Continuity mistake: In the flashbacks seen at the start of the film, Charles Nichols introduces Kimble to Alec Lentz. When this flashback is revisited later in the film, when Kimble breaks into Frederick Sykes' house, the words and actions of Nichols and Lentz are slightly different to what was seen earlier in the film. (00:04:15 - 01:24:55)
Continuity mistake: After the bus crashes, Kimble unlocks his hands and throws the keys onto the floor in front of Copeland. Two shots later the keys are lying in a different position when Copeland grabs them off the floor.
Continuity mistake: When the landlord's son is arrested, it's snowing, and the following scene is during the St. Patrick's Day parade, with no snow on the ground. The only other time there was snow was when the other fugitive was arrested/killed, so they must have filmed that the same time of the year.
Continuity mistake: Kimble puts the worker's uniform on over his prison uniform, but when he takes it off to tend to his wounds, we only see him remove the worker's uniform, with no sign of the prison uniform.
Continuity mistake: When the Marshals go to arrest Copeland, they are in Whiting, IN. When the Sheriff's car comes through, it is an Illinois State Police car.
Continuity mistake: The prisoner starts foaming at the mouth and pulls the sharp implement from his sock, but when he is shot, he collapses back in his seat with no sign of the foam around his mouth.
Continuity mistake: When Kimble leaves the hospital and the detectives arrive, it's dark outside. However, when they're interviewing the nurse, you can see it's daylight outside.
Continuity mistake: When Kimble is on the moving train, Sykes mysteriously appears from a door when he wasn't there before. (02:00:00)
Chosen answer: He didn't. A key plot point is that Nichols borrowed Kimble's car on the night of the murder. The call to Sykes, which is expressly stated by the marshals as being on Kimble's car phone, was from Nichols, presumably arranging to meet so that he could give Sykes Kimble's keys to get into his house to lie in wait for him.
Tailkinker ★
Thank you for explaining it. I've seen it several times and never realised how it went down.
And Tommy Lee Jones tells Kimble that they knew Nichols called Skyes from his car, but how? Wouldn't the more logical answer have been that the US Marshals thought that Kimble called Sykes from his car to tell the killer his wife was home alone? There is no way the US Marshalls would have known that the Kimble let Nichols borrow his call - that's the mistake in the movie! It actually should have made the Marshalls suspicious of Kimble, not exonerate him.
The Marshals know Kimble let Nichols borrow his car because Kimble told the police when he was initially interviewed following the murder. He gave a detailed account of his actions and whereabouts that night and mentioned that Nichols had borrowed his car. It didn't seem suspicious to the police at the time because Richard claimed he fought with a one armed man he didn't recognize; a story the police did not believe because there was no evidence of this and Kimble's wife "identified" her attacker as Richard. Gerard puts everything together when he realises that Nichols lied about knowing Lentz.
BaconIsMyBFF
How did Sam figure out that Nichols borrowed the vehicle and made the call to Sykes and gave him keys, etc? I know in the laundry he reveals that he knew this but when/how did he figure it out?