Commando (1985) - 102 mistakes

Continuity: After chasing down Sully, the yellow Porsche is totally wrecked on the left side, until Arnie drives it away, and it's fine.

Continuity: At the very end of the film. When the 3 helicopters and the seaplane come into land, it is quite a wide show, with no boats visible. A few minutes later, when the seaplane takes off again, a big white boat is near the cost. Even if the boat was off camera during the landing scene, a few minutes was surely not enough to get that far, and that close to the shore.

Continuity: When Bennet and Matrix are fighting at the end. Bennet has his hand over Matrix's face. During instant camera cuts, the position of his hand alters on Matrix's face and neck.

Continuity: When Matrix is driving the red car and trying to run Sully's yellow car off the road, watch the front bumper of the red car. At some points it is hanging off the car, and at others is it attached onto the car.

Continuity: At the start of the film we see two guys on the bin wagon. The one on the left of the screen already has his Uzi in his left hand, yet in the next shot we see him lean into the back of the bin wagon to pick it out.

Revealing: When Arnold raids the compound at the end, he blows up several buildings. Watch carefully, there are dummies all around the building to look like people, but they are so poorly constructed and look so ridiculous it's absurd. There are three separate shots to check out, all within seconds of each other.

Continuity: When Arnold lets go of the landing gear he lands in the water. A few seconds later we see him walking up towards the beach, and we can now see that he is only wet from his waist down. It's not likely that he would have been able to land standing on his feet and not not becoming completely soaked.

Revealing: When Matrix hits the button to blow up the village, you can clearly see that there are only cardboard stand-ups of men next to the buildings blowing up. Also, for some reason the top of the watch-tower blows up when Matrix never put a bomb there.

Continuity: During the shooting scene by the mansion, the same poor soldier gets killed from different angles, again and again and AGAIN....

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where John uses a Caterpillar to enter the scuba and guns shop, the driver is a stuntman, in both slow or normal motion.

Continuity: Rae fires a rocket at the police van, first she fires it back to front then the second time she fires it correctly only this time she is knocked back by the recoil, why wasn't she affected the first time and pushed forward?  Also there should be no recoil with a rocket launch.

Factual error: Towards the end there's a firefight between Matrix who wields a shotgun and El Presidente who is armed with a Steyr AUG. The weapon sounds used for the Steyr AUG however are from a MAC 10 or an UZI and don't sound a bit like it.

Audio problem: When Matrix tells Cooke that "I eat Green Berets for breakfast" you never see his lips move when he says "But right now I'm very hungry."

Revealing: In the siege at the end, there is a shot where you can hear the squibs (small charges that explode on a stuntman to make it appear he was shot by a bullet) going off on one of the soldiers as Matrix shoots him.

Continuity: When Matrix first rips out the seat of Cindy's car and sits in its spot, his body sits very low to the the bottom of the car. You can even see in the next scene that his head is clearly lower than Cindy's. However, during the chase scene, his head is level with Cindy's.

Continuity: When Matrix is infiltrating the base (just before he blows everything up), and just after he has cut a soldier's throat and planted a bomb, he is confronted by two more soldiers walking along with rifles slung. Seeing Matrix, the two frantically start un-slinging their rifles. Matrix throws two knives at them. Next we see the two soldiers falling with knives in their throats... and the one on the right has his rifle fully slung again.

Continuity: At the end of the movie, Arnie puts on his flak jacket then his make-up, but when he takes off his jacket, he's got camouflage on.

Continuity: After Matrix throws the police officer into the bunch of officers at the mall, he runs at Sully, and you see the guards are beginning to get back up on their feet, but then you see them again a few seconds later, and they are back on the floor again!

Continuity: When the baddies are destroying Matrix's house he is laying on the floor covering his daughter's head. The position of the hand keeps swapping depending on the angle.

Audio problem: The scene where Bennet and Matrix are fighting towards the end of the movie, before Matrix kills Bennet they have each others throat in their hands and one of their backs is against the furnace. While they are grunting and groaning, if you listen carefully, you can hear one of them say "switch" just before they change positions.

Factual error: The shot of Matrix landing in the swamp after jumping from the plane isn't consistent with the free fall. The final shot indicates he has not fallen more than a couple meters. On top of that, after jumping from a DC-10 doing over 150 mph, he has no forward momentum when he lands.

Visible crew/equipment: When Matrix and the girl are driving out of the parking lot you can see the camara crew in the reflection of the car.

Continuity: In the fight scene where Matrix and Bennett are trying to force each other against the furnace, watch Bennett's hands as he struggles with Matix. In one shot Bennett has his hand pressing against Matrix's face, in the reverse shot he is holding Matix by the back of his head/hair. His hands switch back and forth several times.

Continuity: When Sully flees the mall in his Porsche he runs into Matrix, knocking him up and over the car but also knocks off his wing mirror in the process. In the driving scenes that follow the mirror is back on the car.

Continuity: When Matrix and Cindy are about to take of in the pontoon plane it is dark. Then as the plane takes off it is dusk with a little sun left, yet at the same time the view from the cockpit shows it is unbelievably dark.

Continuity: While on the compound, there is a scene where some army guys are driving at Matrix in a jeep. They drive past some random army supplies and are about to surprise Matrix when he turns around and nails them with his rocket launcher. Or he sort of nails them. Actually, the army supplies that they had just passed have suddenly relocated and are crashed into by their jeep. Rewind and play repeatedly for full humour effect.

Continuity: The style of Cindy's car changes when Matrix and Cindy are tailing Sully. Note the front grille with the center emblem that suddenly appears, the style of the headlight chambers that surround the headlight casings, as well as the two bumper guards that disappear and reappear. Obviously different vehicles.

Continuity: When Cindy fires the rocket launcher she is knocked down by the blast. The camera cuts to the rocket flying to the van and she is instantly stood up again. Slow-mo may be helpful but is not essental.

Continuity: When Matrix jumps inside the house to protect the girl from the shootings, the blood stain on his forehead suddenly disappears.

Deliberate "mistake": When Cindy asks 'What did you do with Sully?', surely she must have known he'd been dropped off the cliff as she was standing about five metres away?

Visible crew/equipment: During the scene where Matrix is attempting to push his truck down the hill, pay close attention to the shot where the truck starts rolling and Matrix jumps into the cab - the cable controlling the truck is visible to the right of the rear tire.

Revealing: Just before the guard in his tower gets killed and falls out, you can see the wooden sides have been precut. When he supposedly falls through the wood it parts along the cut line but remains hanging on string.

Continuity: In the bar at the mall, when the bad guy receives the money and handshakes the fat man, he grabs a glass with his left hand. In the next shot his hand is suddenly away from the glass.

Continuity: When Arnold throws the pipe at Bennett the end of it is round and clean; in the following shot it is irregular shaped and edgy.

Plot hole: Arnie is supposed to be an army trained soldier but at the end of movie when he's shooting up the army base he hangs the grenades by their pins. Surely he couldn't be that stupid?

Other: When Arnie enters the plane's cargo hold at the start of the film, he is confronted with a black dog in a cage barking at him. As he slides past the dog it seems to pay no attention to Arnie, but seems to be more interested in barking at someone else who is out of shot. (trainer perhaps?)

Continuity: During the attack on El Presidentes house Matrix is seen using the belt fed machine gun. One shot shows him firing it apparently left handed (the film has been flipped as mentioned before) with a strap diagonally across his chest. The shots immediately before and after this he does not have the strap. A couple of shots later he is seen picking up a gun with a strap and putting it over his head. The next shot is the same one as previous but flipped back to its correct way.

Continuity: During the ridiculously overdrawn action sequence at the end, Arnie has a belt-fed machine gun which becomes lefty and righty through certain shots. Since Arnie isn't lefty, and it's unlikely that the army would just have a lefty belt-fed gun lying around, it's safe to say that the picture was reversed.

Continuity: When Matrix is rowing the raft towards the shores, if you look behind him, he is clearly rowing the raft towards open sea, with no island in sight.

Continuity: In the hotel fight scene between Matrix and Cooke, Cooke is knocked on the ground and shoves a red suitcase out of his way, and it lands near the door to the adjacent hotel room. When Cooke is knocked to that exact spot a few seconds later and grabs the gun, the suitcase is gone.

Continuity: When Matrix first abducts Cindy and is talking to her in the car, both of their windows are rolled up. When she backs the car out, the passenger side window is rolled down. In the next shot, as they exit the parking garage and pay the attendant, both windows are rolled down.

Revealing: Just before Matrix crashes the red car there is a shot with just 1 person in it. The woman has vanished.

Revealing: When Matrix fires the multi-bazooka at the jeep, just before it explodes, a bunch of boxes covered with bushes suddenly appears right in front, most likely to hide all the stuff to allow for the explossions and chaos that follows.

Audio problem: When the soldiers surround the shack and finish firing at it,you can hear a shotgun blast last while nobody shot.

Revealing: At the end of the fight between Matrix and Bennett, Matrix throws a pipe through his body into the steam duct behind him. However, immediately after he is pierced by the pipe, we see Bennett slide about half a foot down the wall, which would be impossible with the pipe lodged in behind him.

Continuity: On Matrix and Cindy's way flying to an island to rescue his daughter, they flew west. Yet, prior to arriving at the island, the sun was seen rising. Did they travel around the world?

Continuity: During the car chase there is a silver Renault 5 which is behind the Porsche and in front of Arnie, two or three times Arnie overtakes it, yet in the following shot he is right behind it again.

Continuity: When Matrix and Cindy follow Sully from the airport to the shopping mall the front license plate of Cindy's car is missing. When they arrive inside the mall parking ground it is back again. Later, when they follow Sully from the mall to the point where they intercept him, the plate is gone again.

Revealing: The stunt double for David Patrick Kelly is seen driving the car, just before he crashes through the gate of the parking garage.

Continuity: The police van flips onto its right side. The camera cuts and it is now on its left side.

Continuity: When Cindy and Matrix are following Sully, there is a shot from inside Sully's Porsche and there is a big green what looks to be a lorry following 2 cars behind. The camera cuts and it is no longer there.

Other: Bennett grabs the furnace door but doesn't get burned.

Revealing: In the beginning of the movie when Matrix goes to get his rifle from the shed, he uses a combination on the keypad to unlock the door but the door was already half opened.

Revealing: During the stunt where the police van flips over (as a result of the rocket launcher attack) you can see the telegraph pole section used to flip the van over. It rolls down the road. (Stunts involving flips rely on a mini pile driver under the vehicle, as opposed to using an explosive charge by itself which can be too unpredictable).

Deliberate "mistake": In the scene in which Matrix rams Sully off the road we see his car go up the embankment and land on its side. It lands about three feet from the embankment.Then when we see Matrix go to flip the car back onto its wheels, it is now about seven or eight feet from the embankment.

Continuity: The rocket launcher. It has 4 barrels. Which means 4 shots. Cindy uses 2 rockets to save Arnie from the police truck. When he is using the rocket launcher when he is saving his daughter, he fires 2 rockets. 1 at the jeep behind him and 1 at the large impassable door. But when you see him fire these 2 rockets, they both come out of the same top right barrel. Why would he need 4 barrels if the rockets come out of a single barrel?

Continuity: Halfway through the movie, Matrix is checking out the house where they keep his daughter. We then see a shot that shows what he is seeing through his binoculars, as he looks from the left to the right. Strangely, the landscape seems to move in the same direction as he is moving the binoculars, whereas normally the landscape would be moving in the opposite direction.

Continuity: As we see Matrix enter his gun shed, he picks up a pistol and tucks it into his pants. He then runs back to the house and kills the guy in the chair. As he leaves the house, the gun is now tucked into his belt.

Continuity: As Matrix and his daughter are eating their sandwiches at the start of the film we see Matrix holding his sandwich looking out the window when he hears the chopper. Then, as the camera angle changes, the sandwich is now back on the plate.

Continuity: As the two garbage men are shooting the guy at the start of the movie, we see from the side shot that they are standing parallel to each other a few feet apart and they stay still as they shoot him. Then when the camera changes angles to the front shot after the dead guy falls, we see the bad guy on the right has moved a few feet forward.

Continuity: When Matrix and Cindy are getting onto the amphibious plane, you see them with several bags...but not the rocket launcher.  Yet it is on the plane when they arrive at the island.

Continuity: At the beginning of the movie when Matrix is driving his truck down the mountains after the bad-guys, there are two mistakes. The first is that just before Matrix's truck crashes, the two cars he's chasing (the car and the van) are very close to one another, and Matrix drives right between the two cars without hitting either of them. This is because after you see the shot of the two vehicles close to one another, the next shot you see the van that was following the car is way behind and totally misses Matrix's truck. The next mistake is just before Matrix's truck falls off the little cliff, you see many trees in front of him (where the cliff was supposed to be), however, once the truck actually falls off, the cliff is there with no trees around it.

Continuity: At the end when Alyssa Milano is standing next to Arnold, in the wide shot you can see it's him, but in the close-up of Alyssa the person standing next to her has blond hair on his chest while Arnold is well "shaved clean".

Continuity: When Matrix and Cindy are getting into the plane, the guys on the docks are shooting at the plane. You see several bullets make holes on the right side of the door. Later when you see the plane, the holes are gone.

Continuity: When Matrix has got the gun with an ammo feed into it, the amount of ammo left in the feed changes drastically between shots.

Continuity: When Matrix is laying on the table, and the bad guys are telling him the plan, a chain around his chest keeps appearing and disappearing depending on the angle.

Factual error: As noted elsewhere, it is simply not credible that Cindy, a trainee pilot, could land an seaplane so neatly, but it should also be pointed out that she banks into a low level formation on three helicopters - a very tricky manouevre, and then immediately after take off banks tightly into a high speed flyover of the squad on the beach. Both of these stunts would demand a very high level of skill from a pilot, especially one flying a lumbering old seaplane.

Factual error: Rae Dawn Chong sees a receipt for some aircraft fuel and comments that its "type 4" the kind used for amphibian aircraft. Well I've not heard of "type 4" and surely fuel used is differentiated by the type of engine not by the type of aircraft, JP4 is kerosene for jet engines and avgas for piston engines. (The plane they take has piston engines).

Factual error: When Cindy and Matrix are in the warehouse, Cindy instantly knows that 250 gallons would get the plane to the island and back. It would be unlikely that she knows the rate of fuel flow, and, indeed, the weather conditions and type of engine, to allow her to figure this out.

Revealing: The scene with the shack has many mistakes, but only if you play it in slow-mo. First, he throws the circular saw at the guy in the window, the saw is moving on wires and he has a hairpiece someone just pulls off with a wire. The next guy he stabs with a pitchfork, and Arnie just lightly stabs him and the guy falls forward holding onto the pitchfork to make it look as though he was stabbed. Arnie then throws a saw at a guy hitting him in the chest. The guy actually just catches the saw in his arms in a way to make you think he got hit. Then Arnie swings some sort of gardening tool into the genitles of a man, but he actually stops it before it hits the guy and the thug just holds onto the handle. Finally, Arnie hacks off the forearm of a another man. You can tell that his arm was fake from the elbow on.

Factual error: Matrix reads coordinates N33° 13' W117° (or possibly W119°) 18'. Neither LAT or LONG has seconds; just degrees and minutes, but he says, "These coordinates are somewhere near Santa Barbara". Even if you fill in 59" for the latitude north, it's still quite a ways south of Santa Barbara. If you fill in 119° it takes you farther west out to sea: that much further from Santa Barbara. The closest island to those coordinates is San Nicolas Island, and since they did go to an island later, that must have been it. Still a far cry from Santa Barbara. The handwritten coordinates would be much easier to read on Blu Ray.

Continuity: When Arnie is escaping from the aeroplane at the start, he has a cut on the right hand side of his forehead. When Arnie (or his stuntman) climbs out onto the landing gear, the cut is on the left hand side of his forehead.

Continuity: When Matrix is fighting with Bennet at the end of the film with the knifes, when Matrix slashes Bennet's wrist if you look at the knife it has no blood on it.

Continuity: After Matrix lands on the island and kits himself up, the camera zooms out to show him fully geared up; pay attention to the binoculars hanging from his neck - they are different to the ones he uses a minute or two later.

Continuity: When Matrix boards the plane towards the beginning of the film, it is early evening - the sun is shown to be low in the sky, casting long shadows. Once he has escaped from the plane and is making his way back across the runways into the airport building, the shadows are smaller and more intense, showing the sun is more directly overhead - therefore it has suddenly become much earlier in the day.

Continuity: In the mall, before the girl enters the bar, a guy in a blue and white shirt is half a metre away from passing next to her. Camera shot on Arnold, then back to the girl, and now the walker, plus the passers by around, have stepped backwards several metres and repeat their movements again.

Continuity: When Bennett is beating the crap out of Matrix by the furnace, the close shots show big bleeding wounds, which disappear or diminish drastically in the wide shot.

Continuity: During the last fight, when Bennett and Matrix fall over on the platform, the gun on the floor to the right side of the screen moves around between shots, allowing for Bennett to easily pick it up.

Factual error: When Cindy first gets into the seaplane, she asks 'where are the LCD readouts? - I learned in a Cessna' as well as saying 'this plane is older than I am.' Any Cessna she learned to fly in would almost certainly be older than her, but even worse, Cessnas used for initial flight training (150s, 152s or 172s) certainly do not have LCD displays.

Continuity: During the long shoot-out at the compound, Arnold shoots down a whole army of bad guys. When he reaches the fountain, he shoots at about 3 or 4 people from a bird's eye view. If you watch closely, you can see one of the guards dive on the ground and play dead before Arnold's stream of bullets reaches him. Given what was happening at the time, that may have not been a bad idea.

Continuity: After Matrix kills Sully he tips the yellow Porsche back on its wheels and we see the hood ornament is gone. As he and Cindy drive away it's magically reappeared. Then as they go through the city it's gone again.

Factual error: Arnie drops from a plane travelling well over 100mph, falls about 100 feet, and just because he lands in a marsh, doesn't mean he'd be uninjured...

Continuity: The position of the pipe stuck in Bennett's chest moves down and to the left in the second shot.

Revealing: There is a scene in the mall fight between Matrix, and the security guards when he knocks one of them over a railing you can see the cord that's attached to the security guard's right ankle as he falls.

Revealing: When Matrix cuts a soldier's throat, he slides the blunt side of the knife against the man's skin. Furthermore, the soldier doesn't bleed.

Revealing: In the mansion, Matrix jumps to shelter in some flowers and the mat he lands on is noticeable because he bounces and parts of it become visible.

Continuity: When Matrix is trying to ram Sully off the road, the amount of damage to both cars is constantly varying.

Continuity: When Bennett holds his knife against Matrix's face the knife keeps swapping positions and also the blade appears up or down depending on the shot; despite Bennett being unable to move his arm.

Continuity: At the end of the film, when the Army are arriving on the island, the amphibian plane is beached, with the nose facing the beach and the camera. In the next shot, when we see the same plane again, it has been moved out about 50ft, and turned round.

Visible crew/equipment: When Matrix is holding Sully over the cliff, you can see the cable holding him up.

Plot hole: The police are marching Matrix out of the gun shop, they didn't even put hand-cuffs on him! I think I would put hand-cuffs on a guy who just smashed open a gun shop and was stealing all the guns he could get into his hands.

Deliberate "mistake": At the mall when Sully first sees Matrix, he grabs at Cindy's handbag wanting a quarter. It's amazing that Cindy first would have a quarter just laying around in there, but it's also amazing how quick he finds it without looking! What if he got to the phone and it was a nickel? He never even looks at it!

Deliberate "mistake": When Matrix drives the car head on into the telephone pole, he gets out of the car with NO injuries. It looks like he was driving at least 40 miles per hour. They weren't wearing seatbelts either, so both of them should have flown through the windscreen.

Continuity: When Matrix is in the gun shop, you see him take the missile launcher off the wall, but then in another scene, it is back on the wall again. Also, watch how easily Cindy runs with the missile launcher to the shopping cart. I guess those things don't have any weight to them.

Continuity: When Matrix fights Cooke in the motel room, after smashing the glass wall they knock over a pink lampshade, but in the next shot it's back up again.

Visible crew/equipment: In a scene towards the end, you can see the two bad guys flip into the air, and see the air ramps they fly off.

Continuity: Sully is a very short man and Matrix is a very tall big man. Yet after Matrix kills Sully he gets in his car and drives away without having to adjust the seat at all.

Continuity: Towards the end Arnold is firing a gun, and the length of the ammo belt changes. They show the ammo almost gone and then after an edit it's dragging on the ground.

Continuity: At the end, where Matrix kills Bennett by throwing a pipe through him (OK sure, but let's just pretend). The pipe goes through Bennett, and into a steam pipe behind him. Then steam pours out of the Pipe that Matrix threw. Now what happened to all of the flesh, bone, skin, and blood that was inside of the pipe?

Revealing: When Arnie hits the telegraph pole with the red sports car, you can see Rae's "dummy" head go flying off over the windshield

Revealing: During the fight scene with Matrix and Cooke at the Motel, the stunt double for Cooke (the bald black guy) looks nothing like him and can be seen during many parts.

Factual error: The gun that Arnold uses at the end to take out a hundred soldiers would need to be deployed. The kickback would knock even Arnie flat on his back after a few shots fired. And there is no way he could run and shoot at the same time.