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Mistakes

When Wesley Snipes makes the truck rush the roadblock, one of the deputies is not in the patrol car. That car is pushed quite a distance, before it rolls down an embankment on the far side of the bridge, but somehow the deputy not in the car manages to reach his partner in the car nearly straight away and help him out. He must be some runner to be able to get that distance so fast. See more...

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U.S. Marshals (1998) - 19 corrections

Directed by Stuart Baird, starring Daniel Roebuck, Joe Pantoliano, Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones, Wesley Snipes (add more)

Genres: Action, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
Corrections
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When Mark Sheridan is in the car before he boards the cargo ship, he looks at his girlfriend's passport. Her name is typed on the passport as Marie Rice, but if you look above it on the signature line, it is signed Mary Rice. [I have a friend named Anne Marie, pronounce like Ann. She signs her name as Annie because that's what she's called by her friends and family, a cutesy nickname from childhood that never went away. It's likely Marie has a similar situation.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
After the plane crash, the prisoners and the guards get into the water to swim to shore. It's obviously a bit of a swim, especially if you watch how long it takes for Gerard to get over. However, in the next scene there are overview shots, and the plane is much closer to land. [On the overhead shot on the next morning, you can see the mooring lines from the shore to the plane. By this time, the plane would have been pulled back closer to shore.]
Edit
One of the search scenes takes place in a mangrove swamp, supposedly in Kentucky. There are no such swamps in Kentucky. [There are similar such swamps in Kentucky. One is found in Graves County, Kentucky.]
Edit
When Wesley Snipes is escaping through what appears to be an old folks home he makes for the front door only to find Noah coming in. He shoots at him and breaks the glass in the doors. Later when the police arrive we see Noah at the doors and the glass appears to be intact. [Snipes shoots and breaks the glass to the left door closest to him and the outside right door. When the squad cars pull up and the officers rush in behind Newman, watch as one of the cops goes to grab the inside left door. His hand wraps around the part of the door where the glass should be and he would not be able to do this if the glass were still intact.]
Edit
When the Marshals follow the guy in the green cap into the cemetery we see him unlocking a white door and going inside a building. TLJ and another deputy sit and wait for him outside. When we see him exit you'll notice the door is now a brown wooden door. [He enters and leaves the building by different doors. The white door is on the side of the building at ground level, the brown door is at the front up some steps.]
Edit
During the plane crash scene, the vertical stabilizer snags a hydro line, which rips it off. There is no way that the tail of a commercial jet would be so fragile. It is far more likely that the lines would snap. [Wrong. Many crashes have occurred for precisely that reason: wings being torn off planes due to contact with electrical lines, power lines, guy wires etc or just plain metal fatigue.]
Edit
From the plane crash scene: On touchdown, the pilots attempts to slow the plane are apparently restricted to pulling the parking brake and waiting for the plane to stop. However, commercial jets have thrust reversers and spoilers that should have been used in this situation and were not. Most also have anti-skid brakes (similar to a car's ABS system) that would be far more effective than using the parking brake. A Boeing 727 has excellent short-field landing characteristics and should be able to come to a stop much faster than depicted in the movie. [Short-field landing characteristics or not, within 10 seconds of the aircraft landing on the roadway (different surface texture than a runway) it clipped the series of telegraph poles and seriously damaged the aircraft which ultimately led its demise. Its likely other systems were damaged, and put simply, an aircraft of that size could NOT have stopped before the telegraph poles.]
Edit
As the plane is overturned in the swamp the marshals go to retrieve their guns from the compartment, yet the guns are right side up, they wouldn't be if the plane overturned. [The guns were stored with the barrels pointed down,so when the plane rolled,the were pointing up when they were removed. its not uncommon to store a gun with the barrel pointing down and lots of gun cabinets are manufactured so the gun is stored that way.]
Edit
The plane crashes, and Gerard and the other guards are fighting to get the prisoners out of the plane. Someone calls out for Gerard to leave the plane, as it is starting to sink, and you see the water level rise considerably. Gerard eventually leaves at least two of the prisoners behind, as there is no time to save them. In the next scene it is the following morning, and you see overview pictures of the crash site. The plane is up-side-down, but the water level isn't even near the planes windows. Not a chance that anyone would be at the risk of drowning in a few inches of water. [Thats because by the time morning comes around, the emergency services have discovered the crash site and have pulled the plane out of the water. I believe there is a crane holding the plane at this point.]
Edit Corrected by manthabeat
In the scene where the plane crashes and goes sliding down a hill, it seems to be sliding at a fast pace for a couple of minutes. When the plane is stopped at the bottom of the hill and the camera focuses on the actors walking away from the scene, you can see in the background that the hill can be no taller than 20-30 feet which should only take a matter of seconds to slide. [The plane movies fairly slowly down the hill, and it only seems like it took minutes because they switched back and forth between the plane and the people on board. Story-wise it only took a few seconds for the plane to slide down, the two different shots were happening at the same time.]
Edit
The prisoner transport plane is supposedly going from Chicago to New York. While on the plane, one of the guards makes a comment about being only 20 minutes from landing (in New York). Later when the plane crashes they are within 20 miles of the Illinois/Kentucky border near North Central Kentucky, which makes no sense because 1) it is quite a trip to be only 20 minutes from New York and 2) why would the plane go a couple hundred miles south of Chicago before going east to NY, and then soon after Wesley Snipes is in Paducah, which is over a hundred miles away from North Central Kentucky. [The transport plane is going to Memphis first. One of the plane crew states that before the plane leaves Chicago.]
Edit
When Tommy Lee Jones has his gun brought to him in the restaurant, he checks the gun by pulling back the slide. However, rather than letting the slide go, he moves it down by hand. With a Glock, this could result in a jammed cartridge - a man of his characters experience would, first, realize that and second, want to reduce errors when chasing a dangerous fugitive. [Words like "this could result" and "want to reduce errors" are evident that its not a movie mistake but a character choice and at the most perhaps a character mistake. The way he loads his gun is his preferred method, maybe not the "correct" way but makes no difference.]
Edit Corrected by Lummie
In the scene where Agent Royce is arrested by Gerard for hiding information, Royce opens the handcuffs, breaking Cosmo's dark glasses and using one of its arms to unlock it. In a later scene, on the plane crash site, you can see a shot where Cosmo's glasses are still intact. [Cosmo's glasses are not intact. If you look carefully you can see that the earpiece has been taped back on with white tape - the glasses had obviously (or not so obviously) been fixed between scenes.]
Edit
After the crash when the search is started, Gerard calls for a search of all counties south of the Alexander/Pulaski border. The crash site occurred in Pope county and neither Massac or Pope are mentioned in the search. [The assumption is that Wesley Snipes is already far enough from the crash site. If they start searching too close, he will have more time to escape.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart
When in the hospital Tommy Lee Jones asks to see Robert Downey's Glock. While looking at it he removes the full magazine, and replaces it with an empty one.  In the next scene when Downey pulls his gun to shoot Jones it just clicks as if empty. What about the round that was still in the chamber?  Jones never cleared the chamber in the prior scene. [There was no round in the chamber for Tommy Lee Jones to clear.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart
After the plane crashes into the river, and they show Tommy Lee Jones and the agents checking the condition of the prisoners, don't you think they would check to see if the pilot, co-pilot and engineer are still alive? They might have survived since the front end, where the cockpit is, is still well above the water. [We don't see all of the agents after the crash. Some of them could have checked on the air crew. Additionally, the crew could have their own procedure for escaping the cockpit after a crash.]
Edit Corrected by Mister Ed
After Tommy Lee Jones examines Robert Downey Jr's Glock in the hospital and replaces the full clip with an empty one, Downey Jr should have known from the gun's weight and balance that the clip was empty. A law enforcement clip usually holds 12 rounds, which made a considerable amount of difference to the weight of the gun. [Downey has only had the Glock since he killed Noah. Up until then he had been using his nickel plated weapon. He simply wasn't familiar with the weight of his new weapon.]
Edit
In the scene where Wesley Snipes is jumping over the fence, watch what falls out of his pocket. It looks to be like the passports that he had put in only moments before. And he doesn't pick them up. Yet later on in the movie, he has them. [He actually does pick them (or at least something) from the ground right after he's jumped over the fence. It happens quite quickly but it's visible.]
Edit
In the scene where Gerard asks Robert Downey Jr about getting the tapes from the UN security camera, look at RDJ's desk. One minute the laptop's there, and there's some paper in a neat pile. Next, the laptop is gone, and the paper is spread out. [It's an L-shape desk - when the laptop is in the frame there is a window behind it and to RDJ's right. When it is not in the frame the desk back is open to the room and in front of RDJ.]
Edit