Darkman (1990) - 27 mistakes

Other: At the carnival, you can see an African-American man staring at the camera for a while. I am unsure if he is a crew-member watching over the scene, or if he is just an extra trying to get onscreen.

Other: Near the end, when Julie is pushed off the building by the henchmen, her handcuffs get caught on some rods that where sticking out. But this is impossible, by the way she was falling (vertically) the rods would have made contact between her legs. No way her handcuffs could have been caught like that. And they were sticking out a good foot or two from where her body was.

Deliberate "mistake": There is just too much movement and detail in the synthetic skin masks. Peyton lost a large portion of his face in the explosion, and cannot make much expression with his own face, but somehow he can make the masks move perfectly just like a real face.

Continuity: In the opening battle at the warehouse, there is frantic gunfire and battling during the scene. However, after the second car crashed, all of Eddie Black's men are suddenly dead, despite almost all of them being alive just a few seconds earlier.

Plot hole: Peyton had his face burned in the explosion. In fact, he basically lost his lips, so he should not be able to talk very easily. While he could probably learn to speak normally again through other movements with his mouth and tongue, he does so too quickly to make logical sense. And his uncanny ability to almost perfectly mimic his enemies could probably be learned over time, but again is too quick to make sense.

Other: Whenever Peyton looses his nerve, we see a montage of images racing through his mind. The first time this happens, we see him screaming with his face bound in bandages. However, at this point, he has just woken up after being found, so he should not know he is burnt and wrapped up.

Continuity: When Durant fires a grenade launcher at Darkman as they are flying through the city, Durant hits a truck with a clown face on it. A few seconds later Durant hits the exact same truck again.

Plot hole: After all the chaos at the film's climax, the next morning there is no commotion as Peyton and Julie leave the construction site. Surely someone would have noticed the bodies of two men who fell over 600-feet.

Factual error: During the scene where Peyton is hanging from the helicopter, Durant is firing at him with a grenade-launcher. He hits several cars, most of which end up in flaming wrecks. Despite this, traffic continues as normal... If you saw cars around you exploding, would you casually continue on, oblivious? This error is especially visible with the truck driver, whom reacts to Peyton landing on top of his truck, but seems oblivious to the chaos behind him.

Continuity: When the power goes out in Peyton's lab (when he figures out the secret of the synthetic skin), the entire lab is still filled with some light. If it was daytime, this would be believable, but it is night outside.

Revealing: When Peyton is running from Durant, who is on the helicopter, look closely as Peyton throws himself on the floor. His left coat sleeve goes up revealing a perfect and skin bound arm despite the fact that it should be burned.

Revealing: When Strakk is firing the giant nail gun thing at Darkman during the climax, you can see that the gun firing does not always match the squibs going off on the beams behind Darkman.

Continuity: When Darkman's hand is pinned to the steel beam by the rivet there is no blood. When we see a close up of him trying to pull his hand free, there is now blood coming from the wound. When Strack calls Darkman a freak, Darkman gets angry and the blood from his hand is gone. The next shot of his hand shows blood, as he pulls it free from the rivet.

Continuity: As Peyton and Julie leave the construction site at the end of the movie, the sky is pitch-black. However, a few shots later, the sun has fully risen and the streets have gone from empty to packed with morning traffic.

Continuity: At the climax of the movie, in the skyscraper construction site, there is a segment where the villains are swinging large wires with metal hooks to hit Peyton. However, the number of wires swinging through the area changes during the course of the shots, and in fact, they all disappear for a period of time.

Continuity: In the final battle, after Darkman has a large nail shot into his hand, for the rest of the scene, there is no blood or visible mark when there should have been a giant hole.

Deliberate "mistake": In the climax, the villain Strack fires a nail-gun at Peyton. There are two shots where the camera is basically inside the nail looking out. In both of these shots, the nail moves straight for Peyton and then curves away at the last second, instead of moving in a straight line just past him. This was obviously done for suspense but it still is a mistake.

Revealing: When Peyton looses his nerve and breaks the fingers of the game operator at the fair, you can see the fake hand that was used is a very cheap prop. It looks like hollow rubber the way the skin bends in and there is no sign of muscle/bone underneath.

Revealing: In the grave yard scene Liam Neeson quite obviously fumbles with his American accent.

Revealing: When Darkman is hanging from the helicopter above the street, dodging traffic, in one shot from the side, the camera pans to follow a car, and you can make out the shadow of a crane. This makes it very obvious that in this shot, Darkman is in fact not hanging from the copter, but rather from the crane.