Best crime movie plot holes of all time

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Kiss the Girls picture

Plot hole: In the scene where Ashley Judd runs away from her attacker and falls into her aquarium he has moved to the bottom of the stairs - there is no way he would have been able to move that full fish tank. It looked to be about a 30 gallon tank - it would weigh about 400 pounds with the stand and even if he slid it with some superhuman strength, glass tanks are notorious for shattering when you move them full. Plus it would've made enough noise to wake the dead - no way she wouldn't have heard it.

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Knives Out picture

Plot hole: The killer shows up at the scheduled appointment at 8 AM. They kill the idiot blackmailer with an overdose of morphine. Remember, that morphine that supposedly killed Thrombey in 10 minutes. Marta finds the blackmailer at 10 AM...alive, and does CPR on them, keeping them alive long enough for the ambulance to come and bring them to the hospital, even if in critical condition. So we went from "kills in 10 minutes, you can't even try to save him" to "after 2 hours, you are still hanging on"? (01:56:10)

Sammo

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Suggested correction: Marta injected an absurdly large dose. A smaller overdose would not kill in 10 minutes.

I read that objection before. From 10 minutes to 2 hours there's quite a leap that the movie does not explain or address at all, if it were part of the plot they should have said why this difference, on something so time sensitive (of which they got the factual details wrong anyway). Even visually when you look at the dose injected to Harlan and the dose in the syringe for the murder, they do not look different. He even stabs her with the syringe. Which makes sense since he has no reason to leave her there with a small. Controlled overdose in her veins risking that she would be saved as it -almost - happens - it's amazing he got away with it to begin with because she is so dumb to show up for no reason in a derelict place without talking to her accomplice that passed her the toxi report, or anyone.Without a throwaway line from an investigator or anything of the sort ("but you injected her the wrong way, so she was still alive two hours after"), we are just left with an inconsistency.

Sammo

Suggested correction: You've assumed a hell of a lot! Marta said Thrombey was given a dose of 100 mg (instead 3) of Morphine and would die in 10 minutes unless given the antidote. You just asserted that "Thrombey would die in 10 minutes" as if it was fait accompli, while Thrombey didn't die of morphine overdoes at all! (He cut his own throat.) For all we know, Marta's 10-minute assessment was a worst-case-scenario assessment. Fran's age and physique, as well as Marta's CPR, helped negate the effect until the ambulance arrives. If the medics administered the antidote, it could have prolonged Fran's life. Finally, 2 hours is the time after which the viewer is informed of Fran's death, not her actual death time. Most importantly, this happens in the medical world all the time: A person who is supposed to die after 3 days lives for 16 years. There are case-by-case explanations for each one, but they baffle the medical examiners at first.

FleetCommand

Two hours is not my assumption or when the viewer is informed of her death; the killer gives the appointment to the victim at 8 AM and to Marta at 10 AM, so as I said, after 2 hours with 0 medical care on her she is still hanging on and with barely a little tap she is ready to dispense important clues. I go by what the movie says also about the 10 minutes overdose time. Of course if you tell me that baffling freak occurrences can happen all the time in medicine and that very precise statements from the movie don't matter because the character can just have gotten it wrong by over 10x and the movie does not acknowledge it at all, well, that's a very respectable opinion; mine is that fiction (a whodunnit, not a slasher flick with a killer surviving multiple gunshots and the like) is not reality and it should respond to higher standards than "I guess she was still alive somehow."

Sammo

I re-watched the movie to verify that Fran was given an appointment at 8 AM. I discovered something new: The bottle that was injected to Fran contained only 5 mg of Morphine. That's 1/20th of what was "supposedly" given to Thrombey Sr. So, yeah, 10x is OK. In fact, 20x is OK.

FleetCommand

No, no; it contains 5 mg of morphine PER ml, it's the concentration, not the total. Go back to the scene when Marta "messes up", the vials are the exact same as the one that Ransom injects (obviously, since they come from Marta's bag after all). It's new for you but I covered that already in the Factual Error about it. It's something that piles upon a previous mistake. She did not give him 100 mg of morphine because it would have emptied the vial (which is more than half full) and because a full vial of ketorlac would have killed Trombe regardless, at that concentration! The movie gets both the props and the medical facts wrong (100 mg of morphine does not even kill most patients, Harlan would have not died in 10 minutes especially since he takes safely big doses of toradol and morphine), but nothing - in the script - says that Marta or Ransom got basic medical facts wrong.

Sammo

Okay! It seems mistake after mistake is piling up. Now, it appears Fran lived 4 hours, during 2 of which she was unattended. Plus, 100 mg of Morphine from a 5 mg/ml vial amounts to 20 ml of liquid. Well, now, everything you say makes sense... or at least most of the things. On the whole, I think it was a complicated situation.

FleetCommand

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Edward Scissorhands picture

Plot hole: At the end of the film, we see Edward carving ice sculptures in his mansion. How did he get the ice up there? First of all, it takes place in a warm climate and I didn't see a freezer up there in the castle. He couldn't have gotten ice from town because firstly he had scissors for hands and couldn't have gripped the ice. And, even if by some miracle he could, he wouldn't be able to buy any from town because everyone in town but Kim was convinced that Edward was dead, she told everyone that they killed each other. And Kim didn't bring it to him because she told her granddaughter in the end that she never saw him again after that night. So where did he get that ice?

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The Lincoln Lawyer picture

Plot hole: Despite being obvious witnesses neither the prosecution nor the defense calls the gay couple (the ones that immobilized Roulet) to testify about their involvement (who called them, what they saw, etc).

mauslyon

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Now You See Me picture

Plot hole: Each of the four magicians are given a tarot card that has a date (March 29), a time (4:44pm), an address (45 East Evan St), and a city (NY). When they enter the building on that date, they know which apartment to go to. The problem with this is that it was never stated on any of the cards which apartment to go to once they reached 45 East Evan Street. (00:08:40 - 00:10:05)

Casual Person

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The Transporter picture Video

Plot hole: When Frank Martin steals the Mercedes, how does Lai manage to open the rear door, get in the back and hide - all with her hands bound behind an office chair? Not to mention actually closing the door and hiding herself (and the chair) in the rear footwell long enough for Frank to drive off and not notice her until they are out on the road. (00:29:25)

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Live Free or Die Hard picture

Plot hole: Since they took down the telephone network, it would have been impossible for Justin Long to even be speaking to the emergency response woman for the car, much less send a signal to start the car up.

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Suggested correction: Is it possible this is a satellite phone call akin to Onstar?

manthabeat

No, the BMW system requires a cell signal to work, which was taken down earlier in the movie.

BaconIsMyBFF

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The Outsiders picture

Plot hole: The pictures used in the newspaper article regarding the fire are obviously taken after Ponyboy and Johnny ran away since Pony's hair is blond and Johnny's is short (their hair was cut and dyed after they ran, ruling out the photos being old school photos), yet Johnny's face is free of burns. This would mean the pictures were taken while they were hiding in the church, which would be impossible.

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Suggested correction: They could just be an old photo. Taken a year or two back, plenty of time for them to look roughly the same but have their hair change wildly. Could have dyed his hair and then stopped or cut the hair and then let it grow.

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Bullitt picture

Plot hole: The movie is based on one huge plot hole: if it wasn't for the "professional" hitman's sloppy work, Bullitt and his team wouldn't have been needed for much. The hitman enters the hotel room, wounds the policeman, then shoots the target with one shotgun blast to his upper left shoulder area. Any hitman worth his fee knows that this is not likely to be an immediately fatal wound. The hitman had a pump shotgun and should have finished the job right then and there. Surely he had more than two shells. Instead, he sees the target is slumped unconscious, then leaves the hotel room without checking to see that his victim really is dead. Nothing seems to be immediately threatening the hit team, though. The hitman spends the rest of his life trying to finish his job and pays the ultimate price for being lazy.

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Money Train picture

Plot hole: When Charlie sets out to hijack the money train, he jumps off the platform onto the tracks as it arrives, in plain sight of the driver and other passengers at the station, and only puts his mask on once he's in position on the tracks. The train conveniently stops right over top of Charlie, allowing him to enter through the conveniently-placed grate on the train's floor. (01:17:15)

Jay Runkle

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Robocop 3 picture

Plot hole: The opaque red lined map that Otomo retrieves from his first fight is ridiculous. Why would people who know where the hidden base is be carrying around a map on them (which shows a route so basic that they'd have to be brain-dead not to be able to remember it anyway) just so that conveniently one of their enemies can get it?

GalahadFairlight

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London Has Fallen picture

Plot hole: After an assault on the scale that's been witnessed, covering a wide area of London by extremely well prepared attackers, there's no way Marine 1 would fly to the airport at low altitude within easy range of missiles, and then when attacked, double back over the areas that have already been attacked where hostiles would still be present. (00:35:00)

Jon Sandys

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Fargo picture

Plot hole: After the kidnappers kill the trooper and then one chases after the 2 eyewitnesses you can see that they are on a straight road (no turns and he catches up to them fairly quickly) but the next morning when Marge arrives on the scene of the 2 bodies she arrives from the direction of the trooper's body (the first shooting). After examining the bodies of the eyewitnesses she asks her deputy "where the trooper is" and the Deputy points in the direction she just came from and states "down the road a bit" how did she miss it? She would have had to have driven right past the trooper's crime scene to get to the 2 bodies.

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Suggested correction: The trooper wasn't visible from the road, he was dragged into the ditch. She also could have been asking if he was in the hospital or morgue.

rswarrior

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3,000 Miles to Graceland picture

Plot hole: How could the police miss finding Cybil in the trunk of Michael Zane's car when it was in an impound lot? They would have definitely searched the car if he was found in violation of a federal offence (for carrying the weapons). Even if they didn't do a search, they would certainly have heard the sounds that Cybil would have made from being locked in the trunk.

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Fast & Furious 8 picture

Plot hole: The nuclear codes are stolen and the Russian guy holding them was let go by Dom. He would contact his government to let them know and the codes changed. Cypher would also know this so her plan is flawed.

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The Shawshank Redemption picture

Plot hole: When the warden comes into the cell the morning after the escape, the poster covering the hole is fastened down on all four corners - impossible to do after squeezing into that small hole. [On the DVD commentary, the director confirms that this was a movie "cheat".] (01:49:05)

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Suggested correction: It's a shame the director surrendered, but for someone as smart as Andy, this is the smallest of problems. He could've put weights on the bottom of the poster, or used magnets he embedded in the walls together with iron glued to the poster, or enough washers in the bottom to essentially do both.

dizzyd

That's a load of rubbish. Embedding magnets in the wall? Really.

Ssiscool

If he can make a six foot escape tunnel, he can scrape out several small holes around the poster's edge, and insert the aforementioned magnets, glued in however he can manage (ie tape, chewing gum).

dizzyd

He could have simply used glue mixed with dirt to weigh it down. Once the glue dried it wouldn't matter how heavy the poster was, so long as there was contact.

How could Andy do that after he escaped through the hole in the wall?

satishsasikumar

I don't think it's what happened, but easily enough. Put magnets in the wall during his tunnel digging process - he had years - then something magnetic affixed to the corners of the poster. As soon as he was in the hole the poster would hang down and affix itself to the bottom corners.

Further, if the poster weren't "glued" on the bottom, it would not have been taught enough for the warden's pebble to go through it. If the poster were attached loosely, the pebble would have simply bounced off.

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The Thomas Crown Affair picture

Plot hole: When Renee Russo was reviewing the tape showing the room with the painting to see who stole the painting, and the tape was blank because the heat generated from the suitcase hidden under the bench, why didn't she just back up the tape completely to see who put the suitcase there in the first place? (00:28:30)

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Sister Act picture

Plot hole: Delores is walking into the murder scene at the beginning of the movie just as Ernie is shot. Later, while she is being questioned, she tells the two detectives what the thugs said and did, yet, she was not eavesdropping or looking through the door.

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Untraceable picture

Plot hole: The FBI in the movie has the ability to "blackhole" an IP address, which makes that computer unavailable to the internet. If they can blackhole the computer acting as the web server, they could also blackhole the computer acting as the name server (DNS), thereby taking down the web site and preventing additional users from connecting.

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Beverly Hills Cop II picture

Plot hole: Cain's hitman asks for a match to lit his cigar. Cain gives him the matchbook. When Axel later tests the matchbook for fingerprints, there is only one on it - Cain's. The hitman's fingerprint ought to be on it too.

Jacob La Cour

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