Audio problem: At the NSA, General George Deckert asks Kyle what did Stone tell him when they spoke. Kyle replies "He didn't say much", and in the following reverse shot you can see Scott Speedman's jaw as he's speaking, but no sound is heard. (01:02:15)
Character mistake: At the party, George Deckert tries to sway his old army buddy and convince him to join the coup. He says "With or without you. Three days." Within minutes he gets killed. Day after, Stone goes to the air carrier. Then the day after is the State of the Union day, when the coup takes place. Not 'three days' then, but two. (00:38:50 - 00:58:20)
Other mistake: During the infiltration in the carrier, Ice Cube steals an M2 Bradley and drives it around damaged for an extended period of time; the flames keep burning with different intensity always at the same spots; one wonders what makes the same point of the armor and the very bottom corner of the back ramp for so long, without spreading at all. (00:56:00)
Factual error: XXX took a hit in his M2 Bradley and to get out of the predicament he rams the other tank, muscling it off its way and into the wall with crushing force. You don't need to look the tank specs up to see that something is wrong there, because tanks are fairly grounded vehicles not easily shaken off, and one looks much much smaller than the other; in fact the M2 Bradley is bit less than 30 tons and the bad guys' Abrams is around 60 tons. With this kind of disparity, not even Ice Cube's bulk can make the difference. (00:56:00)
Revealing mistake: Aboard his M2 Bradley Stone dodges the other tank's cannon shot, which destroys the helicopter without piercing its outer frame; the helicopter simply implodes. (00:55:10)
Revealing mistake: On the receiving end of a prison sex joke, 'Sergeant' Cobb shouts irate to his men to kill Stone. An RPG is fired at him but Stone apparently makes a tank as maneuverable as a bike and just dodges it. The rocket hits a truck, but if you look at the trajectory, the CGI rocket gets inside the truck making it explode from the inside without breaking the side of the truck itself, which is pure witchcraft. (00:54:45)
Character mistake: Darius in his waiter suit arrives at the party and goes past two officers with flags. At the back of the room there are sequined versions of the flags hanging as banners; the US flag is displayed 'backwards', as the union section should be in the top left. With an official event with generals and top level official government brass present, that's a flagrant breach of etiquette. (00:37:20)
Audio problem: When Stone runs away from the cells where Gibbons, Harris and Jackson are, there's a guard in his pursuit super-close, but in the next shot he's battling a guard to the totally opposite end of the corridor - if he locked the door or managed to kick the guy back, we did not get to hear it, only Samuel Jackson yelling. (00:53:20)
Continuity mistake: When Samuel Jackson yells at XXX to leave them in the cell, he is leaning against the wall in the wide shot, has his arm across the bars in the previous. (00:53:20)
Continuity mistake: Darius Stone pimpslaps Charlie Mayweather unconscious. She falls with her left foot under her calf, but she adjusted to a more comfortable position with her leg stretched and one hand up when a second later the guards open the hatch. (00:53:20)
Continuity mistake: Following Charlie inside the ship, Darius assaults a guard conking his head against the wall. In the first shot the guy loses instantly his cap, but in the wider angle he has his cap on his head almost all the way to the floor. (00:52:35)
Other mistake: The establishing shot of the General's house shows still Charlie's car outside in the driveway when Ice Cube gets out of the shower, but for obvious reason it can't still be there - the police convoy is arriving. And of course Ice Cube never hears her drive off or the complex murder setup happening. At the same time, the police IS incredibly quick to arrive. How long did that rugged army man spend in the shower, oblivious to everything? (00:42:45)
Other mistake: Ice Cube just got 'home' after the umpteenth inexplicable escape from the police (he was surrounded by the police with 10 miles radius of roadblocks and they found out about his escape almost instantaneously). The same newscast that reports Pettibone's death reports also that his troops are en route for the funeral. That means that the funeral has been already booked quite literally when his body is still warm. (00:47:50)
Plot hole: The gimmick Stone uses to escape is cartoonish in its silliness; he just puts in the bathtub a bunch of stuff he heated in the microwave in a vaguely human silhouette, and the police is fooled into thinking that that mass of heat their thermal scanners pick up is him. That's of course idiotic on many levels; a bunch of slabs of meat and hot pocket boxes, all heated at different times, is not gonna look at all like human temperature, and we also have to assume the extraordinary circumstance that the police switched on the scanner only whenever XXX was ready for this trick and not much earlier when he was talking with the agent or preparing the bathtub enchillada. They even show the scanner already on when Agent Kyle Christopher Steele is walking out. (00:46:20)
Continuity mistake: Stone holds in close-up the photo someone somehow took of him with Pettibone by the upper left corner, which becomes the bottom left when he throws it down on the table in anger. (00:45:40)
Continuity mistake: When Darius finds the random gun in the middle of the corridor and picks it up with zero precautions because he's obviously an idiot, the gun casts a shadow on the tiles at a different direction and angle in the first shot and in the close-up. (00:42:40)
Plot hole: Forgetting the fact that Charlie Mayweather knows everything about General Jack Pettibone's home including where he keeps his shirts (somehow the same size as Ice Cube...), and that there's nothing in his home that tips anyone about its owner (both can be explained), what is pretty hard to explain is how did this Machiavellian plan work when Darius made a hasty very early exit from the party the General was at, they drive to his house in that fast sports car, and...his corpse is already there, or at least is by the time Darius gets out of the shower. If this was the plan all along, it hinged also on the fact that Darius would have been at the party (he arrived on his own, not with Charlie) and chose of all the possible moments and actions to get close to the General and eavesdrop on the exact moment when the bad guy talked to him; they needed also picture proof. That's all levels of arbitrary and impossible.
Audio problem: Charlie takes Darius to the big mansion; Ice Cube says "Woah woah woah wait a minute; this is your home?", but his lips don't move. (00:40:30)
Continuity mistake: Charlie intervenes to fetch Darius who is making his escape from the party; forgetting the question on how could be in her car so fast, she travels in reverse gear a much lengthier portion of road than the one she traveled to pull over by him - even accounting for a different depth of field of the camera. She then nearly crashes into a taxi that in the second shot struggles to get inside the entrance of the alley nearly as much as in the first. (00:39:50)
Deliberate mistake: It's a really fun visual, but when the bad guys enter the kitchen and get swarmed by African-American waiters in white tuxedos, one can't help but wonder how it could be that Darius was almost the only waiter on the floor up until a moment before - there were a couple others, mostly white dudes, while now we see about 20 people, all of color, coming out at once. The disproportion is huge, it's not like dinner is being served. (00:39:30)
Answer: To break the surface of the water making an easier penetration. Hitting water at high speeds can be like hitting concrete. By stirring up the water it "softens" the impact.
EMTurbo