Continuity mistake: Darius is making his way through the party crowd after the former SEAL member spotted him. Look when he drinks the last glass of champagne; in the background there's the same woman with a pearl necklace his pursuers already passed by. It's like they are -ahead - of him and not behind. (00:39:15)
Continuity mistake: After the funeral, Charlie is walking in a mall. Behind her there's a man with a maroon tie chatting with a woman at his side. He carries a beige coat that in the second shot is held differently, showing its black interior. (00:34:00)
Revealing mistake: Ice Cube peels the sticker from the hard drive, but he starts peeling it from the right side in the first shot, the left side in the close-up - in fact looking at the numbers you can tell it' s a mirrored shot. (00:32:00)
Plot hole: To taunt Agent Augustus Eugene Gibbons, General George Deckert namedrops Darius Stone. Gibbons looks at him genuinely shocked, which the General acknowledges scoring an important moral victory and establishing himself further as a Machiavellian villain. The problem with all this is that Gibbons would have to literally not know what he's been doing and why up to that point, to think that the General, who is also the Secretary of Defense, does not know about it.Gibbons broke Darius out very openly, from a military prison that is the only maximum security correctional facility in the Department of Defense. His reason to bring Darius out was also, explicitly, that Deckert is targeting the ex members of their unit (which is, we have to assume in retrospect giving perhaps too much credit to the screenplay, the only reason why Gibbons could execute such a flawed plan to begin with and why Darius is still alive). So, Gibbons being surprised that his adversary "knows", after a couple of days even, is pure absurdity.
Continuity mistake: For his escape, Ice Cube leaps on the incoming surprise silent chopper. The trajectory of his leap is different in the various shots - he was never gonna be able to grab the skid the way he was falling in the first shots. (00:12:45)
Revealing mistake: When Ice Cube is escaping from prison and the prison sniper tries to shoot him down, the actor might as well been doing "pew-pew" noises with his mouth, because his finger is not even on the trigger. (00:13:00)
Continuity mistake: With a gun pointed at his head, Gibbons retorts that General George Deckert does not seem to do "any of the dying." Look at the shadows on the doorframe, and look at them again when the camera is back on Samuel Jackson; big change even if he surely didn't go anywhere. (00:29:40)
Continuity mistake: As Ice Cube waltzes into the truck after the boat stunt, Shavers stares at him. Behind him you can see the car window is half/a third of the way up. With all the commotion, it's unlikely that Shavers decided to close it a bit; it was practically all the way down before, when Darius told him to get his butt off the driver's position, and up when he was saying there was a problem. (00:24:50 - 00:25:20)
Plot hole: Agent Kyle Christopher Steele ordered roadblocks for 10 miles, Stone just destroyed a state police patrol car blocking a major bridge, but he is able, with no explanation, to just get away with that one encounter with the police and bring back his hyper-recognizable monster van from the countryside to Georgetown with no problem. (00:25:00)
Continuity mistake: When Ice Cube jumps off the speedboat he crashed on top of the bridge, the natural light in the shot when he is walking towards the explosion without looking is quite different from the crash shots. (00:25:05)
Character mistake: When the unlikely trio of heroes gets off the helicopter and calmly boards the GTO, Samuel Jackson fails to properly close the car trunk, that stays semi-open. (00:13:55)
Factual error: The sniper that lets Ice Cube roam free the roof all cat-like tries to make up for his mistake by shooting him repeatedly as he boards the heli. Which is nothing short of miraculous, since he's doing it with a Remington 700PSS bolt action rifle, in his capable hands suddenly turning into semiauto. (00:13:00)
Revealing mistake: The wider shot (after the POV) of the boat going up the ramp to rescue Agent Toby Lee Shavers from the Virginia police is a miniature work recognizable at first glance. (00:24:55)
Continuity mistake: When we see Ice Cube move from boat to boat cutting the fuel line, we see also the disconnected pipes flopping down. But in close-up the little fuel tube we see pumping gas letting it pool into the deck is carefully propped to stays up and spurts at full force. Darius did not take time to fix any engine that way, though. (00:23:30)
Continuity mistake: When XXX stuns with rather unorthodox techniques the two guys the idiot co-protagonist left alone to guard the base, the first one to go down collapses with his right arm straight in front and the left hand below his elbow. When Scott Speedman gets back and start chasing Ice Cube, you can see the same man on the floor, right arm all the way down along his side, and his body turned so the left hand is not in the same position. (00:21:40 - 00:22:20)
Plot hole: The NSA base in Virginia is assaulted. Gibbons escapes after noon/early afternoon and gets to the United States Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas, the day after. Another day passes for the prison escape, and then another day to get back to DC. The FBI agents are hanging out at the crime scene in full force three days after, but during all this time nobody sealed or covered with as much as a tarp or put any perimeter around the huge entrance holes; makes little sense to guard the doors with a dozen agents and leave huge uncovered (not to mention dangerous) holes leading to the core of the building. Even worse, the hard drives of the people they are supposedly investigating (Gibbons) are still there. They would have been sent to the labs to be analyzed, especially since they have been wiped clean, which would only enhance the suspicions. (00:21:00)
Plot hole: The destroyed NSA base is in the middle of nowhere and patrolled by dozens (we see at least 8 agents just by the barn outside) of federal agents, but Shavers, who provides nothing of relevance to the mission since he's not even the getaway for Stone, is able to just park in plain sight in the vicinity and stalk it with binoculars. With that level of surveillance, his van would have been spotted and approached for identification by the feds in no time. (00:20:35)
Continuity mistake: In a problem already spotted in the previous movie of the saga, the departed Michael Roof had poor ring discipline; when the scene of the assault at the barn begins and he reminds 'X' that it's a covert operation, he's holding the binoculars with ring-free hands, but in the shot when he sighs saying "Subtle..." he sports an obvious metal band (exactly like in the original movie) at his right ring finger. (00:20:40)
Continuity mistake: When Gibbons asks Agent Toby Lee Shavers to fit the rocket he picked from the car into a personal weapon, Michael Roof holds the rocket in two different ways (grip on the pipe or between the fins) depending on the camera angle. (00:20:10)
Other mistake: Gibbons and Stone have been been together in the same car for over 15 hours at least, from Kansas to Washington DC, and at Lo's they still talk as if they haven't exchanged a single word. (00:19:15)
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