Minority Report (2002) - 75 mistakes

Continuity: In the beginning, when Anderton arrests the jealous husband, he notes that he is being arrested on April 22 - that day - for the future murder of his wife and her lover. Later, while Anderton is jogging, we see billboards advocating a "Yes" vote on pre-crime on April 22. The next day, Anderton's boss Lamar notes that the vote is in a week, which would make it April 15, making the day that the jealous husband was arrested April 14, not April 22.

Plot hole: Anderton's wife gains entry into the jailhouse using her husband's eyeball - but he's already locked up inside, so his eye would not still have access to enter as it pleased. Any place anywhere that would have any sort of security system requiring anything from a simple passcode to a card key to a retinal scan, would immediately delete the user in such instances from all rights. And would also certainly report on any attempted use of such (retinal scan, pass code, whatever).

Factual error: The time period of the movie is 2054. There is an election day (April 22nd) that is on a billboard and then announced as a Tuesday. However, April 22nd, 2054 is actually on a Wednesday.

Plot hole: When Anderton jumps on the back of the jet packed cop, the thrust can sizzle burgers a foot away, but nothing happens to Anderton's jacket or shoes or anything. Even if he is hanging onto him on the side, he's still close enough. And how come the cops themselves don't get scorched by their own pack? I can believe them using asbestos pants in the uniform, but not Anderton's civvies.

Continuity: Anderton's wristwatch is an Omega Speedmaster X-33, but it shows a Bvlgari display when he looks at it for the countdown to the murder he is to commit. When he's not looking at it, the watch can be seen with its original Omega face. One example of this is in the tub scene where one of the spyders is peeling off Anderton's eye bandage. The watch shows its Omega display (white hands on an LCD digital background). Omega's developer of the X-33 told me that this was a major legal battle for them.

Continuity: In the part when Anderton is in the green house with the old lady, her hairstyle changes under her hat in every scene when she turns around, looks up or down or when they are talking.

Visible crew/equipment: When Anderton visits his wife after the auto plant scene, the camera pans around the car and the camera operator is clearly seen in the reflection on the bumper.

Visible crew/equipment: When Lamar shoots Witwer it shows the the bullet's point of entry. Looking closely at his shirt, you can see the outline of the square/rectangular blood pack.

Continuity: When Anderton visits his friend to get help to download data from Agatha, he is wearing tan-colored pants. Later on, when they are running again, he is suddenly wearing blue pants.

Plot hole: During the "greenhouse" scene Dr. Hineman explains to Anderton how the Pre-Cogs came about from the children of drug abusing mothers using these words, "This was 10 years ago when neuroin first hit the streets...All of these kids were born with severe brain damage. Most died before the age of 12." If this only happened "10 years ago" how does she know they died "before the age of 12" and, more importantly for the film, how is it that Agatha and the twins are older than 10? (From the European DVD version, scene 10, with the English "Hard of Hearing" subtitles on for clarity.)

Continuity: Anderton is driving Agatha aka the Pre Cog in his car after kidnapping her from the Temple. She is complaining that she is cold so he takes off his jacket and puts it on her shoulder and body. The next shot is from outside the window looking at her and the jacket is down on her arm. The next shot is back to Anderton and the jacket is on her shoulder again. In the final shot of the Precog, the jacket is on her shoulder.

Continuity: In the final scene of the movie, as the camera pulls back from the cabin where the three pre-cogs were taken after leaving the Temple, there is a tractor to the left of the cabin. Between the tractor and the cabin is a small bush that is moving like it is being blown by a strong wind. However, the smoke coming from the cabin is more or less rising straight up into the air. In fact, it is drifting a little to the right while the bush is being blown to the left by the helicopter which has the camera.

Continuity: When Agatha is in Lara's bedroom, she talks about John and Lara's son Shawn. When John is sitting on the floor in the bedroom you can see his eyes have changed colors. First they are brown from the eye transplant, but the next shot of his head you can see his eye color is his real color.

Continuity: During the jet pack escape scene, we see Anderton scaling the side of a building followed by a group of precrime officers who fly up to catch him. When Anderton jumps and catches the officer directly below him, we cut a shot of the pair falling directly towards the camera. If you look to either side of them, you'll notice that all the other officers - including the one hanging from the rail without a jet-pack - have disappeared.

Factual error: In the scene where Anderton drops the eyeball that he wants to use to gain entry to Pre-Crime, the eye rolls down the passage, making "clickety-clack" noises. We were watching the movie on DVD with a friend who works in an eye clinic, and we all burst out laughing. Eyes are too soft to either roll or sound like that (only the ones from Halloween novelty stores do that...).

Continuity: The handle on the door to room 1009 switches sides.

Plot hole: When Witwer invites Burgess over to discuss the problem of Anne Lively's murder, he gives Burgess Anderton's gun saying "We recovered that from Leo Crowe's hotel room", yet making no mention of why he is showing the gun. It makes no sense why he would bring the gun or give the gun to Burgess seeing as he would have to remove it from the evidence of the murder. There was no important evidence regarding the gun he would need to show Burgess and only seems to serve the plot (as Burgess uses the gun to kill Witwer at the end and the blame goes on Anderton). What complicates the matter further is that Witwer knows someone in the Pre-crime division was behind Anne Lively's murder, so to give a person who could very likely be involved in the murder a LOADED gun seems a little risky and unnecessary.

Continuity: In the beginning of the movie, Anderton is working on the case with the jealous husband (case number 1108). During this scene, we see a shot of Anderton taken from behind the transparent screen. In the upper right corner of the screen you can see the case number (1108). Later in the movie, Anderton starts working on the case where he himself turns out to be the killer. This is case number 1109. In this scene we again see a shot of Anderton taken from behind the transparent screen. However, the case number is still 1108. Shouldn't it be 1109, since he is working on that case?

Continuity: When Anderton is finally caught at Lara's place, we see a shot (from behind Anderton) of the precop resting the top of the halo on the back of Anderton's head. In the next shot, the halo is rested onto his head again.

Continuity: When Anderton is mad about the doctor sticking him with the anesthesia and is holding him on the counter holding the doctor's arm behind him, the needle changes places quickly and ends up in different places.

Continuity: In the scene where Danny Witwer and Burgess are going over something that wasn't seen before, Danny's tie is loosely undone, but in the next shot it's perfectly done up.

Visible crew/equipment: When John and Agatha come to Rufus T Riley's place there is a low camera view of them walking through a doorway as Rufus starts saying about Anderton getting 'a little jerky for himself'. To the left of the doorway the crew are reflected going backwards filming the action.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Anderton is going to kill Crow, the camera angle changes to behind Crow. In the window behind him you can see the demolitions charge used to create a bullet hole and crack the glass.

Continuity: In the alley scene where the rest of John's team comes, he keeps repeating "everybody runs" and they surround him. After a dog barks at them he climbs up a fire escape. In one shot you can see the back of his jacket is cut and wires are sticking out. It's a very quick shot but it's there.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Anderton is being chased by the pre-crime officers down the alley they pull a sick stick on him, which he then uses on one of the officers. If you freeze the image (better achieved on DVD) the officer is actually being sick out of his lower chin, not his mouth. This is obviosly a result of a badly placed 'sick-guidence' tube on his neck.

Factual error: In the scene when Anderton escapes out of the Maglev Car, there's barely any wind blowing his hair or jacket, even though the car is moving at intense speeds and he can barely keep his balance. He jumps from car to car on a vertical track, jacket is not moving. Then he jumps on to the roof of another car and you him from the inside of the car, there's no wind movement on him at all.

Continuity: In the Jetpack scene, where John and the other two cops bump the ceiling, if you look at their food and drinks on the table, everything gets knocked over and spilt, yet in the following shot everything is neat, and the drinks have reappeared unspilt.

Plot hole: It's good to know that in the future we will be able to simply walk inside a car factory (without ANYBODY working, neither employees, security people, or an automated protection system), get inside a brand new car and just drive away...

Continuity: At the end of the film when John's wife is talking to Lamarr he says "I haven't worn this in years" and turns around, in the following shot he turns around again.

Other: When Anderton and the pre-cops are gearing up to prevent the Howard Marks murder, there is a shot of Anderton loading his gun. If you watch closely you can see he places a clip under the gun but doesn't actually put it in, he just sort of mimes inserting it.

Plot hole: At the beginning of the movie, we are told the year is 2054. When they show a tour of Pre-Crime for school age children, they say that Pre-Crime, started in 2046, has been running flawlessly for 9 years. Funny, I thought 2046 to 2054 is only 8 years. [If it was Early '46 to late '54, that would be close enough to nine years that they might just have rounded up. However, someone else has said that the movie precedes the election in April 2054, so Pre-Crime could only have been in business for 8 years and 3 months and 21 days, at most.

Continuity: At the start of the movie, two wooden balls are created to name the next victim and killer. After the balls are created, they are dull and unpolished, but their travel through the tubes shows them to now be highly polished and shiny.

Continuity: When the cheated husband says "I forgot my glasses", the lover is on top of the wife, and tries to sneak by bouncing way up and then turning to his left. The jump is cut and the angle changes to a close up of the lover, but this time he is right next to the wife, as if he had just moved aside. No bounce. You'll need to freeze the image to notice it.

Continuity: During the Howard Marks previsions, Anderton notices that the two images of the kid and the man show the kid on different sides. At first, he rotates his hand counter-clockwise (from his point-of-view) to see the image where the kid is on his right, and clockwise to the one where the kid is on the left. The camera cuts away, then cuts back; now the opposite is true (clockwise = kid is on the right, counter-clockwise = kid on left).

Factual error: When they are given the Federal Agent a tour of Pre Crime in the beginning, they say that the victim ball appears on the left and the perpetrator on the right. Yet later in the movie, when Leo Crowe's murder is revealed, Anderton picks up his own ball (the perpetrator's ball) from the slot on the left. If he had wanted to pick up the correct ball, he would have grabbed the one on the right.

Continuity: When John and Agatha are in Leo Crow's room, John finds the single photo of Sean and as he looks at it we see the back of the photo and the outline of the boy's image. John then finds the multiple photo-strip of Sean with Leo and holds it in front of him, but as he says, "I am going to kill this man," John is actually holding the single photo - note the outline of only Sean's image on the back of the photo. Next shot he's holding the multiple photo-strip again.

Continuity: When Lara, standing, is putting on Lamar's tie while he is seated, he gives himself away regarding the drowning of Anne Lively. Lara's arms stop moving and we see her standing straight, her arms by her side, and she says that she never said that Anne was drowned. We cut back to Lamar, and Lara still has her arms around Lamar.

Revealing: When Anderton first sees himself killing Leo Crow in the precog vision, pay attention to the shot when he says "no". The reflection of Jad in the Hi Tech screen doesn't match with his movements.

Other: The name on the red ball at the beginning has the name 'Donald Dubin' on it. But in the end credits, it is spelled 'Donald Doobin'.

Continuity: When the pre crime cops are looking for John in the mall, there are 7 of them on the upper balcony, the leader tells two of them to "take the east end," and you see two of them run off to the left, yet in the following shot all seven of them are running to the right.

Continuity: After John has had his eyes changed and the cops send the spiders into the rooms, there is a shot of John kneeling down. Behind him, the fridge is open, yet a few shots later he crawls past the kitchen and the fridge is then closed.

Continuity: When John runs into the alley he runs past a slightly burnt out car, but in the following shots the car is on the opposite side of the alley.

Continuity: At the beginning of the film when Howard Marks goes out for the paper, he walks down his steps outside and reaches the bottom, twice.

Continuity: When John is in the Precog chamber, and Agatha grabs him, he is on the small platform, yet when Wally comes in if you slow it down, he is no longer on the small platform.

Continuity: In Containment, Anderton asks the sentry about Agatha's missing prevision. The sentry says, "For that, we go for a ride," while facing the pipe organ. The camera cuts to a wide shot of the plank extending and the sentry is now facing away from the organ.

Continuity: During the lover-husband scene, when the lover and the wife are staring at the husband holding the knife, they keep changing positions from far away to close to each other depending on the shot.

Continuity: When Fletcher is explaining to Witwer about John scrubbing the images for clues for the Marks murder, Jad puts his hand up to his chin, but in the next shot his hand is down.

Visible crew/equipment: When John shoots Crow, Crow falls out of the window, there is a shot of the outside of the window and just before Crow falls you can see a camera on a rig and a small flood light (this shot is about 0.2 seconds long so use the slow-mo button).

Continuity: When Witwer looks at the prevision with Agatha in the mirror it's not broken, but during the murder it is. The prevision was not altered until the time of the murder was altered by John's delay, so the killing was not 'a different one' until after that point, yet the borken mirror error occurs before time runs out, making it an inconsistency with prevision.

Visible crew/equipment: After the scene in the car factory when Anderton drives up to Hineman's place, he parks his car and opens the door. When he opens the door, you can very easily see a camera manbent down reflected in the car door.

Continuity: During the film we see huge highways far above the ground and skyscrapers so tall they have major roads running down them -- all in Washington, DC. But at the end of the film we see a night-time panorama of Washington, and the only tall structure is the Washington Monument.

Continuity: At the beginning of the movie the date is stated as 2054. However, when Anderton has been identified on the metro and data appears on a clear screen, the date he went missing is listed as December 12, 2055.

Other: When Witwer is killed, he actually reacts to the impact on his head before the shot is heard. We are standing mere feet from the incident, so no 'speed of sound' delay applies. It's an obvious sound error during editing.

Continuity: When John Anderton is fighting off the agents in the car factory, he does a backflip, and then jumps for the approaching walkway, but if you look closely at the floor, the agents feet are visible, therefore signifying they arrived a little early, and stopped.

Continuity: At the beginning of the film, when Anderton and the crew go up on the rising platform, you can see a guy approach the platform, and in the following shot he is approaching the platform again.

Other: Leo Crow grabs Anderton's gun and they each fight for control of it. Crow succeeds in forcing Anderton's hand to pull the trigger, killing Crow. The problem is, right after the gun is fired, we see a shot of Anderton with his arm fully extended and with his entire hand holding the entire gun, as if he had aimed and fired the gun himself. Such a sequence of events is at least totally illogical if not physically impossible.

Continuity: During the hovercrafts scene, Anderton enters a room where a kid is playing sax. The kid runs away and leans on the wall, but from a back shot he is seen close to the door. He keeps moving between the wall, door frame and aisle, in the rest of the front and back shots.

Continuity: During the lover-wife-husband scene, the lamp on the night table keeps moving all the time: sometimes slightly away from the bed, others a bit of its screen touches the head rest, and in some angles half of the lamp's screen is touching the bed.

Continuity: When we see the Leo Crow previsions for the first time, we see the numbers "9" and "6" backwards because we are seeing the previsions from behind the screen. But in the cyberparlor we see the previsions from the same side that Anderton and Riley are watching them, and the numbers are still backward.

Audio problem: When the child asks her mother for a balloon from the balloon man, the mom's words don't match her lips.

Continuity: When the Pre-crime agents break into Laras house to catch John, they barge in and surround him, when you see the man with the head piece it is fully extended at the time but when the go to place it on his head the headpiece is not extended untill the agent activates it.

Continuity: When Anderton is in the street escaping on the jet pack the shot from above shows him tilted upwards (so his body looks higher off the ground).In the following shot from in front of him he's much closer to the ground and tilted downwards.

Continuity: When John and the other precrime agents go to arrest Howard Marks, they stand in a group trying to figure out which house is the right one. A couple of shots later there's a wide shot of John from behind with nobody else there, and a couple of shots later still, the agents are all in a group again.

Continuity: When John visits the creator of precrime in the greenhouse, in one scene the old lady kisses John, her hand changes from being at the side of John's face to holding it at the front.

Continuity: When Anderton enters the "ball-room" for the first time in the movie, a guy behind grabs a folder and presses it against his chest. In the next shot he is repeating the movement again.

Visible crew/equipment: When Anderton is about to enter the Lexus factory he runs into the cops' car. When the passenger door opens, you can see the reflection of a crewmember.

Continuity: As Witwer tells Laura about John's apartment being full of drugs, she's sitting straight up with her hands at her sides, but in the next shot she has her legs crossed and her arm on the top of the painting.

Continuity: When we first see the numbers on room 1009, they are all even. Just before Anderton rotates the "6" to its correct position, however, the number is slightly raised.

Continuity: In the scene when Anderton escapes out of the Maglev Car, we see him jump into a room full of gymnasts. He is on the floor with his legs up in the air, then we see him lower his legs. Yet, in the next shot his legs are back in the air again and we see his legs go down again.

Continuity: When Agatha suddenly scares and grabs John Anderton in the pool, she says, "Can you see?" with her right hand over his left shoulder, but when the shot changes immediately, Agatha's hand is now under his left armpit.

Continuity: During the scene where the police first go to arrest Howard and John is deciding which door is the right one his plastic face plate is down and in the next shot it is clearly up.

Audio problem: When John Anderton's wife throws John's eyeball (stored in a clear plastic bag) onto Tim Blake Nelson's pipe organ, an ongoing organ note is heard, implying that the weight of the eyeball is depressing a key or two. We then see a shot of the eyeball resting on the organ's keys, none of which are depressed.

Continuity: At the beginning of the film when Anderton and Danny Witwer first meet, in one shot Danny Witwer is standing about six foot away, in the following shot he is really close to Anderton.

Continuity: In the scene where Anderton is in flashback to the day he lost his son at the pool, the same woman (of "ample build") walks past him in a pink-ish bikini at least twice.

Continuity: At the start, when John Anderton is going to arrest the man who can't see well without his glasses, he his trying to figure out which house the killer is in. While looking around, his helmet is fastened tightly around his neck, however, as he is racing off to the house he pulls the helmet off in a way which couldn't have been accomplished with the strap still fastened.