The Italian Job

Factual error: The group is plunged into the icy water for at least several minutes wearing nothing but light jackets yet no one seems to be suffering from hypothermia in the slightest when they show up on shore. (00:21:30)

Factual error: Even a minor low-speed impact of a motorbike that heavy into a car door would damage it so badly that it would look different than shown on the white Mini - if the door were still there. Most certainly the glass would be shattered and the door could not be closed. (01:36:30)

Factual error: The crew sets off explosives so the armored truck will fall through the street into the subway tunnel. In reality, the subway tunnels underneath Hollywood Blvd are about 6 stories underground. That means the truck would have to fall through approximately 80 feet of concrete, soil, rock and more concrete to fall into the tunnel. (01:29:15)

Factual error: When Mark Wahlberg is a child, he steals a wallet with bills sticking out. The bills are large head print, not possible in that time period. (02:10:10)

Factual error: Pilots always use the established phonetic alphabet to give registrations or information. Steve's pilot says, "3 Kilo Bob". He should have said "3 Kilo Bravo".

Ssiscool

Factual error: In the flashback scene of Lyle when his roommate steals the Napster code, the caption says Northeast University - 1999. The computer Lyle is sleeping at is running Windows XP, which was not commercially available at the time. (00:29:30)

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Suggested correction: Actually that is not Win XP on Lyle's computer, based upon the Dell XPS D233 shown on his right, Win NT4 SP2 is what is running on the display. I had a similar D266 running NT4 SP3 back in 98.

Factual error: When Mark Wahlberg is trying to evade the helicopter, he runs into a dead end made up of two buses attached to a tow truck. The problem is that they're MUNI buses, and MUNI only runs in the San Francisco bay area, so these would be no where in the Los Angeles area.

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Suggested correction: The Muni bus is not exclusive to San Fran. I lived north of Halifax NS, and there were 18 GMC silverside MUNI buses.

"Muni" buses aren't a brand or model. Muni is short for San Francisco Municipal Railway, which is a transit service owned by the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority. The SFMTA does not operate anywhere else in California, and certainly not in a foreign country. Los Angeles is served by Metro, not Muni.

Bishop73

Factual error: In the scene where Charlie is introducing the gang to Stella, the Napster arrives on a yellow Ducati motorcycle. All Ducatis are twin cylinder machines which have a distinctive throbbing exhaust note. The sound used is from a higher revving four cylinder machine, definitely not the bike being ridden. The same is true of the motorcycle chase scenes - they are BMWs, opposed twin configuration not producing the 4-cylinder engine noise, which must be overdubbed. (00:30:10)

FastBikerBoy

Factual error: In the Mini Cooper subway scene, the cars are first seen outside of the Hollywood/Highland red line station. However, when they jump in front of the metro rail line, it is the blue line they are jumping in front of and not the red line. The only red line station that meets up with the blue line is the 7th Street/Metro station, not the Hollywood/Highland station. (01:26:10 - 01:27:25)

Factual error: When Steve is measuring the position of the safe, 14' 8" is depicted as 14.8 and 8' 5" is shown as 8.5. This is completely wrong. (00:08:50)

throcko

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Suggested correction: They wrote it that way because they wanted to. They do not have to write it as 8'5." Short forming would be 8.5 since they know what scale they are using to measure with.

Factual error: Charlie tells Napster it's "13 across, 4 high, 4 deep" as anyone can see that's only the math for one of the three shelves in the same. It would actually be 13 across, 12 high, 4 deep (although at points it looks only 2 deep and other points it looks to be 3) which would mean that there's 624 bricks not 208 and it'd be worth 81 million instead of 27. Funny enough, Napster still returns that it's 208 bricks and 27 mil so it seems that no-one in cast or crew noticed the mathematical mistake.

Factual error: During the escape at the end of the movie, when the Minis come out of the pipe and drop down into the basin of the LA River they fall nose first into the pavement. However, with approximately 9 million dollars worth of gold in the trunks of the cars, they would be back heavy, not front heavy, and fall more evenly or even back first. It's been suggested that Wrench could have put a ton of weight up front to balance the cars properly, but the amount of gold carried in those special boxes loaded into the back end of the very short wheelbase Minis could not be balanced even by the legendary Wrench without severely re-engineering the vehicle. If that was possible, the handling of the unladen Mini would be woeful, and the chase scene BEFORE the subway gold heist would be impossible. The Minis would have fallen like bricks nose-first onto the subway track when jumping from the platform.

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Suggested correction: I have spoken with an expert in vehicle dynamics and physics, and he said that the falling of the vehicles is absolutely correct. He has seen the movie and finds nothing wrong with the scene. The front of the car starts falling first, and therefore will land first. The cars would have to fall a much greater distance for the weight to take over and cause the back of the car to drop and hit first - it would have to have fallen perhaps as much as 25-30 feet. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but in reality it was real as presented.

Sorry, your expert must have been a friend of the stunt coordinator. It was the worst car stunt mistake of all time and why they never balanced the cars and reshot the scene is anybody's guess.

Of course the front end starts to fall first, that's the point of the mistake, it should be backend heavy. If you watch the scene, it's clear there's a ramp at the end of the tube (whether intentionally done by the characters or for stunt purposes). When the cars hit the ramp, they fly up so that the front end is up in the air above the back end. Then the cars fall front end first, fairly quickly, that if even if they fell from higher up, the back end would never fall faster than the front.

Bishop73

Factual error: The safe at the end is a very high end model with a glass relocker if you break the pane. However, in this type of safe, as an extra security measure, the glass is a small pane put somewhere randomly in the door by the safe door assembler, not one large pane as depicted in the movie.

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Suggested correction: The glass relocker is located in an area that is vulnerable to attack. In this case, the entire area around the dial is vulnerable to attack as a drill would allow access to the inner mechanism. It would not make sense to be in a random spot as you could figure out where the glass is with special depth gauge and acoustic devices.

Factual error: When Charlie hands off the case of gold at the end, he easily spins it around as if it's empty. Bars of gold aren't light by any means.

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Suggested correction: When they put the gold into the Minis, we only see silver metal boxes in the trunks, not the black one Charlie hands over to the Ukrainian. Also the time span between getting on the train and the confrontation with Steve was too short to put the barrels into the black box. It's more likely that the box is full of money and was prepared before the Minis entered the subway system.

Not likely. Gold would be worth more than cash in that box. And gold would make more sense as then they don't have to carry cash and take up space in the minis.

Ssiscool

Continuity mistake: In the getaway scene after Charlie leaves Stella and Handsome Rob to go after Steve, Napster says take the next left and you see the Mini's number plate which reads 2SBI658. When he skids narrowly missing a truck it now reads 2SAQ321.

DTL315

More mistakes in The Italian Job

Left Ear: We're in Italy. Speak English.

More quotes from The Italian Job

Trivia: Shawn Fanning plays himself in the flashback scene where Lyle describes how Fanning stole the Napster code from him while the two of them roomed together in college.

More trivia for The Italian Job

Question: During the Venice boat chase at the beginning of the film, a large number of vessels are flying a flag which looks more like the flag of Mexico than that of Italy. Or are they perhaps flying the 'Kingdom of Italy' flag which looks similar from a distance to the Mexican National Flag? Can anyone help?

Answer: They are flying the Italian Civil Ensign, which is used by civilians on water. The emblem in the center of the Italian flag when used on water are the Arms Of Savoy, the former royal Family of Italy.

More questions & answers from The Italian Job

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