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Jeffrey Pelt: Mr. Ambassador, you have nearly a hundred naval vessels operating in the North Atlantic right now. Your aircraft has dropped enough sonar buoys so that a man could walk from Greenland to Iceland to Scotland without getting his feet wet. Now, shall we dispense with the bull?

Ambassador Lysenko: You make your point as delicately as ever, Mr. Pelt.

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The Hunt for Red October (1990) - 29 mistakes

Directed by John McTiernan, starring Alec Baldwin, Courtney B. Vance, James Earl Jones, Jeffrey Jones, Joss Ackland, Peter Firth, Richard Jordan, Scott Glenn, Sean Connery, Tim Curry (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Thriller

The Hunt for Red October book mistakes

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Factual error: Aboard the aircraft carrier, there is a closed-circuit TV that shows the operations on the flight deck. At one point, a gull-gray F-14 Tomcat, in obvious distress, comes in for a landing. The camera cuts away from the TV to Ryan's face, and the cuts back to the TV. All of a sudden, the plane crashing is no longer an F-14, but an old Korean War-era fighter, colored the dark blue the Navy stopped using in the 1950s. The director probably chose to insert a piece of stock footage rather than build a model F-14 to crash for an otherwise unimportant scene.

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Visible crew/equipment: When the Red October sub has surfaced to let the crew get off because of the supposed nuclear leak, there is a brief shot where you can clearly see the camera and its filming crew in their tennis shoes on the deck. Use of slow motion is suggested. (As per the rules of this site: Use of slo motion IS acceptable when camera or crew are visible.)

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Continuity: When Ramius is shot, he drops to the floor holding his wound with his left hand. He is still using his left hand when Ryan asks "What happens if he makes it to that ignition circuitry". The angle then changes, and Ramius is holding his wound with his right hand as he answers "He can incinerate the ship". New angle change, and Ramius is once again using his left hand on the wound.

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Revealing: In the scene where Jack Ryan is brought aboard the U.S.S. Dallas after releasing himself from the helicopter, two crewmen drag him inside. The crewman on the left side of the passage backs into a metal valve, but the valve moves down and left, then snaps back in place as if mounted to a rubber pipe.

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Factual error: In the opening scene of the movie, the Red October is being escorted out of the Russian harbour by a United States Coast Guard Cutter and U.S. Navy sea tugs.

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Factual error: The Hunt for Red October takes place sometime in late 1984. The Oliver Hazard Perry Class Frigate Reuben James (FFG-57) on which Adm. Greer and Skip Tyler were on board in the latter half of the film, was not commissioned until March 22, 1986

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Factual error: In the scene where the U.S. submarine Dallas is chasing the Red October in an underwater canyon, if you listen carefully you can hear an officer on the bridge yell out gravity anomaly values in milligals. This was an incredible breach of U.S. security at the time the movie was made, because it was a highly classified secret that gravity measurements were used to navigate by the U.S. navy. (The technology can "see" terrain passively and silently, without sending out a signal.) This technology was later declassified after the movie came out. However the mistake was that only large Trident submarines had this capability, not smaller hunter-killer subs.

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Visible crew/equipment: When Jones the Sonar operator detects the Red October for the final time via his headphones, he is talking to someone next to him. The whole time he is doing this, a microphone boom is constantly bobbing into view from above his head.

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Factual error: In the scene after the silent drive was first engaged and Red October changes course to south-west, a seaman is shown plotting the new course. The map shows the track of the submarine as if it had left from Nordkapp, which is in Norway, a NATO country. The Red October had left from the harbor of Polyarnyi, which is located next to Murmansk, some 300-400 kilometres to the east.

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Continuity: During the final battle, Borodin announces "20 seconds to impact". Ramius and Ryan discuss a book Ryan has written for the full 20 seconds, then Borodin updates, saying "10 seconds to impact" despite the torpedo and the sub both remaining on their same courses at the same speeds.

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Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Ryan is being flown out to the Dallas, the door crew member looks out and says, "Yo, got a sub about 2 miles out." If you look closely in his goggles, you can see the reflection of the crew.

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Factual error: In some stateroom scenes in the October the bulkheads have numerous little lockers installed because storage space on a submarine is at a premium. The latches on the lockers are of a unique design created only by USA Navy ship and submarine construction shipyards.

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Deliberate "mistake": The torpedo hitting the water dropped by the Russian Bear Foxtrot, and the one dropped by the Americans are the same piece of footage.

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Factual error: Captain Mancuso's discussion with Ryan after having exposed to Red October Dallas' presence: After asking if Red October has opened opened its outer torpedo tube doors, Captain Mancuso asks Sonar to report all contacts. Sonar reports back that the only contact is Typhoon 7 bearing 195. Issue: Bearing 195º is very close to directly behind Dallas, whereas in the preceding exterior scene, Red October appeared in front of Dallas at a bearing between 030 to 045. Captain Ramius had directed "All Stop" for Red October, so it would not have progressed much further into its 'Crazy Ivan' circular path. After having exposed Dallas' presence, Captain Mancuso would likely have taken action to reposition Dallas in order to prevent Red October from achieving a position behind Dallas. (To minimize torpedo travel, Captain Mancuso would have kept his loaded torpedo tubes pointed roughly at Red October.).

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Continuity: As the helicopter nears the Dallas sub, Ryan is in the right-side doorway at the rear of the opening. A spotter is on the same side of the craft, at the front of the opening. The spotter looks straight out the right side of the chopper and shouts for the pilots to turn left, as he has spotted the Dallas at three o'clock (which is where he is looking). But turning left moves away from the Dallas, not towards it.

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Continuity: The opening shots of Red October sub show water slapping against it. At the water line, the flat/vertical sides of the fake sub are visible - a very different look than the underwater model's tapered sides.

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Factual error: Roughly 25 minutes into the movie, Jonesy identifies the sub contact as a typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine. They dub it the Typhoon-7 as they have six other typhoon submarines recorded in the computer. In reality, six typhoons were indeed built, with a 7th canceled under construction. However, in November 1984, which is when this is supposed to happen, only two had been commissioned and the third was near completion. Thus, the Dallas couldn't have had six typhoons in its computer at the time, only two.

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Revealing: None of the exterior storm scenes where rain is present have any visible impact on the actors. No water or mist on face, binoculars, hat brims, etc. The special effect that creates the rain does not correlate to the either actor appearance or background reality - sun reflections, clouds, etc.

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Other: Even though Ryan was warned earlier that the water was so cold that you could survive in it for only four minutes, he doesn't even shiver while drinking coffee in his wet clothes inside the Dallas. This after plunging deep underwater from his fall from the helicopter and then waiting to be rescued and brought aboard by the diver.

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Continuity: Near the beginning of the movie, Ramius is in his cabin with one of the crew members and they are getting ready to read their orders. The safe containing the orders has 2 locks, one on top of the other, requiring two separate keys. Ramius takes his key and puts it into the lower lock, then gets the key from his comrade for the upper lock. But the next camera shot shows a key already in the upper lock, and Ramius apparently using the key he had just gotten from the other guy to turn the lower lock.

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