Visible crew/equipment: In a scene not too long after Tom Cruise attempts to revive a hooker who has OD'd, he is speaking with an older gentleman. The three are in a bathroom and the hooker is passed out on a chair. One of the shower or light fixtures toward the left of the screen is shiny, and in a shot during which the camera briefly tracks in reverse, you can see the camera, cameraman and the focus puller reflected. It's pretty clear and not all that fast.
Continuity mistake: At the orgy a man walks through a door with a naked woman on each arm, then the camera cuts so that Tom Cruise is in the shot with the man and two women approaching him. In this shot one of the women is a different woman from before.
Revealing mistake: In the newspaper that Tom Cruise is reading, the same sentences are printed over and over.
Visible crew/equipment: When Nicole opens and closes the mirror in the bathroom, you can see the camera's lens reflected on it (the camera is cover by a white thing). (00:22:34)
Continuity mistake: In the scene where Tom Cruise calls the woman whose father has died and the boyfriend answers, a rubber band appears on the desk next to the pen after he hangs up that was not there before he made the call.
Revealing mistake: There are a number of scenes in the city where a letterbox is shown. Watch this postbox and the graffiti on it - the same box is used in 3 different places. (I think it's shown outside the hotel and outside the costume shop.)
Continuity mistake: The jade sculptures move from table to table in the hallway, while Tom Cruise is having a pass made at him by the daughter of his newly deceased patient.
Continuity mistake: When the older guy is playing pool and explaining to Tom Cruise's character who the masked people are and why they're dangerous, the balls (the 3 ball, in particular) on the pool table are in a different spot every time it comes back to the older guy.
Continuity mistake: When Tom is talking to Nicole on the phone, she's sitting at a table in the kitchen. Watch the number of Oreos in the packet on the table - it keeps changing.
Continuity mistake: As Tom Cruise walks down a street he is being followed by a bald man. He sees the man and runs across the street and hails a cab from a street that is supposedly at a right angle to the street he was just on. However this street is actually the same street he just ran away from. You can tell because there is a small bodega in the background with a green awning. In the first scene it's lit. In the second the lights are out. But it's clearly visible, as are the other shop fronts.
Revealing mistake: As Tom Cruise's character is in the morgue to find out about the now dead prostitute who helped him out, the corpse moves.
Continuity mistake: During the scene that Nicole and Tom are smoking weed in the bedroom they show Tom sitting on the bed and there is an ashtray behind him, well sometimes. Sometimes it's there.. sometimes it's not. It keeps coming and going.
Continuity mistake: Just after being followed on the curiously empty streets of Manhattan, Tom Cruise makes his way to a coffee shop. The last shot from the street before he turns to enter the shop shows not a person on the sidewalk, but the next shot of him from inside the cafe opening the door, shows about three people passing in the background.
Continuity mistake: In the scene where Tom Cruise and the older man are playing pool, in addition to the pool balls moving, the cue chalk and the drink on the edge of the pool table move as well.
Continuity mistake: In the scene in which Alice tells Bill about her fantasies regarding the military man, the right shoulder strap on the camisole she's wearing is up, then down, then up, then down - obviously the scene was culled from multiple takes. In addition, the stack of CDs on the window sill just over her right shoulder seems to be balanced precariously (particularly the top one) in some shots, and stacked normally in others.
Revealing mistake: That's the most fake newspaper I've ever seen. It's printed on a heavier weight paper than a real New York newspaper. (02:05:20)
Other mistake: As Tom Cruise stands outside the Sonata Cafe, he sees snaps of Nick Nightingale's band. Kip Fleming on bass, Larry McVey on drums and Bobby Berman on guitar. Inside the Cafe, Nick introduces his band in a different order and instruments; Larry McVey on bass and Kip Fleming on drums.
Continuity mistake: In the scene where Tom has become quite paranoid and is being followed by the bald man. Well when he turns that one corner you'll notice a sign in the background on the buildings on the other side of the street which has some name an the number (212)555-5115 or something like that. Then the shot cuts to the bald guy, but when the shot comes back to Tom if you look in the same spot the sign is gone, and you can notice the outline of where the sign was.
Revealing mistake: Just after Bill consoles the lady for her father's death, he strolls about a New York street late in the evening. One shot has the camera dollying backwards as it follows Bill down the sidewalk, and as it does the camera's own shadow is cast on the sidewalk, just to the left of actor Tom Cruise. But just as interestingly, the angle of the shadow is such that Cruise ought to be casting his own shadow, but there is none. Cruise has been photographed against a process screen, then added to the background in post-production. (00:45:55)
Continuity mistake: Throughout the film Nicole Kidman's nails are very short, but in the scene when she is holding a cigarette her nails are long and obviously false. Later that day, they are short again.
Answer: No. They needed to have an article for Cruise to read and, on the assumption that it wouldn't be readable by the viewers, they simply filled up the space required by repeating the same sentence over and over again. Another commonly used tactic is to steal text from a real article, leading to situations where the text of a newspaper article can be seen to have nothing to do with the actual headline.
Tailkinker ★