Road To Perdition

Corrected entry: When Tom Hanks is removing his belongings, his son sees him unload a .45 calibre pistol. That type of gun was not available until 1940.

Correction: Unless you're talking about a different gun, Michael Sullivan uses a Colt M1911A1. The M1911 has always been a .45 caliber weapon. The M1911A1 became available in 1924 (and still a .45).

Bishop73

Correction: The classic shape of the semi-automatic pistol Tom Hanks uses is a 1911 series available in 1911 and onwards adopted by the US Army. In 1924 it was slightly revised and known as the 1911A1 series. Both were double action with 7 round magazines. Either gun looks very similar at a distance and were both available in 1931. Imfdb.org has identified the Tom Hanks pistol as a 1911A1. And the same for Daniel Craig's gun.

Corrected entry: In the diner scene, the Sullivans pull up while it's still light out, but while Tom Hanks is having dinner, it's pitch black.

Correction: When he goes in the diner it's evening, the next scene is Jude Law driving to the diner when it's dark out. He sees Tom Hanks' car and pulls in and sees him sitting inside eating dinner. This means that time has elapsed from evening to night. This is not a mistake.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Paul Newman finds one of his people dead in his car in the rain, the guy slumps on the steering wheel on the horn, supposedly sounding the horn. The whole scene goes silent, and the firefight starts. You can still see the guy laying on the horn when the scene ends, which means that during the whole firefight, the car horn was sounding.

csteel310

Correction: Horns of that era didn't stay on when you "lay on the horn", the horn would go "meeeep." and die out. They are not like modern horns that can go on and on in one long continuous honk.

Corrected entry: After the shooting at the diner, Sullivan is driving away with his son. At some point Sullivan drives off the road into a farmer's field. In the overhead shot of the car driving off the road into the field you can clearly see another set of car tire tracks from a previous take.

Correction: Why is it automatically assumed something like this would be from another take? Isn't it possible that the existence of preexisting tire tracks may have influenced his decision to turn there in the first place?

Corrected entry: After his wife and son are murdered, Sullivan drives overnight to Chicago. He then goes straight to see Frank Nitti. How then did John and Connor Rooney get to Chicago in time to eavesdrop in the next room? They must've passed Sullivan on the road.

Oscar Bravo

Correction: It is entirely possible that Connor had anticipated Sullivan's trip to Chicago. Additionally, there is more than one route to Chicago and Connor may have known a shortcut or simply traveled faster than Sullivan, like Connor may have chosen a mode of transportation that was faster than Sullivan, for example, a train.

Correction: It took time to stop and look for Conner before he left for Chicago. He finds Mr Kelly instead, who offers him 25K to leave and go to Ireland. Mike shoots him in the face as a message to Mr Rooney.

Corrected entry: At the scene in the beginning of the movie where Tom Hanks is kneeling by the coffin, look at the coffin filled with ice. If the ice 'preserves the body' as he says, then why is the coffin by the fireplace?

Correction: This is not a "movie mistake" but a placement mistake "in the movie." At least it seemed intentional (in the film), as that was also the head of the room, and it WAS the middle of winter, and was pretty cold out, so you had to have a fire going for all those people. Why do you think there was so MUCH extra ice?

Corrected entry: When Hanks and the kid leave the farmhouse after Hanks heals from the bullet wound, the trees in the background are fully green - but when they go back to the city, it's winter again.

Correction: It doesn't snow everywhere. It is very common to be in one place where there is snow/winter-like conditions, yet go down in elevation a bit and conditions are completely different (trees are green with no snow).

Corrected entry: After Tom Hanks and his son leave the house (right after his wife and son have been shot dead), he walks past his son towards the car. When he gets into the car, the son is already sitting in the front seat. Quick little boy.

Correction: Tom Hanks is holding a brown bag (visible in a short second) while he's talking with his son outside the car. The moment after when the son is already seen inside the car, Hanks is placing a black suitcase on top of other things. Presumably, Hanks has come back from the house again.

Correction: When Tom Hanks leaves the house with a brown suitcase, he slams the door behind him. The black case he puts on top of the brown one when Michael is in the car is the case that holds the Tommy gun. He must have gone to the garage to get it after he put the brown one in next to Michael.

Corrected entry: Sullivan shoots Jude Law's character with a handgun in the hotel, but when confronted by Law by the Ocean House in Perdition, Law has scatter shot wounds as if he were shot by buckshot from a shotgun.

Correction: One bullet hit a crystal vase which shattered and hit his face.

Corrected entry: When Sullivan shoots Maguire at the end of the movie, there is no blood/bullet wound in Maguire's back. When the camera zooms out at the end of the scene, there is no pool of blood on the floor where Maguire is laying.

Correction: If you look closely you can se a bullet hole in the back of Maguire's head right below where his hair ends. It is visible when Maguire is on his knees.

Corrected entry: When Tom Hanks is driving into Chicago, there is a ball field with light poles (for night games) in the background. Ball fields were not lit for night games in 1931.

Correction: Lights were used - see http://www.iowacubs.com/asp/history.asp.

Revealing mistake: At the end when Sullivan is shot in the back while looking out the window, you can see blood come through the front of his shirt, meaning the bullets must have exited his body, yet the window he is standing in front of isn't shattered by the bullets that had passed through him. Also, immediately after this when Jude Law sets up his camera to take photos of Tom Hanks dying, the blood all over the glass is completely gone. The window is clean.

More mistakes in Road To Perdition

Betty the Waitress: So what brings you guys to the middle of nowhere?
Michael Sullivan, Jr.: We're bank robbers.

More quotes from Road To Perdition

Trivia: Jude Law's character, Maguire, was based on Arthur Fellig, who photographed bodies at crime and fire scenes, then sold them to the tabloids. The photos shown in Maguire's apt are real crime scene photos and some were taken by Fellig himself.

Super Grover

More trivia for Road To Perdition

Question: I'm guessing that Jude Law's character's face at the end of the film had something to do with the fight they had in the hotel, where Tom Hanks's character shot him in the face. But why did he have all those little marks, if Tom Hank's character only shot him once?

Answer: Tom Hanks shot at a glass lamp, which shattered right before Jude's face, causing lots of shards of glass to cut his face.

Ral0618

Were they scarred or stitched because it bothers me.

Scarred. He was injured by a bunch of tiny shards of glass, something that could pretty much heal on its own and wouldn't need stitches.

jshy7979

I think that's why McGuire shoots Sullivan out of revenge... He wasn't ordered to but after his disfigurement he wants revenge and kills Sullivan That's my take... After all Al says it's over after Connor Rooney goes down but it's now personal for McGuire.

Answer: I think that McGuire's last kill was personal. I think that after Sullivan deforms his face McGuire is out for blood. After all Al said after he kills Connor it's over. So it probably was but McGuire's kill was personal because of his deformity. It was not because he was instructed to kill Sullivan.

Yeah, when Maguire fatally shot Mike Sr. at Aunt Sarah's residence, it was no longer business and was definitely personal/a revenge killing.

More questions & answers from Road To Perdition

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.