Ronin

Factual error: When Gregor shoots the guy in the car after nearly killing the little girl, blood sprays over the window, but there's no bullet hole. If the bullet exited his head, hence spraying blood, it should have gone through the window too. (00:55:00)

Jon Sandys

Continuity mistake: During the chase scene, there is a Citroen XM series II (the citroen sign in the middle, on the front) and then there's a Citroen XM series I (the citroen sign on the driver's side, on the front). It changes back and forth a couple of times. There's also a difference at the bottom of the car; the series I carries the name Citroen XM on the left side, while the series II bears a Citroen sign on the left side and the XM sign on the right.

Continuity mistake: During the big car chase the Audi S8 rams the Citroen, pushing back the headlights on the Audi but on the subsequent scenes in the town the front of the Audi is intact.

Continuity mistake: When Gregor tries to sell the case, he puts the Jeep into park (we hear the sounds of an automatic transmission, and in a brief shot of the pedals there's no clutch). But he jolts the car forward a minute later without shifting into drive.

Ronin mistake picture

Visible crew/equipment: When Vincent and Sam are running through the ice rink's changing rooms to get the case off Gregor, the camera passes a mirror. If you pay attention, you can quite clearly see the boom operator wearing a blue and white checked shirt in it. (01:43:40)

Continuity mistake: At the end of the Paris car chase with the BMW M5 and the Peugeot, Jonathan Pryce fires a few shots at De Niro and Jean Reno in the pursuit car. One shot takes the left wing mirror clean off, and De Niro even jerks his head to the side in reaction to the shot. The mirror comes off in mid frame, and you can even see the adjustment wires dangling from the mirror base. In all subsequent scenes, the mirror is back on the car.

Factual error: Supposedly the holders of the mystery briefcase are holed up in Nice; but when De Niro and McElhone go to check out the bad guys security arrangements at their hotel, the hotel is in Cannes (believe me) and the Michelin Green Guide that De Niro is carrying is opened to a map of Cannes. (00:33:56)

Visible crew/equipment: During the initial chase with the Audi S8 immediately after the messed-up arms deal, you can see exhaust fumes and tire smoke from the leading camera car in most front shots of the gang.

Continuity mistake: In the early scene of the arms deal, when they are waiting in the car for the arms dealers to turn up, Robert De Niro (in the back seat) is initially unshaven, but then later in the scene he is clean-shaven.

Continuity mistake: In the car chase after the bald guy with the suitcase, when his car approaches a fish market inside Nice, you can see a guy with a water hose running to the right, to avoid being hit by a car. His hose is connected to some point on the left, however in the following shot there is no pipe across the road.

Continuity mistake: When Spence draws the sniper ambush scenario on the whiteboard and gets stopped, the cup of coffee is set down on a small table. When Spence backs away into the cup, its handle has turned itself around. (00:27:30 - 00:28:20)

The-Immortal

Factual error: In the scene where Sam & Deidre are sitting in the Audi spying on the villa, you can see that the car steering wheel is a 3 spoked sports type which is right for that model. Later just before Larry smashes it into the Citroen outside the cafe, there is a close up of him as he comes out of a side street, you can see that the steering wheel is changed to that of 4 spoke design used on the normal A8 and not on the S8.

Revealing mistake: At the start of the chase, the Mercedes slides around a bit, and it is comically obvious that the tire smoke has been poorly painted onto the scene. (00:45:15)

johnrosa

Continuity mistake: After the first big chase scene, Robert De Niro is seen with the group in their hideout. As he treats the man who was injured, he puts the bottle of alcohol down twice.

Continuity mistake: In the apartment with Diedre, Seamus's hand jumps from the bottle of scotch to his side.

Continuity mistake: When Gregor is in the chase scene at the old stadium, he runs/falls down some stone steps and loses his wire-rimmed glasses. In the next scene, he is wearing them once again, looking over his shoulder for Sam, who is chasing him.

Other mistake: When the arms deal goes wrong by the river in Paris, Larry drives the Audi flat out straight into the tunnel where the bad guys BMW is parked right in the middle, leaving little space to get another car through. Even if he could squeeze the Audi past the other car, there were dead bodies either side that he would have to drive over, as well as crashing into the doors that were left open. This would have done some damage to the Audi at the speed he was going.

Revealing mistake: In the rink, only a few shots after Natasha Kirilova is introduced, the camera pans across the crowd where Sam and Vincent are sitting and you can see that the upper half of the crowd are all cardboard cutout people.

Continuity mistake: In the middle of the film when Gregor is selling the suitcase onto the Russian guy in his jeep, you can see that when Gregor puts his foot on the accelerator the other guy jerks about and the last shot we see his head is down, yet the following shot he is looking at Gregor before the splatter of blood on the window. (00:55:05)

The-Immortal

Sam: Either you're part of the problem or you're part of the solution or you're just part of the landscape.

More quotes from Ronin

Trivia: In many of the stunt car scenes you can see the actors apparently driving. The producers used British RHD cars and fitted phoney steering wheels on the passenger sides to make it look as if the stars were really driving.

More trivia for Ronin

Answer: Sorry for posting an off-topic comment, but why are so few questions and mistakes posted anymore?

In large part it's reduced traffic, sadly - I'm always running a bit of a backlog of submissions (about 200 currently), because life gets in the way, but some get auto-approved so there's often a trickle of new content regardless. Mainly though it's just that thanks to search algorithm updates the site's now getting half to a third of the traffic it was about a year ago. I think also there are just fewer mistakes being made! Going back a while a DVD would come out and people would spot a lot of relatively obvious things. Now so many get fixed with CGI before release, and with streaming being wholly digital, lots of things are fixed even after release.

Jon Sandys

Thanks for all your hard work.

Brian Katcher

You're welcome! I've got no intentions of abandoning it, whatever the traffic. Still enough regular and irregular visitors to keep it trundling along!

Jon Sandys

I second that! Jon does an amazing job.

raywest

Thanks! I've got no intentions of abandoning it, whatever the traffic. Still enough regular and irregular visitors to keep it trundling along!

Jon Sandys

I have to assume it's just down to 1) maybe less people are submitting, and 2) the site primarily being run by one guy (Jon), and I have to imagine that he probably doesn't have the time to constantly check the site and do updates. I've noticed that sometimes it can take a while for things I submit to be posted, but they usually are within a week or two. To be fair, there's also been in excess of 600 mistakes posted within the last month, and I have around 60 mistakes waiting to be approved (going through the "Chucky" movies and shows looking for mistakes), so it's still happening... just a bit slower than it used to be back in the day.

TedStixon

I don't think it's a problem with fewer submissions. I've submitted several questions that have not made it onto the site yet, and mistakes were that were finally posted after an unusually long time.

I know there have been volunteers who do a lot of work here, but maybe that has dropped off.

raywest

Have been wondering the same thing.

raywest

Answer: Regarding the movie question, there's no way of knowing what was in the case. It is a plot device called a "MacGuffin," a term coined by director Alfred Hitchcock. It doesn't actually matter what the object is but it just drives the story. It can be any type of object or device such as a "secret formula," "enemy war plans," "nuclear weapon," "treasure map," and so on that the characters are either searching for or protecting. There was never any intention to reveal what it was. Its purpose is to motivate the characters' actions and tell the story. Most likely it was intended to be McGuffin just to keep the audience thinking about the movie long after it ends.

raywest

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