Shooting Vest Shotgun

Movie question about body armor in the Punisher?

In the 2003 movie the Punisher in the last shoot out scene the main character puts on some body armor and later takes a point blank shot with what looks like a 12gauge shotgun. It looks like soft armor maybe III-A rated. To my knowledge III-A will only stop up to a .44. Anything more “bullet resistant”, for lack of a better term, would have steel plating right? Is this just hollyweird BS or is there stronger soft armor than III-A?

My room mate and I are very critical of firearm flubs in movies and this was one of those we didn’t know about so I figured I would ask.Also the vest takes repeated shots from a 1911 .45ACP, how well would soft armor stand up to repeated abuse like that?

Here is the scene I am referring to. The body armor in question is about 1min., and 15 seconds into the video. The hit from the shotgun is around 4:25 in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCj_uZbX4QE&feature=related

Shotguns, contrary to the popular mythos, are not super powerful, kill-all weapons. Shotgun pellets, the bigger they are, are some of the easiest projectiles there are to be stopped by soft armor. Big, blunt, soft lead projectiles will kick you in the chest like a mule, but they don’t tend to penetrate. Smaller, FMJ rounds penetrate far better. .45 ACP is easily stopped, too. You can think of it like trying to throw a basketball through a chainlink fence….as opposed to throwing a golfball through the same fence.

ar-15 tactical shooting “run and gun”