Corrected entry: During the Federal Reserve scenes, the driller machine cuts a hole in the wall into one of the gold deposits. In one scene, the gold is stacked at the same level. When we see the room on the television screen, there are 2 different height levels of gold in the room.
Corrected entry: In the scene when Simon asks Inspector Cobb to have McClane come to Harlem on the phone, he just mentions the address/location and the Inspector hangs up the phone. There are no further instructions given, as to what McClane has to "do" at Harlem (which McClane does in the subsequent scenes).
Correction: The camera comes in close to Cobb's eyes as Simon speaks. His eyes react after Simon has mentioned Harlem, then we hear Cobb shout out "Kowalski" to the bullpen. The next cut is from further back, where we see Cobb hanging up the phone and barking instructions to his men. There are two very common cinematic techniques being used in the phone call sequence. The first is a timecut. When Cobb answers Simon's call and then when he hangs up the phone are actually two different scenes that occur probably several minutes apart. The second technique is prelapped dialogue, which is when dialogue from a later scene is heard over the previous scene. So when Cobb shouts "Kowalski," it's not actually occuring during the closeup to his eyes, but in the second scene timejumped a few minutes later. Simon gave further details during the intervening (offscreen) minutes between the two scenes.
Corrected entry: 'Simon' needs McClane alive until the very end, when he has secured the gold. Diverting the police by making them think he is merely avenging his dead brother is a vital part of his plan. It therefore makes no sense at all that his very first task for McClane - wearing a grotesquely racist sandwich board as he walks through Harlem - could very easily get him killed.
Correction: "Simon" does not necessarily NEED McClane alive to complete the heist. In fact, everything he plans later for him to do is "just in case" he survives the previous task. McClane being dead will have NO EFFECT on Simon's plan, as once the police were diverted, his plan merely consisted of robbing the Federal Reserve.
Correction: Yes, he could easily give the same instructions after the Harlem scene to the police without McClane alive.
Corrected entry: When Samuel L. Jackson slams on the brakes and gets out of the cab on Wall Street to catch the phone call from Jeremy Irons, you can see various tyre marks that were caused by previous takes.
Correction: This kind of "mistake" has been posted and corrected for a number of films. The car is on a busy road which is marked by skidmarks. Why do that have to be "from previous takes"?
Corrected entry: The bomb on the train has to blow up, and Bruce Willis is not supposed to find it. But he does and throws it out the back of the train just before it blows up. But the bad guy didn't expect this, he expected in to blow up in the train. In which case hundreds of people would have been killed, injured and trapped. It would take the rest of the day to clear that mess - making it impossible for them to raid the bank. Pretty crap plan - I guess he got lucky?
Correction: This is all part of the plan. The commotion would allow him to more easilly go through with his plan, as most of the attention would be focused on the train wreck. McClane actually just made it harder to go through with it, but this is still not a mistake.
Corrected entry: When the No. 3 train is arriving at Wall Street, we see that that the head car is slowing, about to stop at the end of the platform. However, when McClane shatters the storm door window at the rear of the train to eject the bomb, we see the train is still moving at speed through a local station. This is because the train interior footage with McClane was shot on the actual subway here in New York, while the exterior shots were filmed on the set in Mount Pleasant, SC.
Correction: The scene where the train is travelling into wall street was filmed in the States. The scene where the train pulled into the platform was actually filmed in London.
Corrected entry: When John ambushes the two men in the truck in the tunnel, only three shots are heard, yet there are nine bullet holes in the door. (01:15:30)
Correction: On my DVD copy, I hear 9 shots which is followed by the sound of empty gun clip.
Corrected entry: When McClane and Zeus jump into the water as the ship explodes, the underwater shots show two white men, not one white and one black.
Correction: That's quite a bit of a stretch to say both men are distinguishable to be 'white'. The scene is quite dark and contains flashes from the explosion. In fact for a moment or two, both men appear to be 'dark'. We'll have to put this down to color and contrast of the scene.
Corrected entry: The explosive the bad guys have chosen is not easily 'booby-trapped'. The two chemicals have to be mixed to produce an explosive. The fact that no one, including McClane, (who knows this) thinks to just clip one of the hoses and prevent the chemicals from mixing seems a little far-fetched.
Correction: The bombs also had dummy mechanisms to foil anyone tampering with them, no-one was prepared to step in and clamp a hose on the off chance that it might trigger a secondary explosive.
Corrected entry: In the park, McClane and Zeus are challenged to fill one 5-gallon jug with only 4 gallons of water, using it and a 3-gallon jug. When they solve the problem, they put the 5-gallon jug with, supposedly, 4 gallons of water in it on the scale to deactivate the bomb; however, the 5-gallon jug, on the scale, is filled only halfway, no where close to where the 4-gallon mark should be.
Correction: If you look closely at the jugs, the design makes them difficult to measure. The inverted handle might deceive how much was there. Don't rule out as well that Simon might have purposely made the bomb to defuse even if the jug was a little off. The likelihood of getting exactly 4 gallons and not an ounce of more over or under was going to be near impossible. The fact he enjoyed running McClane all over town showed he wanted to enjoy watching him suffer.
Corrected entry: When the two officers go to rescue the kids that are stuck in the classroom they for some reason try and escape by going to the roof. However you see that there is a good solid two minutes and fifteen seconds left before the so called bomb is going to go off. Why wouldn't they just go out the front doors?
Correction: They didn't know how long they had to get out. They were nowhere near the bomb.
Corrected entry: After the subway explosion and the dump trucks are coming on the scene and the cop (who later gets killed) is waving them through. One of the lead terrorists is riding on the side of the truck. A few scenes earlier the same cop is in the van with McClane and the FBI agents looking at snapshots, and the same terrorist is shown, trademark square sunglasses and all. Some detective...
Corrected entry: Right after the train station explosion McClane is sitting down and talking to Zeus and Det. Lambert. McClane says "What were the odds of us making it down there on time?" which is replied by Zeus as "Zip". Zeus got to the phone at the train station on time, with time to spare. If McClane would have continued in the cab with him they would both have gotten there in time.
Correction: McLane is simply stating that Simon set up a task that he believed to be impossible with no chance for success, as he needed the train to blow up underneath Wall Street for his plan. He never expected they would make it. Just as planned in the plot, Simon underestimated McLane and Zeus, which ultimately leads to Simon's demise.
Corrected entry: When John is getting on the train and busts the window out, his pants are relatively clean and have no holes or tears. After he pulls the bomb off the wall and starts to walk away, his pants have a good size hole above each knee.
Correction: He rips them on the broken glass of the subway train's window as he quickly jumps through.
Corrected entry: The Germans say they are going to blow up the gold in the Long Island Sound, but they take the trucks up the aqueduct, which is on the other side of Manhattan on the Hudson River. They did not have enough time to go on the aqueduct and another bridge and end up on the Long Island Sound.
Correction: But they did not put the gold on the boat, so this is not a mistake. No one is tracking their movements except McClane, and he loses the gold after being flushed out of the aqueduct.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Bruce Willis kills the two bad guys in the truck in the aqueduct, he is walking towards the truck from behind left. When he shoots, he is still behind left of the truck. Then the camera changes and you see the blood spraying out of the bad guys torso. How could Bruce Willis be able to hit the torso of those guys if he was left behind the truck? It would have been okay if he had shot them from the front. That he was able to hit the guy sitting on the right side is really amazing.
Correction: We don't actually see McClane when he is shooting the "bad guys". He could have been standing perpendicular to the door, OR simply holding his gun with his arms extended out in front of him. So when he shoots throught the door he hits both of them. He then would have had to take a couple steps back to open the door.
Corrected entry: After Zeus and McClane escape the boat, Zeus asks Lambert to give McClane a quarter to go call his wife. However in the very last scene of the movie Zeus hands McClane a quarter to go call his wife. How on earth did he get that quarter? He obviously didn't have one the first time so why does he suddenly have a quarter now? Not like it would have mattered anyway, considering you don't need any money to make a collect call.
Corrected entry: When McClane and Zeus are climbing down the cable towards the ship, if you notice in one shot they are wearing gloves and in another shot they are not.
Corrected entry: When dealing with the binary liquid bombs you always see two equal volume containers with both containers completely full. As stated near the beginning of the movie the red liquid pumps into the clear in order to mix. If both tanks are full, how is there any volume left to pump in the other chemical in order to mix it? At least one of the tanks would need to be half full in order for there to be room to pump in the second chemical.
Correction: Both containers mixed equally, so the same amount of liquid that was going into the container was leaving the container, making the mixing process possible.
Corrected entry: When Ricky and the two officers are leading the terrorists down into the subway, we see two of the terrorists tranquilize the officers. The shot then cuts to Ricky, who notices the downed officers and is shot. As soon as the shot cuts to Otto and the other terrorist shouting, the two who tranquilized the guards are in full police uniform. I wish I could get dressed in five seconds...
Correction: As Ricky is being shot, the two terrorists unzip their coveralls to reveal police uniforms underneath. You can see it happening in the corner of the screen on Widescreen.
Correction: We see different sections. The first shot of the gold we see is the French Republic. The second shot (on the monitor) only shows part of the gold stacks, so they look even, but the view is cut off shortly above the doorknob. The 3rd shot on the monitor shows the whole section, and we see different levels of gold stacks, which are exactly the same stacks seen when it cuts to the camera view of it (as opposed to the monitor view).
Bishop73