Revealing mistake: If you look at the missing part of the bridge, and look at the shadow underneath, the shadow is of a full bridge. (01:02:35)
Plot hole: When they get Sam the driver off the bus and onto the trailer, it's stressed how important it is to get him to hospital, but in all subsequent scenes, the trailer never leaves the side of the bus and no-one takes Sam off.
Suggested correction: It is unlikely, but they could have transferred him a second time to another vehicle off-screen.
Continuity mistake: Travis shoots Harry in the leg, and Harry is slumped against the wall next to the doorway. When Payne sets off the bomb, Harry is now no longer near the door, and is halfway down the corridor. Not enough time had passed between shots for this to have occurred. (00:22:20)
Suggested correction: Harry drops to floor by door 1 on the right-hand side of the corridor facing the parking lot. We then get a 2-3 second shot of Jack shrugging and shouting "Freeze" at Howard. Howard is then seen staring at Jack in disbelief at the thought of him shooting a hostage. We then see Howard (still in the initial 3 seconds) walk into the parking lot and Jack run towards the door. As Howard is going through the door the shot changes to Jack and in this shot you can see Harry shuffling down the corridor.
Continuity mistake: When the subway carriage bursts out into the street, Annie's handcuffs slide off the broken pole and in slow motion you can see the pole is shorter than all others. Besides, all the other poles in the carriage are intact. (01:49:15)
Suggested correction: If you have to use slow motion to see something, it's not a mistake.
Continuity mistake: When Keanu and Jeff are on their way to the building at the start of the film, their car flies over a hill and lands back on the road. The right hand front wheel takes a really nasty knock as it lands and looks ready to come off, and yet in the next shot they arrive safely with no apparent difficulty driving the car. (00:06:00)
Suggested correction: The wheel takes a knock but at no point does it look "ready to come off"
Continuity mistake: After the bus driver looks at the note "Bomb on Bus" he starts decreasing speed. So Keanu puts the Jaguar beside the bus and tells the bus driver to open the door for him to tell the driver to go at a speed of 50 miles per hour. Just before this you can see a camera shot in which the door is already open. This mistake is easily seen if you watch it in slow motion.
Suggested correction: If you have to use slow motion to see something, it's not a mistake.
Continuity mistake: When Howard Payne is in the elevator, he hears Jack and Harry doing something from above, and he reaches for his bomb trigger. In slow motion when he's picking it up, it has two buttons on it, yet when Howard pushes one of the buttons, the device now has three. (00:13:00)
Suggested correction: Look closely. There are 6 buttons in all shots (3 rows of 2 (1 red, 1 green)) However the bottom row has tape over it in the close up of Payne picking it up.
Continuity mistake: When Jack and Harry are pulling people out of the elevator there are two men offering to help the stubborn lady out of the elevator. 2 seconds later there is only one man jumping to get out. (00:15:50)
Suggested correction: One man is trying to help her before he gets out. However, 2 cops are trying to help her from outside.
Plot hole: Payne's finger prints would've been all over the elevator, on his shotgun, and near the area where he killed the security guard as he was never shown wearing gloves. Since he was a former police officer, I would assume his prints would've been on file with the FBI and in a multitude of databases. You would think they would've been able to identify him much earlier in the movie than they did by running the prints through all databases of finger prints.
Suggested correction: IAFIS, the FBI fingerprint database, wasn't implemented until 1999. At the time this film was released, the LA police would have to individually run any prints found through the databases they wanted to search. Essentially, they would have to know beforehand that Howard Payne was a former Atlanta police officer or have made a wild guess.
Plot hole: The police thought they could catch the bomber at the ransom drop because he did not know that the bus had exploded. However, the exploding bus would have created a huge plume of smoke that would have been reported by the media. (01:30:00)
Suggested correction: The news reporters at the airport had been blocked by the Police from reporting. Reporters that weren't at the airport would see a cloud of smoke but wouldn't know what was causing it.
Stupidity: Howard has the opportunity to shoot Jack at the end, but doesn't for no discernable reason; he's already committed multiple felonies, and shooting Jack would help cover his tracks all the better. In fact, he could even have just taken the cash onto the subway and left Annie behind while staying in full disguise as a cop.
Suggested correction: Howard Payne's taunting dialogue in the subway station suggests that he wants Jack to live a long life, tormented by the fact Payne was able to beat him. He doesn't become intent on murdering Jack until the dye pack goes off, ruining the money. After that, he tries to shoot Jack but runs out of bullets, then decides to beat him to death with the detonator but fails.
Other mistake: When the safety cable goes taut and stops the falling elevator, a woman standing in the corner is shown to fall through a hole in the floor. However, the hole in the floor was plainly visible in the bottom of the elevator as it was falling. As the hole was more than wide enough for the woman's legs to fall through, she couldn't have been standing in that corner as it was falling.
Suggested correction: No, however when the elevator stops, it does so with a massive thud. Easily enough to knock a woman off her balance to fall through the hole.
Plot hole: It is never definitively stated if the bomb is tied directly to the axle, triggered by the speedometer instrumentation or throttle. Regardless, as long as the wheels keep spinning above 50mph the bomb will not explode by design. This means that if you lifted the wheels of the bus off the ground or you bottom out, you could keep accelerating without any speed at all. This could be accomplished in any number of ways. One example would be driving on grass and keeping the tires spinning.
Suggested correction: And that would accomplish precisely nothing. They know Payne is watching them and he explicitly stated no-one is allowed to get off the bus or he will detonate it, only making an exception for the injured driver. What good is finding a way to keep the wheels in motion if everyone is still stuck on the bus?
The mistake is suggesting that you basically find a way to stop the bus but keep the wheels spinning such as grounding it on a hill. Then while the bus is stationary, just (I'm assuming here) put a weight on the accelerator to keep the wheels spinning and then everyone just hop off and walk away. However, you're correct in that Howard is watching the live feed so would just blow the bomb when people got off.
I fully understood what the entry was suggesting, but Payne's demand that everyone stays on the bus under penalty of detonation voids it. Even if that wasn't the case, finding a way to somehow stop the bus but keeping the wheels spinning (such as lifting it with a helicopter) would be a logistical nightmare in that scenario. Their plans to drive on the otherwise unoccupied freeway and then circle the airport runway were much more practical.
The other glaring problem with "stopping the bus while keeping the wheels moving" is those pesky laws of physics. Momentum, kinetic energy, and inertia would all prevent that from happening under any circumstance that could be quickly cobbled together by any police department. I'm sure physicists and engineers could come up with something given a few months and a buttload of money, but for this example you could consider it impossible - especially without causing a lot of passenger injuries.
Suggested correction: This might be correct, but it depends on the sun's position. If the sun is to the far left of the shot, the gap in the shadow would appear somewhere far to the right of where the actual gap is.
Nice try. Look at the shadows of the bridge trestles and those on the small brown building to the right of the photo. The sun is to the left of the bridge, and the shadow is exactly what you would expect to see if the bridge was complete - which it was, by the way. The "gap" is CGI.
Original guy was right to pick up the full shadow and the gap is CGI, both suggested corrections erred in saying the sun was in the left or even far left as the reference point for the position of the sun is the bridge in the far background that seems to be over a canal where the shadow indicates that the sun is almost directly overhead.
Again, nice try. All three trestles holding up the unfinished section of the bridge are casting long shadows to their right, as is the small black vehicle visible on top of the bridge itself. The shadow of the section of the bridge that was removed by CGI (that is, the shadow that should not exist) is displaced some distance to the right of the bridge itself. The sun cannot possibly be 'almost directly overhead'.