Corrected entry: When Jack tries to stop the subway and realises he can't, he has a gun behind his back in his waistband. Why didn't he just shoot the cuffs off?
Corrected entry: "Tuneman" has no actual license plate on his car, just the same vanity plate on front and back.
Correction: The Jaguar owner has personalized plates, and the rear license plate has the registration tabs (stickers) affixed to it, the month (Nov) at the left and the yellow tab with the year at the right.
Corrected entry: Jack has been using the phone he took from "Tune-Man" ever since getting in his car. Payne has been calling Jack on that same phone while he was on the bus, but Jack never gave him the number. How has Payne been calling him?
Correction: When the police on the truck/trailer are riding beside the bus, the terrorist calls the police's number. The officer in the passenger seat of the truck's cab radios back to McMahon saying "it's him". McMahon relays that to Jack, and Jack responds by telling them to give the terrorist Jack's (or "Tune Man's") number.
Corrected entry: When Jack is first running down the bus, trying to get on before the bus hits 50 MPH to arm the bomb, why wouldn't he shoot the tires out?
Correction: Firing a gun at a moving vehicle full of innocent people on a highway, with hundreds of other cars around, is not a viable strategy to get the bus to stop.
Corrected entry: "Supercop" Jack somehow never thought to have his boss cut power to the third rail (after slowing the train down rather than speeding it up), which would have stopped the train that was speeding near the end of the film.
Correction: Jack has no means to contact Mac. The radio in the train is damaged after Payne shoots the conductor and Jack didn't bring a radio or phone with him.
Continuity mistake: When Howard Payne is in the elevator, he hears Jack and Harry doing something from above, and he reaches for his bomb trigger. In slow motion when he's picking it up, it has two buttons on it, yet when Howard pushes one of the buttons, the device now has three. (00:13:00)
Plot hole: It is never definitively stated if the bomb is tied directly to the axle, triggered by the speedometer instrumentation or throttle. Regardless, as long as the wheels keep spinning above 50mph the bomb will not explode by design. This means that if you lifted the wheels of the bus off the ground or you bottom out, you could keep accelerating without any speed at all. This could be accomplished in any number of ways. One example would be driving on grass and keeping the tires spinning.
Suggested correction: And that would accomplish precisely nothing. They know Payne is watching them and he explicitly stated no-one is allowed to get off the bus or he will detonate it, only making an exception for the injured driver. What good is finding a way to keep the wheels in motion if everyone is still stuck on the bus?
The mistake is suggesting that you basically find a way to stop the bus but keep the wheels spinning such as grounding it on a hill. Then while the bus is stationary, just (I'm assuming here) put a weight on the accelerator to keep the wheels spinning and then everyone just hop off and walk away. However, you're correct in that Howard is watching the live feed so would just blow the bomb when people got off.
I fully understood what the entry was suggesting, but Payne's demand that everyone stays on the bus under penalty of detonation voids it. Even if that wasn't the case, finding a way to somehow stop the bus but keeping the wheels spinning (such as lifting it with a helicopter) would be a logistical nightmare in that scenario. Their plans to drive on the otherwise unoccupied freeway and then circle the airport runway were much more practical.
The other glaring problem with "stopping the bus while keeping the wheels moving" is those pesky laws of physics. Momentum, kinetic energy, and inertia would all prevent that from happening under any circumstance that could be quickly cobbled together by any police department. I'm sure physicists and engineers could come up with something given a few months and a buttload of money, but for this example you could consider it impossible - especially without causing a lot of passenger injuries.
Corrected entry: As the end of the conversation about Jack getting off the bus nears, there's a picture on the TV behind Payne showing the bus going down the freeway, but the bus is on the airport tarmac at that time.
Correction: The local news coverage is, typically, replaying earlier highway footage throughout the incident. But the bomber, Howard Payne, was watching the bus the entire time with a hidden camera that had nothing to do with local news coverage. The police tell a television news crew to record the private transmission and rebroadcast it in a continuous loop, to fool Howard while the bus passengers were offloaded at the airport. So, Howard is watching his private feed, not the local news coverage. Howard still thinks the bus is on the tarmac and under his control. Too late, he realises that he was completely fooled by the video replays.
Continuity mistake: Travis shoots Harry in the leg, and Harry is slumped against the wall next to the doorway. When Payne sets off the bomb, Harry is now no longer near the door, and is halfway down the corridor. Not enough time had passed between shots for this to have occurred. (00:22:20)
Suggested correction: Harry drops to floor by door 1 on the right-hand side of the corridor facing the parking lot. We then get a 2-3 second shot of Jack shrugging and shouting "Freeze" at Howard. Howard is then seen staring at Jack in disbelief at the thought of him shooting a hostage. We then see Howard (still in the initial 3 seconds) walk into the parking lot and Jack run towards the door. As Howard is going through the door the shot changes to Jack and in this shot you can see Harry shuffling down the corridor.
Continuity mistake: When the subway carriage bursts out into the street, Annie's handcuffs slide off the broken pole and in slow motion you can see the pole is shorter than all others. Besides, all the other poles in the carriage are intact. (01:49:15)
Plot hole: Payne's finger prints would've been all over the elevator, on his shotgun, and near the area where he killed the security guard as he was never shown wearing gloves. Since he was a former police officer, I would assume his prints would've been on file with the FBI and in a multitude of databases. You would think they would've been able to identify him much earlier in the movie than they did by running the prints through all databases of finger prints.
Suggested correction: IAFIS, the FBI fingerprint database, wasn't implemented until 1999. At the time this film was released, the LA police would have to individually run any prints found through the databases they wanted to search. Essentially, they would have to know beforehand that Howard Payne was a former Atlanta police officer or have made a wild guess.
Continuity mistake: After the bus driver looks at the note "Bomb on Bus" he starts decreasing speed. So Keanu puts the Jaguar beside the bus and tells the bus driver to open the door for him to tell the driver to go at a speed of 50 miles per hour. Just before this you can see a camera shot in which the door is already open. This mistake is easily seen if you watch it in slow motion.
Plot hole: When they get Sam the driver off the bus and onto the trailer, it's stressed how important it is to get him to hospital, but in all subsequent scenes, the trailer never leaves the side of the bus and no-one takes Sam off.
Suggested correction: It is unlikely, but they could have transferred him a second time to another vehicle off-screen.
It could've happened during the scene where the older scared woman was trying to leave the bus, and the cops told her to "grab my hand." They KNOW the hostages leaving the bus risks the bomb going off, and they still tried to get that lady off. It's literally these cops' first day on the job.
Plot hole: The police thought they could catch the bomber at the ransom drop because he did not know that the bus had exploded. However, the exploding bus would have created a huge plume of smoke that would have been reported by the media. (01:30:00)
Suggested correction: The news reporters at the airport had been blocked by the Police from reporting. Reporters that weren't at the airport would see a cloud of smoke but wouldn't know what was causing it.
Yes, but the reporters would still report it, and the bomber would know what had caused it.
Corrected entry: Soon after Jack gets on the bus, Howard can see the bus on the news. Why is the news at this stage covering this? The only thing that has been suspicious is someone from a car coming from a car onto a bus, but what has happened before this that makes this newsworthy? Looks like regular traffic is flowing up to this point. (00:44:00)
Correction: It is extremely common for news helicopters to cover rush hour traffic in major cities. If a news crew happened to be monitoring the freeway and noticed a pedestrian running to catch up to a bus, stop a convertible dead in its tracks, get in the convertible, catch up to the bus, the man jumps from the speeding car onto the bus at 50 plus miles per hour, and the car then crashes; it seems fairly normal for the bus to be on the news by this point. It certainly isn't a plot hole.
But for that scenario to work, not a single element can be missed. If the film crew missed any of it why would they film the bus?
I don't think if a single element was missed it wouldn't be newsworthy. If, for example they missed everything but a man jumping from a moving car onto a bus I still think that makes the bus newsworthy. That's really the only element that can't be missed by the news for this explanation to work. Payne himself comments on Jack's bravery in getting on the bus so that means he saw it. The only thing that could make the news following the bus a plot hole would be if Jack managed to get on without any fanfare at all, which of course didn't happen. It can't be a plot hole because it's not impossible for the news to have followed the entire incident of Jack getting on the bus. The fact that they may have been able to miss something doesn't make it impossible that they didn't.
Corrected entry: Halle Berry was the first choice for the part of Anne.
Correction: According to the IMDb, the part was written for Ellen DeGeneres (and the role was a lot more comedic). Halle Berry was just one of the people to turn it down.
Correction: According to Wikipedia and Rolling Stone, the role was offered to Halle Berry but she declined the part. Berry would later regret the decision. Later, the character had then been changed to a driver's education teacher, and made the character more of a comic-relief sidekick to Jack, with Ellen DeGeneres in mind for the part.
Revealing mistake: When Payne opens the money bag to see a dye bomb explode, he is wearing a transparent protective face shield (partially visible). (01:42:35)
Suggested correction: This needs clarifying. The dye looks like it goes directly on his face in real life, and no protection is visible at all.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Jack tells the Captain that the gas is leaking, he says that it will be about 10 minutes before it's empty. But at the speed that the gas indicator was going down, it would be a lot less then 10 minutes.
Correction: So he mistakenly estimated the size of the hole and the amount of gas coming out. Character mistake.
Correction: Also, he doesn't puncture the gas tank right at the bottom; he punctures maybe 1/10th of the way up. Everything above that hole would come out fast, everything below that hole would only come out as the gas sloshes about.
Other mistake: When the safety cable goes taut and stops the falling elevator, a woman standing in the corner is shown to fall through a hole in the floor. However, the hole in the floor was plainly visible in the bottom of the elevator as it was falling. As the hole was more than wide enough for the woman's legs to fall through, she couldn't have been standing in that corner as it was falling.
Continuity mistake: When Jack and Harry are pulling people out of the elevator there are two men offering to help the stubborn lady out of the elevator. 2 seconds later there is only one man jumping to get out. (00:15:50)
Correction: It's a common misconception that you are able to just shoot cuffs open. It's very dangerous as the bullet can ricochet off and hit a vital part of the body of either party.
lionhead