Directed by: Renny Harlin
Starring: Bruce Willis, William Sadler, Bonnie Bedelia, John Amos
Visible crew/equipment: When we first see McClane on the snowmobile, marks from the camera snowmobile are visible. (01:27:20)
Visible crew/equipment: When we first go to the Annex Skywalk, the SWAT team are walking with the guy from the tower and he is talking on a radio. In the mirror behind them you can see the boom mike and operator as they walk.
Factual error: It is impossible for a stream of burning jet fuel to follow a plane through snow and catch up. Not only is jet fuel extremely hard to ignite, almost as soon as the plane was off the ground the fuel stream would be too dispersed for the flame to climb up into the tank, and even if not it wouldn't burn fast enough to catch the plane.
McClane: Hey, don't I know you?
Col. Stuart: No, I get that a lot. I've been on TV.
McClane: Yeah, me too.
Trivia: Producers of the movie were concerned that actual terrorists could use the information in the film to disrupt airport/airplane communications in real life. Most of the "sensitive" information in the film is not only wrong, it is purposely misleading to prevent terrorists from attempting what we see in the movie.
Question: How could McClane tell that the ammo in the blue labeled magazine were blanks?
Answer: Just before the attack on the church, Grant and his team switch the red taped clips from their weapons with blue taped clips. The blue clips carried blanks and the red clips carried real ammo. After firing on a guy but not hitting him, McClane checked the clip and realised that the gun he used had blanks and that Grant and his team were involved with freeing Esperanza.
Quite apart from the fact that anyone who has spent his whole professional life with guns would know instantly that he had just shot off a magazine of blanks – no recoil.
Answer: Additionally, in the military, blue tape or blue in general is associated with non-lethal. Red tape is for danger, i.e., magazines with live ammo. A blue grenade is inert and meant for training.
Answer: If you listen, he says something to the effect of "I know I had that guy in my sights", meaning he is amazed he missed. So he checks the bullets in the magazine to see if that's the problems. Blanks are simply shells with no bullet that are crimped shut to hold the powder in. The difference between blanks and live rounds is very obvious even at a glance.
Grumpy Scot