3M's own Ultra S800 documentation states the product is not bulletproof. We repeat that on every school and facility walk-through, because the alternative — letting a board believe they've bought ballistic protection — is a genuinely dangerous thing to allow.
What safety film does is hold glass together. An 8-mil tear-resistant multilayer film with roughly 31,500 psi tensile strength turns a pane that used to shatter into a membrane that flexes, spiders, and stays in the opening. An intruder expecting one swing now needs a sustained, loud, visible attack. That delay is the product.
Here's the part most bids skip: filmed glass can still be pushed out of the frame as a single sheet. To get rated forced-entry performance, the film has to be anchored to the frame with an attachment system. 3M makes two — a wet-applied Impact Protection Attachment sealant (350 psi ultimate tensile, 525% elongation) and a dry Impact Protection Profile (over 20,500 psi, full adhesion in one to two days, no odor).
For an occupied school hallway, the dry profile is usually the right answer: no solvent smell, no ventilation plan, no evacuating a wing. For a summer shutdown where you can give the sealant its cure time, the wet system is the strongest bond available.
So when you compare bids, ask one question: which attachment system did you spec? If the answer is none, you're buying a film job, not a security system — and they should not be priced the same.