Behind Enemy Lines (2001) - 61 mistakes

Continuity: When Burnett takes off, the wheels start to retract in one angle. Camera cuts and they're back out.

Revealing: When Burnett stabs the trackers with the flair, you can see the outline of the padding.

Plot hole: When Burnett is hiding in the mass grave, the people on the ship are watching a thermal image of him. When he falls, his arm is at an angle and stays at that angle. To move under the bodies in the grave he would had to have moved his arm. But it stays at the same angle throughout, so how could he move under the bodies, without his thermal image moving?

Continuity: After seeing his pilot get shot, Owen Wilson's character starts running uphill while being shot at. Of course you know he's being shot at because you can see the tracers. However, after cresting the hill, and starting down the other side, you STILL see rounds going past him. How did they get smart bullets?

Factual error: Just prior to taking off from the carrier, you see clear shot of the pilot activating the "master arm switch". This arms all the weapons on board the aircraft. You would never arm your weapons until airborne.

Factual error: Shortly after our hero ejects you see the pilot flailing around trying to pull the ejection handle. In a Navy aircraft with two crew, the NATOPS manual (Naval Aviation Training and Operations Manual) clearly states that the seats must be set in the "command eject mode". This means, regardless of who initiates the ejection procedure, the rear seat goes first, followed by the pilot 1/2 later. There is no need for the pilot to pull the ejection handle.

Continuity: The three Marine helicopters leaving the carrier are three UH1N Marine model helicopters. When they arrive in Bosnia to rescue the downed Navy pilot the same helicopters become two Bell model 205C and a Bell 412. When landing back on the carrier with the rescued pilot, they are again N models.

Continuity: Owen Wilson's character is being chased and falls into the mass grave covering himself with another body. As he crawls out he is covered in mud. In the following scenes neither he nor his uniform have a trace of ever being in mud.

Plot hole: As Burnett runs through the minefield, he clearly runs right into much of the exploding debris. Why does not even one bit of shrapnel hit him?

Continuity: Barnett takes a drink of the Coke from the girl. When he goes to have another slug of the Coke, there is more in the bottle.

Visible crew/equipment: Just after Stackhouse is executed, Burnett runs up then down a hill. Once he's over the other side he falls and rolls down a steepish incline. In the background (top left of screen) you can see set vans lined up nicely along the side of a road.

Continuity: Gene Hackman's character, Riegart, begins the movie as a two-star rear admiral. Later in the movie, however, shortly after the second stand-down ordered by NATO Admiral Piquet, he wears three stars on his collar, signifying a promotion to vice admiral. This is highly unlikely, as he spends nearly all of the movie in the grease with his superiors.

Continuity: During the scene in which in the downed Navy pilot is roughing it out in the abandoned factory, before the mines start exploding, you can see that the spot of blood on his left cheek keeps on mysteriously disappearing & reappearing.

Continuity: When Chris Burnett (Owen Wilson) jumps in front of the red truck to get a ride it slides to the right while the skid marks slide to the left.

Plot hole: After Burnett changes his uniform and runs away from the soldiers, he and the other man run to the pick up site just to watch the chopper turn around. During that time, the Bosnians release TV footage of a dead man telling Americans it's Burnett, and the American TV does a little news update about it. But the run only took them ten minutes, how could anyone have enough time to release news about it?

Other: When Stackhouse and Burnett are being chased by the SAM, they pull to the right after deploying flares and you hear a voice on the radio say "Chaff, Chaff, Chaff". Chaff is a cartridge of small metal strips released as a countermeasure for radar guided missiles. These small strips add noise to the radar and clutters it up giving the pilot about 5 seconds to evade the missile. Throughout the scene, several indicators such as the flares and exploding fuel tanks suggest that they are fleeing from a Heat-seeking missile, not a radar guided one. To add to this, the voice on the radio wasn't that of Stackhouse or Burnett and was added for radio effect.

Continuity: When the pilots are talking about the DMZ, they point to the left of the plane (port side) then you see the forest move from right to left. The plane is now headed in the opposite direction.

Factual error: Gene Hackman's aide was a Master Chief. In the real Navy, an admiral would have a commissioned officer as an aide, such as a Captain or Commander, not a non-commissioned officer, such as a Master Chief.

Plot hole: According to the last radio conversation between Owen Wilson & Gene Hackman, the final "RP" was "5 clicks East". Why then, after a short run to the pickup ride, did he travel 26km in the pickup to the war-torn town of "Haq"?

Continuity: In the scene where Burnett falls into the graves, those watching the infrared satellite image on the carrier say that after Burnett falls, he never moves. If he doesn't move, then how did get under a body?