Character mistake: Towards the end of the film the Jackal, in disguise as the fictional one-legged, grey haired Frenchman Andre Martin, finishes setting up his sniper's nest and removes his beret, revealing that he has only dyed his hair grey where it protruded. He has a circular mop of his normal chestnut brown hair under his hat! This is an incredibly stupid thing to do - it is a perfectly normal thing for a policeman (or any other security operative) to ask that someone showing identity papers remove his hat if he is wearing one. The Jackal is a professional assassin who meticulously prepares for all contingencies - he isn't going to throw away his whole plan for the sake of a bit of extra hair dye. (02:10:05)
Character mistake: After Pookie is killed (with his eyes open) and the bomb is strapped to him, he blinks his eyes.
Character mistake: Jim Sturgess uses a sentence that contains the word 'me'. He is corrected, being told that the word 'I' would have been correct. However, he was grammatically correct in his use of the word 'me'. The correction was in error.
Character mistake: The last time Doc tries the defibrillator on Norris, he uses it on the abdomen instead of on the chest.
Character mistake: When Charlie is calling out the brick count to Napster from the subway, he describes it as being "13 across, 4 high, 4 deep". The bricks appear to be 2 deep in the safe (13x4x2), so he could just be lumping two shelves together, which works (13x4x4 = 13x4x2x2). The problem is that when the camera pans down there are 3 shelves in the safe. This means that there are more than the 208 bricks that Napster announces. (01:33:40)
Character mistake: When Sir informs Kelly that she made the drill team, he says Captain Rigby instead of Major Rigby.
Character mistake: Red says that Andy crawled to freedom through 500 yards - 'just shy of half a mile'. 500 yards is far less than half a mile; in fact, it's less than a third of a mile. It is however just shy of half a kilometer, which may be what King was thinking of when he wrote the book.
Character mistake: There is no way on earth that a police officer would shoot a hostage in the thigh to 'take them out of the equation'. Anyone who suggested such a thing would likely be taken out and shot themselves. Bullet wounds to the thigh are often fatal, as an injury to the femoral artery causes massive and frequently unstoppable blood loss. Breaking the femur often leads to fat embolisms as bone marrow gets into the bloodstream and then to the lungs. In fact a broken femur is a life threatening injury in itself, and a shattered femur - a typical bullet injury - would almost always result in a total amputation. You cannot aim carefully enough to avoid the bone or artery as their position in the body varies, (as will the bullet trajectory upon impact). Jack is an experienced cop and would know the potentially disastrous consequences of shooting someone in the thigh. He'd shoot him in the foot.
Suggested correction: Jack is a cop and as such he would have extensive training in first aid, including treating bullet wounds. He would know perfectly well that shooting someone in the thigh was almost certain to cause a life threatening injury. He would shoot him in the foot.
Jack and Harry aren't just "cops," they're elite members of S.W.A.T., meaning they employ "special weapons and tactics." The hostage shooting is extreme, in any case; but the film wanted to quickly portray Jack as unorthodox and a bit of a loose cannon.
And as an "an elite member of S.W.A.T." Jack would be even more aware of the fact that a bullet wound to the thigh would probably kill or permanently disable his partner. I am not questioning the plot line of showing Jack to be a renegade by having him shoot a hostage, I am simply stating the obvious. He absolutely would not shoot him in the thigh.
And, yet, obviously, he did.
No, he didn't. An actor fired a blank round at another actor and a special effects technician detonated a blood squib that had been installed under the second actor's costume, thus creating a fictional representation of logically absurd situation. It's a plot hole.
Then the entire movie is a plot hole. Speaking factually, you could just as easily say that a random passenger could never drive a commercial bus at highway speeds and make 175-foot ramp jumps with it. And, yet, there it is, and that's the story the producers wanted to tell. Call it a factual error, certainly, but the films are doing precisely what the screenwriters and director intended.
Except for blatant continuity errors, your comment negates every posting on this site. It's a mistake, plain and simple, lazy screenwriting, sloppy plotting, factually inaccurate. The original posting is valid, this is not a chatroom and I have nothing else to say on the matter.
Precisely. That's what makes it a character mistake, per the rules of this site.
Tailkinker and CA Miller are correct. This is a character mistake in an over the top action thriller. In real life cops don't shoot hostages in the thigh but buses don't fly over gaps in bridges either. If you can't watch Speed with a willing suspension of disbelief then it's not the movie for you. Enjoying fantasy action with its flaws does not validate mistakes in other movies and claiming it is lazy writing etc just makes a mistake picker seem uptight.
Character mistake: When Missy is at her audition, Courtney and Whitney get annoyed and tell her to do a sequence, (front handspring stepout, roundoff back handspring stepout, roundoff back handspring, full twisting layout). However, when Missy starts the sequence, she starts with a cartwheel instead of a front handspring.
Character mistake: When Stuart calls home from the pay phone he's talking into the wrong end of the phone.
Character mistake: Near the beginning when James Bond enters the North Korean complex, Zao is sent information to his mobile phone about James Bond being from the "MI6 Security Service". This is inaccurate information because MI6 is the Secret Intelligence Service and not the Security Service. It is MI5 which is the Security Service. (00:06:29)
Character mistake: Barbara is in her office looking for the one item they need help to identify when Diana walks in. She says "OK, item number 23." She suddenly finds it saying "here it is" and reaches in the box to grab the Dreamstone. The ticket says item #24. (00:22:18 - 00:22:50)
Character mistake: The commentator says "avalanche of power shots by Ivan Drago." Viktor is the one in the ring. Ivan is the father. If you have the subtitles turned on, it even says Viktor in the subtitles instead of the spoken name, Ivan. (00:55:45)
Character mistake: When Melanie and Scarlett are talking with an (off-screen) wounded Confederate soldier, the soldier says he hasn't heard from his brother since Bull Run. Only Northerners refer to that battle as Bull Run; Southerners have always referred to it as Manassas.
Character mistake: A TV news announcer describes Alan Shepard's first manned launch into space as him being lifted to "an altitude of 116 miles per hour." That's not an altitude, that's a speed. It should have just been "116 miles."
Character mistake: When the Terminator scans the doorman at the bar, a display comes up categorizing each piece of the doorman's clothing. The word "briefs" is misspelled "breifs". (00:13:40)
Character mistake: During the movie's opening credits, Sara is shown auditioning for Juilliard, which is misspelled as "Julliard" on a sign outside the room where the audition is occurring.
Character mistake: When Ripley interfaces with Mother for the first time and sees the special order, an instruction reads as "Insure return of organism" rather than "Ensure return," a common enough grammatical error for humans but not one that a programmed super-computer would generate.
Character mistake: Selena Gomez drives into town in a fully restored 1967 Pontiac Le Mans, which is a long box shaped car. However, when confronted with Bill Murray and Adam Driver, Adam Driver complements her on her 1968 Pontiac Le Mans, which is a completely redesigned shorter curved body style. The two look nothing alike.
Character mistake: People who run after cars when they drive away expecting to catch up with it on foot.
Suggested correction: Generally, people aren't thinking too forwardly or rationally when someone they're pursuing is about to get away. Their lizard-brain just thinks "getting away -> chase," not considering how unlikely (though not impossible) it is for them to either catch up with the car before it fully accelerates or when it makes a turn, then either pull the driver out of the car or jump on the car.
The person acts on instinct. Many people would do the same in real life.