The Bourne Identity (2002) - 66 mistakes

Continuity: When Matt Damon and Marie begin to kiss in the hotel room, his wristwatch is on his right wrist; when the camera angle changes and they are still kissing, his wristwatch has mysteriously changed to his left wrist. Mirrors aren't involved - while there's a mirror in the bathroom, we see too much of the room in all of the shots for it just to be a reflection.

Plot hole: In Paris, why does the assassin go to the ridiculous amount of trouble of swinging into the room on a rope with a machine gun when he came in from the lobby (as proved by the dead woman downstairs)? Alternatively, if his intention was always to surprise Bourne by coming in through the window, why venture downstairs at all?

Continuity: This is the scene where Jason is on the fire escape platform in the embassy in Zurich. Before he goes down below the platform we see that the platform is cleared of all the snow. Then moments later, when security guard opens the door and Jason is under the platform, the top of the platform is fully covered with snow again.

Continuity: When Bourne gets the box from his numbered bank account, the bank clerk carries it by holding its handle. Then he puts it on the table tipping it over to the side, so Bourne can open it. Thus the ingredients (especially the heavy weapon) should all be laying on the right side, what used to be the bottom of the box. But when Bourne opens it, everything is nicely arranged.

Continuity: When Wombosi is assassinated by the other agent he is shown walking down the stairs with glasses on and a turtleneck sweater. He also has another man following him. Then the next shot shows Wombosi (or a stuntman) standing in front of the window with a leather coat on and no glasses. He is obviously not walking anymore and the man behind him is nowhere to be seen.

Factual error: Throughout the movie, there are countless references to the incident early in the movie at the U.S. Embassy in Zurich. Neither the U.S. nor any other country maintains an embassy in Zurich. The capital of Switzerland is Bern. Since most of the characters in the movie work for the U.S. government, they would surely know the difference between an embassy and a consulate.

Continuity: When Bourne approaches Marie about a ride, they talk across the top of her Mini. First, there is lots of snow on the car's roof. Then, there isn't.

Continuity: When Bourne blows up the tank at the farmhouse, the wide shots show a solid wall of black smoke. In the closer shots there's nowhere near as much. The smoke in the first shot must be coming from the explosion, and in the closer shot we're looking right at the destroyed tank, so it can't be due to different angles.

Continuity: In the part of the embassy scene where Matt Damon starts clobbering security people, the Marine's hat falls off no less than three times.

Visible crew/equipment: When Bourne is escaping from the Embassy and standing on the fire escape ledge, the safety cable for the later climbing scenes is clearly visible on the ledge around the corner to the right.

Continuity: When Bourne is escaping from the Embassy, he drops the bag, which hits some metal thing on the way down, making it wobble to and fro. The camera cuts away while it's still moving and we see the marines coming upstairs. When Bourne climbs under the fire escape, we can see down to the ground and the metal thing's stopped moving. All well and good, except after the marines leave Bourne looks down, and in that shot the metal thing is moving again, then stops - obviously the rest of the shot we saw before.

Continuity: In the scene where all the Treadstone agents are being contacted, we see Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. In the first shot of the building we see cranes standing next to it. In the next shot, the cranes have disappeared.

Continuity: In the scene at Treadstone HQ when they are looking at the footage of Bourne and Marie in the alley, Chris Cooper is wearing a short sleeved blue oxford dress shirt. When they zoom in on Marie to present her bio, Cooper is wearing a long sleeved shirt.

Factual error: Jason's Canadian passport has been issued in 1993 and expires in 2003. Canadian passports are only valid for five years.

Continuity: When Jason and Marie are in the car prior to the car chase they have a conversation with camera angles switching back and forth in the car. From shot to shot the window glass is alternately covered with a lot of rain droplets, a few rain droplets, and even completely dry.

Continuity: In the scene where Jason steals a grey Ford Sierra, when Marie walks from the phone booth to the car (Jason is taping the window) she passes a red Ford Fiesta and there is a grey Renault Laguna behind it. The car they are stealing is out of shot. When they drive off their car is suddenly on the spot where the Renault was.

Continuity: In the scene where Bourne is watching Conklin arrive on the Pont Neuf in Paris. The very first time Bourne is seen looking down at the bridge from the roof there is a long row of traffic all along its length. There is a scooter heading the direction of the traffic. Bourne gets his scope out and follows the scooter, yet from that moment on the line of traffic has magically vanished. You see the scooter through the scope about 2 seconds after you can see it on the bridge, and it would still be going along beside the traffic, but the traffic is gone.

Factual error: At the Zurich bank scene Jason's Russian passport is shown. The name is Foma Kiniaev as it is written in Latin letters. But the Cyrillic text isn't the same, it actually doesn't mean anything. The transcript is something like "LSTSFUM ASF". The place of birth is written as "Moscou" which is the French spelling of the name of the city. The passport is bilingual, Russian/English, so it'd be MOCKBA/MOSCOW.

Factual error: When Bourne arranges the rendezvous on the bridge (Pont Neuf) the time is scheduled for 5 p.m. At this time, in winter, in Paris, it would be dark.

Revealing: When Jason climbs onto the rail of the fire escape, it is not attached to the wall - intentionally, it has not broken - but then in another shot, two seconds later, it 'breaks'. It pulls out of a visible hole in the wall, although it was never actually attached and there was no hole before.

Continuity: During the car chase there is a shot of Bourne steering frantically. In the centre of the steering wheel is a Mini badge. Cut back a few moments later and the badge has changed to a Cooper badge.

Continuity: In the farmhouse scene Bourne looks out a window and it is bright outside. When he looks out the glass in the door and it is dark outside. When Bourne goes outside it is bright again.

Continuity: In the scene where Jason and Marie go to Jason's residence in Paris, Jason picks up a Bic Pen to write while he's talking on the phone to the hotel. He takes the cap off and places it on the back of the pen. In the next shot, the cap is missing from the back of the pen.

Continuity: When Bourne is escaping the embassy, he has to scale down a wall below a broken fire escape. As he is inching his way to his right, towards the corner, the shot changes to one from below, and he is suddenly about six feet lower than he was the moment before (there is a curved pipe jutting out of the wall that allows you to easily judge his actual position.)

Continuity: When Wombosi is shot, the bullets come through the bottom of the window which has bars. From the outside, we are shown that the shots go into the top of the window, and there are no bars on it.

Continuity: When Jason enters the train station to stash the red bag, the large clock on the outside of the station reads exactly 12 noon. Once he's inside the station the clock reads after two.

Continuity: At the beginning of the car chase, the red car has a burnt out leftside tail light. For the remainder of the chase, it's working.

Factual error: When Matt Damon enters the station, the clock reads 12noon. On the board inside the station, the timetable shows some trains leaving at 5pm. In this busy train station in Paris, it would be impossible to list 5 hours of departures. It is usually only about 1hour at that time of the day.

Continuity: Just before the car chase, a police car pulls up behind their mini, but when they race off it's no longer there.

Continuity: In the scenes during which Bourne and Marie are driving the Mini Cooper, interior shots are of at least two different cars, neither of which is the older model Mini Cooper featured in external shots. Interiors feature three-point seat belts, far more plastic than one would find on the original Mini, and in at least one shot, a steering wheel that appears to contain an air bag. Minis did not have any of this stuff until the 1990s, while the car used for exterior shots is of 1970s vintage at latest.

Factual error: When Jason asks Marie for the pay phone number in front of the Hotel Regina, she gives him a 7-digit number, 616 2468. A French phone number would be 8 digits, not including the (0)1 prefix.

Revealing: There is no snow at all on any surface higher than the second floor of the consulate, except for the sill Bourne is climbing on, and the fire escape.

Continuity: In the scene where Bourne is moving up the stairs in the embassy, as he approaches the 5th floor you see the legs and feet of someone either standing, or perhaps an evacuee. In the shot immediately following, the person is gone.

Continuity: When Conklin is going to meet Bourne on the bridge, the people walking behind or to the side of him are constantly changing between shots.

Continuity: When Jason is climbing down the side of the bank, there is a car in the snow. When the camera cuts directly to him, then back to the aerial view, the car is gone, there are no tracks and it isn't snowing hard enough to cover the tracks.

Factual error: All the scenes which are supposed to play in Zürich were being shot in Prague, the capital of Czech Republic. The director didn't choose Zürich because the city was too clean for him. The shields on the walls are sometimes written in Czech language, and the people speak German with a strange (Czech) accent, not like someone from Zürich.

Continuity: When Chris Cooper is going to meet Bourne on the bridge, he passes an agent in a wool cap who is facing the street. The shot changes to Bourne looking through the scope, and the man in the wool cap has instantly turned 180 degrees to face the water.

Continuity: In Bourne's Paris apartment, Bourne takes off his orange jumper and leaves it on the desk. When he kicks Castel over the desk, the orange jumper is knocked to the floor. After Castel goes out the window, the jumper is back on the desk again.

Other: In the scene where Nicole is listening to the French police radio, all rack equipment to her right is from Behringer, which is about the cheapest and most unprofessional you can find. A no-budget-limit governmental assassination squad would not save the $300 and buy Behringer equipment. Period. Also, the bass synthesizer, echo/reverb effects and digital crossovers in the rack have nothing to do there in the first place.

Continuity: In the scene at Treadstone HQ's where Cris Cooper is looking at the screen of the mini that Matt Damon is getting into, he takes off his glasses. It goes to the screen and then goes back to Cris Cooper and he takes off his glasses again and puts them in his breast pocket.

Revealing: During the Paris car chase scene a yellow van gets knocked over if you look in the van you can see that there is no one in it.

Continuity: When Bourne is on the phone with the French hotel asking whether his identities are checked in there, his right hand changes from holding passports to holding the phone between shots.

Continuity: In the scene where Wombosi is assassinated, he is walking down the stairs carrying his coat. When he is shot, he has his coat on. They cut to a shot of the bullets going through the window and the assassin on the roof and then they cut back to Wombosi lying at the bottom of the stairs with his coat on.

Visible crew/equipment: Right at the end of the car chase, the yellow van in the pile-up is flipped over by some kind of large metal lever in the undercarriage. This is seen from the last 2 angles of the crash.

Continuity: In the last firefight, after Matt Damon jumps down the stairwell, we are shown a shot at the top of the stairs where there are bullet holes in the wall. If you look carefully, you can see where they have been plastered over in previous takes.

Continuity: When Jason is viewing the CIA agent from the roof of the building, Jason is standing directly behind the big letters of the name. There's a cut and you can see the agent on the bridge and in the background the building on which Jason should be standing, but Jason is NOT there. If the actor were in this clear shot, he would easily be visible. At the next cut he's back again behind the big letters.

Revealing: Just as Jason is returning to the car from the train station after dumping the bag in a locker, spectators can be seen watching the filming, which was apparently done on the sly and without consent. Nonetheless, the onlookers did notice the film shoot and followed the actors' actions, who are not doing anything in the scene to draw attention to themselves. Watch the black man to the left of Jason in the background, he follows the scene and his head turns as he watches. Then look behind Marie right after that and there are 2 or 3 people watching as well, in the background. This is very visible and very distracting.

Visible crew/equipment: When Eamon is running away with Marie and his kids, the camera passes behind the car and a crew member is reflected in the trunk.

Visible crew/equipment: After Bourne and Marie get to Paris, Bourne is sleeping and Marie awakens him. Shortly after he gets out of the car you can see a crew member's head reflected in the rear right window.

Continuity: As Conklin walks on to the Pont Neuf, the French "associate" watches him directly and then speaks into his collar (a very obvious tip-off as to what's going on). But as Bourne watches this happen, the Frenchman has his back to Conklin, without adequate time to have turned around.

Continuity: Just after Bourne knocks out Conklin and walks toward the door, his pistol is a totally black Walther P5K. When the door opens in the next shot, it has changed to a black framed pistol with a silver slide.

Factual error: The laser pointer and the subtitle reads "Gemeinschaft Bank". That's wrong. It has to be Gemeinschaftsbank.

Continuity: Throughout the movie, Marie is wearing nail polish. When Jason and her are talking in the car when he returns from the train station, however, there is a shot of her having Jason's money in her hands. She is not wearing nail polish and her fingernails are longer - someone else's hands or the scenes were shot out of sequence and she had longer nails and nailpolish.

Continuity: During the car chase in Paris, the sun shines when the camera films the front of the car Bourne is driving, but it's grey and gloomy when the camera films the rear of the car. Changes back and forth throughout the entire car chase.

Factual error: After the scene where Bourne is returning to his hotel to find the police surrounding it he smashes a police car window to take a "wanted" poster from the front seat. This poster is titled "Gesucht" which is German. Requests for assistance from another police force would not simply be a matter of faxing a wanted poster to the nearest police station over the border. The request would be given to a national body who would then have translated the request to French before distribution.

Continuity: When Matt Damon is handed the bank number in the beginning of the movie, his fingers aren't bloody. In the next shot, they are.

Revealing: In the night scene where the Professor is driving in the rain to assassinate Womboosi, 2 people are visible in the car when it is shown from the front. Later he states that he always works alone so there is no reason for the other person.

Continuity: When Matt Damon is on the boat, his gun shot wounds are on his left shoulder blade in a horizontal line. In the hotel scene when Marie is taking off his shirt, they are diagonal between his shoulder blades.

Continuity: After Bourne dyes and cuts Marie's hair, she is left with long tendrils at her temples. He brushes them away when they start kissing. But the next morning, when Marie wakes up in bed, all of the front of her hair is cut short.

Continuity: Early in the film, Matt Damon is running up several flights of stairs. He is shown walking around a corner when the camera suddenly cuts to a different angle. In the new angle, he is shown running around the same corner.

Continuity: At the beginning of the film, Matt Damon has a flashing light attached into his chest, then we see it's a big red battery pack attached to a light, at the end of the movie, when he is having flashbacks, the battery pack and the light are not on the wet suit he has on, and the light is not flashing when he was in the water.

Other: After Jason rams the man through the railing at the top of the stairs, he puts in a new clip. As he falls through the air, he shoots the other guard once. Then, he puts in a new clip when he rises after the fall. After one shot?

Visible crew/equipment: When Bourne is scoping out the bridge he is supposed to meet Chris Cooper on, a piece of camera equipment is showing on the right hand of the screen.

Continuity: In the car chase scene, the windscreen wipers on the Mini change from being on, then to off, then back on again throughout the whole chase.

Continuity: When Jason goes into the bank in Switzerland for the first time, he puts his hand up to the identification plate, and then he takes it off. It reads him and allows him to go in, but the next shot shows him taking his hand off the reader again.

Continuity: When Wombosi gets assassinated, the shot changes to a view of the sniper's scope. The glass on the window is not broken, even after a bullet was fired through it.