ACP, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP in addition to the original 9mm chambering. It’s also available as a 22LR pistol as well as tactical versions with extended threaded barrels.
In some promotional materials for The Avengers, Fury is depicted holding two pistols, but he never does so in the actual film. As I mentioned above, it would be kind of pointless since he only has one eye.
