X

Great sites

Anything Hollywood

Atomic Popcorn

Banned in Hollywood

Bits & Pieces

Blockbuster Buzz

Book mistakes

CanMag

The Daily Column

Daily Stab

Defamer

Double Viking

EHOWA

The Evil Beet

Film Drunk

Filmofilia

Filmspotting

Foundry Music

Game mistakes

Geek Tyrant

Gone Hollywood

Hollyscoop

Hollywood Outbreak

I Am Bored

I Love Bacon

Joblo movie news

Movie Banter

Movie Buzz

Movie spoilers

Movie timeline

Other crap

Screenjunkies

Sky movie reviews

Something Really Funny

Tengossip

Trailer Addict

Unreality Magazine

Virtually Existing

Mistakes

Near the start, in the first few minutes, in several shoots you can see barriers that are separating the crowd from the set. They are right back, so they couldn't be too visible. See more...

Trivia

The big speech from "Couldn't you find anyone worse? A child molester..." to the bit where Stu is shot was filmed in one take. Colin Farrel did everything and surprised himself and the crew. When he hit the floor, the crew (and the extras) had to contain their applause until the cameras stopped rolling. See more...

Picture

Movie Mistakes blog

Popular blog posts:

Top 15 biggest Harry Potter film mistakes

The biggest mistakes in the Harry Potter movies

15 biggest mistakes in Titanic

The 20 biggest Friends mistake pictures

10 Twilight mistakes in pictures

Phone Booth (2002) - 18 corrections

Directed by Joel Schumacher, starring Colin Farrell, Forest Whitaker, Katie Holmes, Kiefer Sutherland (add more)

Genres: 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
Trivia
Pictures
Corrections
Questions
Submit
Stu's cell phone call to 911 would force the police to investigate...instead the operator threatens to "terminate the call" if he doesn't answer, which just doesn't happen. [It doesn't? In many big cities, 911 call centers have gotten into trouble because of not believing there was an emergency, or even for not answering the phones at all.]
Edit
In the end the sniper walks right up to the ambulance truck Stu is in and starts talking to him. After a thing like that the police wouldn't just let anyone walk around the crime scene and near the victim. [Thats purely argumentative and in any case a character mistake on the police. The police believed the pizza delivery man was the sniper so there wasn't much point in getting an officer to watch Stu to protect him whilst in the ambulance. As for walking near the crime scene, the police might have not noticed the man or couldn't care less. The sniper only walked near the phone booth and being that it was a busy public street they might have just decided to ignore it or let it slide.]
Edit Corrected by Lummie
Right after Stu got the pain-killer in the ambulance the paramedic did not tape a piece of cotton on the injection-hole. Any real paramedic would do that. [EMTs and paramedics are highly skilled technicians, who in the end use his or her own judgement with each patient in a crisis, and taping gauze or cotton to the syringe's point of entry is not crucial, so at best this is a character's decision.]
Edit Corrected by lmao
Towards the end of the movie when Forrest is talking to Stu about how they are trying to bring the "lawyer" down, there is a shot that includes the bat that the pimp used to smash the booth. After there is a close up, the bat has disappeared from the street. Also, the bat wasn't there throughout the whole movie after the pimp was shot so it is pretty random that it shows up again. [The bat is there throughout the movie, visible in a number of wider shots of the booth. In most shots used, the bat would not be visible - there are only so many wide shots that you can get away with.]
Edit
After the first three shots that the sniper fires (robot, ear, guy with the bat), he threatens several times to shoot the wife, the girlfriend, the cop, etc. He repeatedly 'cocks' the rifle (four times) without firing a shot. Cocking the rifle chambers a round, which doesn't go anywhere until fired. [He's using the sound for psychological effect. Note that the sniper has two rifles present - the one that he leaves behind for the police to discover, and the one that he's carrying in the case at the very end. His main rifle is aimed and ready - the other is most likely the one that he's using for the cocking noise - he can cock that one as many times as he likes.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
While talking to Mario, Stu's cigarette keeps appearing and disappearing throughout the chat. [It doesn't disappear, Stu takes the cigarette from his mouth and is holding it in his hand which is off camera at some points during the conversation.]
Edit
In the end of the movie, the sniper is seen walking away with a gun case. Just about any police officer knows what a gun case looks like and the sniper would have immediately been stopped and checked. [Firstly, the police have their suspect, identified by Stu, and he's dead - they're not looking for anyone else. Secondly, the caller has been established as both intelligent and highly methodical - he would undoubtedly have made certain that he had appropriate documentation to reassure the police that he holds the rifle legitimately before he took any risks that might bring him into possible contact with the police. Even if the police did stop him and check him, it would just be routine (after all, as far as they're concerned, they've got their man) and they'd find nothing incriminating to hold him on.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
At the end, the Caller walks off holding a large duffel case which ostensibly holds the rifle he was using. But when the officers break into his apartment, they find the dead pizza guy - and the rifle still on its stand. The Caller couldn't have possibly gotten back into his apartment and dismantled the rifle with all the cops there, and there's no way he had the time - after realizing he'd been had - to kill the pizza guy, disassemble his rifle, assemble a new one and set it up, aim it perfectly, then get out of there. So what's he carrying at the end? [The Caller had to anticipate that he might be discovered, so he had the decoy rifle - the one he left behind - already assembled, on the stand and aimed in roughly the right direction. He killed the pizza guy and left the apartment, presumably running up the stairs away from the police, with his actual rifle hidden as best he could under his coat. Once out of sight, he would have time to disassemble his own rifle and stow it in the case.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
In the scene where the cops arrive, you can see the pimp's dead body lying on the street. In the very next shot he's gone. [One of the cops says, "Get this body out of here." and the ambulance attendants carry him away on a stretcher.]
Edit Time
When the guy shot Stu's ear, the police oficers could have determined where the bullet came from by imagining a line linking the two holes in the windows of the phone booth. It wouldn't necessarily be hugely accurate, but it would identify the building it came from. [There's only one pane with a hole in it. The pimp broke the pane facing the street which is where the bullet entered.]
Edit
Early in the film, Colin sneaks a call to the police on his cell phone. Kiefer somehow knows about it and chastises Colin. So why is Colin later able to sneak a call to his wife in the same manner? [When Stu phones 911 the dispatcher talks to him and so the sniper hears that the Stu made a call. When he phones his wife she only listens and hands it over to the cop who also says nothing.]
Edit
Towards the end of the movie, after the sniper talks to Stu in the ambulance, the camera rises, and you can see that the street and sidewalk are wet, and below the police cars, the concrete is dry; when in the whole movie, it never rained at all. [The last scene is shot in dark blue-gray tones for artistic effect, so it's hard to tell, but if you look closely the streets are dry.]
Edit
Why did Kiefer Sutherland call from the hotel room phone so that the cops could find out where he was. Did he want everything to end? If he would call from the same phone the whole time he wouldn't have to kill the pizza guy, who obviously wasn't a bad person, he wouldn't have to get another rifle to rig, and he could play with Farrell for a much longer time. [The police found the room because the sniper called Kelly's shop. Forrest Whitaker has the phone call traced because he's sure that the sniper made a mistake and forgot to block it. The sniper didn't plan for the cops to find him when they did.]
Edit Corrected by Ral0618
The max effective range for a beanbag or rubber bullet 12 gauge shotgun round is about 25 yards. The police officer deployed across the street and up on a balcony. With that range, the officer would have been very lucky to hit a barn let alone a moving person. The impact at that range would have been barely noticable. Even from within 20 yards those rounds don't knock you down, they just hurt like hell. [The balcony could possibly be only 25 yards from the street. We aren't given a great shot of the shooter cop, so we can't say for sure that the bullet wouldn't have reached Stu. Also, Stu might have been so shocked to get hit that he fell back, stunned.]
Edit Corrected by Ral0618
When Captain Ramey first talks to Stu, he is smart enough to figure out that there is a problem with Stu staying on the phone but he's not smart enough to figure out that Stu was trying to protect Kelly by saying that she wasn't his wife. Ramey even asked to see her I.D. again and after finding out who she was and even after seeing the laser on her, he still let's her walk all around. [The laser was for emphasis of what Stu was feeling. There was no red dot on the pimp or anyone else when the sight was on them, and the only other time we see the red laser dot was when the sniper asked Stu if he could "feel" the gun pointing at him, and then the dot was used to show that Stu felt the snipers sights on him. Ramey never saw a laser on her because there was no laser, and logically, why would the sniper have a laser on his gun if he was trying to remain hidden? Ramey only figures it out later that there is a sniper, although he did begin to assume that somethings not right from the start. This is why Kelly walks around, because the police chief did not know what the situation was.]
Edit
In the scene where the pimp gets shot, he is heading towards the phone booth. Then in the scene where the bullet grazes Colin Farrel's ear, it enters though the left side of the phone booth and in an ealier scene, the sniper mentions that he could see the numbers Colin was dialing on the phone (which means he would have been viewing from the back of the phone booth)...so how is this possible when the sniper was suppose to be in the same window through the entire movie? [First of all, the pimp was shot in the back right next to the phone booth, holding Colin in his arms. The bullet that shot Colin in the ear entered thru the window that the pimp destroyed with his bat and EXITED thru the left side window. And as for the sniper seeing him dial the numbers, he still would be able to tell what numbers he was dialing and would not have to be behind the phone booth to see them.]
Edit
After the pimp gets killed and the police finally come and get the body the one officer starts talking to Colin Farrell while he's in the phone booth. After a few minutes there is a shot from above the street and there is a chalk outline on the pavement where the pimp's body was. Who had time do that and when did they do so? [When the officers are removing the pimp's body the police man on the near side of the body leans over and chalks the body before moving it.]
Edit
When Keifer Sutherland first engages Colin Farrel in the phone booth, he decribes his rifle. He also states that it would leave an exit wound the size of "a small tangerine". However, when KS shoots the pimp who is attempting to get CF out of the phone booth there is no exit wound. [The answer is in the movie itself. Later on, Farrel questions Sutherland's bullet as he knows the bullet from his gun won't match Sutherland's sniper bullet. Sutherland states that the bullet is a hollowpoint and would fragment on impact rather than travel through and leave an exit wound like a normal bullet would. That's why there is no exit wound; Sutherland's grapefruit analogy is sheerly for intimidation.]
Edit