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Mistakes

As the feds and Max and Vincent arrive at the club, there is a shot from the feds car of the taxi pulling into the side street where the club is, the shot goes back to in front of the cab, and they are just turning in, even though in the previous shot they should already be in the street. See more...

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Collateral (2004) - 33 corrections

Directed by Michael Mann, starring Jada Pinkett Smith, Jamie Foxx, Tom Cruise (add more)

Genres: Crime, Drama, 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.

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Near the end of the movie, Vincent cuts off power to the 16th floor, and Annie's call to the 911 operator is disconnected. However, most phones (especially those in government offices) will continue to function without electricity if an active connection has already been made. [That explains why it's not a mistake - even if "most" phones continue to function without electricity, this one does not.]
Edit Corrected by illiniman14
In the scene where Ruffalo, McGill, and Berg are walking out of the surveillance warehouse to their cars, Berg is caught staring at the camera for a noticeably long period of time. [This sort of mistake is generally disallowed, for the fact that when looking towards the camera it is regarded as a "fourth wall" in movies. In many cases characters will look right at the camera to give the perception that it is showing the view from another character's view.]
Edit Corrected by Lummie Time
In the scene where Detective Fanning and the other cops are investigating the first murder, one cop tosses a shell casing in a baggie out the window to Fanning. The cop then remarks, "You can still smell the cordite." This is incorrect because cordite has not been used as cartridge propellant since approximately the end of World War II. [Cordite was produced until the end of the 20th century, when the last factory closed in England, so it is still feasible that it was used on this occasion. See Wikipedia for clarification.]
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When Vincent and Max go to visit Max's mum at the hospital, Vincent buys Max's mum a basket of flowers from a stand/shop in the hospital. But it should be shut, given that it is very late at night and hospital shops like that are shut by at least late afternoon/early evening. [Depends entirely on the hospital, whether they are employed by the hospital, or a private contractor, and even the population of the city. The local hospital here closes entirely except for the emergency room by 9 PM, but in a larger city I lived in, they had a gift shop and cafeteria open from 6 AM to 12 midnight, 5 days a week, and from 8 AM to 9 PM on weekends.]
Edit
When Vincent shoots the two guys who stole his bag, he also retrieves Max's wallet. How should Vincent have known that they also robbed Max off his wallet? [Well for one, it can be pretty safely assumed that if two thugs who have a gun have just robbed a cabbie (who's tied to his wheel) of a laptop, they'd take his wallet as well. Secondly, who said Vincent already knew? He was just checking to make sure, and he found it.]
Edit Corrected by Gary O'Reilly
Toward the end of the film when Max deliberately flips the cab, it turns over several times before coming to a stop on its roof. But in the shots immediately after, you can see the wheels of the upturned cab are motionless. Surely after such a violent, high-speed crash they would still be spinning for some time after this? [This isn't a bike. Those tires are connected to a lot of heavy parts. Some of which are almost certainly bent and immobile after a crash like that. It'd more likely be a mistake if the tires *were* spinning.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
When the body falls onto the cab, there is the sound of shattered glass, presumably from the from passenger window. In fact, during the rest of the scene, you can hear Max and Vincent walking on broken glass. But in the rest of the movie, all of the windows in the cab are intact. The windshield is just cracked, not shattered, so the glass could not have come from it. [The shattered glass doesn't come from the cab, it comes from the window the informant falls from.]
Edit
Why is it that Max, Annie, and then Vincent enter a Los Angeles subway and there is almost no one in it? Even though it is nighttime, Los Angeles has the second busiest subway in the United States. [I'm from LA, and have ridden the subway late at night, and it's sometimes eerily empty. It's also almost empty mid-afternoon during non-rush hour.]
Edit Corrected by Jane Doe
While Max is tied to the steering wheel of the cab, three guys come up and steal Vincent's briefcase. When Vincent comes out and shoots them, there are only 2 guys. [Originally there are four men. The first two who get to the car reach a point where they can see that Max is tied up - their faces immediately change and they move off-camera quickly. They presumably decide that they want no part of whatever's going on and hurry on their way. The third and fourth men stay - one pulls the gun and converses with Max for a time, then they steal the briefcase before being killed by Vincent. The time taken for the conversation is more than enough for the first two men to have left the area.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
When dispatch calls Max he says, "Shit," with a physical reaction. The following shot shows him with the same reaction and mouthing the word "shit," but with no sound this time. [That's not a mistake. People sometimes mouth a word without saying it out loud.]
Edit Corrected by Brian C Friesner Time
When Annie is crawling along the floor of her office hiding from Vincent she has removed her shoes. When she leaves the building with Max after he shoots Vincent her high heeled shoes can be seen as well as heard. [She didn't remove her shoes, use zoom on the DVD version and it is clearly noticeable.]
Edit
When Annie gets in Max's cab, there is bright sunlight. The scenes quickly change to dark night. Surely their trip wasn't that far. There was no transition from daylight to total night. [Its not bright day-light, it was close to sunset. The journey was long enough to have that transition and not every part of the journey was shown.]
Edit Corrected by SexyIrishLeprechaun
When Vincent chooses between the two trains, he jumps on the outside end of the last car and enters through the rear doors. This would have been impossible since the rear doors on the last car of trains and subways are always locked to make sure that people do not jump out of them onto the tracks. [Just because a door is supposed to be locked, even if all the time, doesn't mean it is always locked. People don't always do things that they are supposed to, even at work as is this case.]
Edit
When Vincent enters Annie's building to kill her, he uses a swipe card to enter the elevator and again to enter the specific floor that she is on. When Max goes in to save Annie, we simply see him in the elevator and then see him helping Annie in her office. But how did Max enter the elevator and Annie's floor without a swipe card of his own? [You don't need a swipe card to enter the turnstiles where Vincent uses it. You can see at the start of the movie that people can just walk right through them. Also, Vincent doesn't swipe his card to get onto the elevator, he swipes it on the floor where Annie's office is to get to where the offices are. Since Max doesn't go to this floor, he goes to the law library where Annie is, he won't need a swipe card.]
Edit
Tom Cruise has on dress shoes at the beginning of the movie only to be wearing loafer style at the very end of the film. Fairly noticeable due to the fact his pants are too short which drew attention to the shoes. [If you pause the film at anytime during the last half hour, especially during the scene where Cruise is chasing Foxx and Smith or the final scene in the MTA car, you'll see that Cruise is wearing the exact same tie-down shoes that he started the film with.]
Edit
When the train leaves, you can see Tom in the window in the front of the second car. Before that they had a huge shoot out, yet the engineer one car forward is unable to hear the shoot out and completes his stops with 30 bullets and a dead guy, not to mention the passengers who didn't seem to care. [In actuality the gun fight is only about 4-5 shots each person. In the film it is very quick and then its over. Being in a closed booth the sound would have been reduced significantly. The engineer could have assumed (with not seeing the incident as well) it was just a ruckus or something on the tracks as it was so quick. There are a number of loud noises being on a train so might have just assumed it was a loud noise. With regards to the passengers that we see, Tom and Jamie pass the only remaining passengers before the stop where Tom holds his gun out the door to stop Jamie Foxx. In that stop the passengers behind would have likely exited the other cars to avoid any trouble as they had seen the guns being carried.]
Edit Corrected by Lummie
When Max comes in the building where Annie works, he shoots the glass in the door. When the glass breaks, the push bar across the door disappears. The push bar would not be attached to the glass but to the door frame. [I had to double check this, but the door handles on both doors are attached to the glass, and do not go all the way to the frame on either end. This can be seen when Max first tries to get in the doors, but they are locked.]
Edit Corrected by ZipWin
In the morgue scene, the coroner unwraps a victim down to his chest to show the detective the single head shot and the "double-tap" in the chest. He then says something about another victim, and the camera angle immediately switches to an overhead shot as they move down to the next gurney. In this overhead shot, you can see all of the victims are still wrapped tightly in the body bag, plastic wrap combo, even the one he just unwrapped. [The overhead shot is of the other side of the room, starting with the bald guy they were just talking about, who is still unwrapped.]
Edit Corrected by Kristal
The train Max, Vincent, and Annie board at the end of the film is not the Metro. The Metro trains look much older and different then the ones in the film. [The train that they board is the exact same train that is currently in use. It is the Metro Blue Line train that goes to Long Beach. The newer trains are used in the subway, which is the Metro Red Line.]
Edit Corrected by Jane Doe
After the taxi overturns and the policeman notices the dead body in the trunk, he points a Beretta 92F pistol at Jamie Foxx. Jamie Foxx overpowers the policeman and takes his gun. In the rest of the film, Jamie Foxx does not have a Beretta 92F pistol but another model. [He doesn't take the policeman's gun, he takes Vincent's.]
Edit

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