Corrected entry: When Moss discovers the transponder in the pack of supposedly $100 bills, most of the bills are actually one dollar bills.
Corrected entry: When he first gets to Del Rio, Brolin's character buys a pair of Larry Mahan boots to replace the ones he lost at the river. He later hitch-hikes to Eagle Pass, gets wounded, and crosses to a hospital in Piedras Negras. He comes back into the Del Rio store for 'everything else', but he should still be in Eagle Pass, not Del Rio.
Correction: Eagle Pass and Del Rio are only separated by 50 miles. Knowing that people are looking for him, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Moss would get a ride back to Del Rio to shop for clothes and other supplies, and return to Eagle Pass only to retrieve the satchel. The border agent tells his subordinate to "get someone to help this man, he needs to get into town", it is perfectly reasonable that Moss would ask his ride to take him to Del Rio, it's less than an hour drive.
Corrected entry: Chighur uses a cattle bolt gun to execute the first victim on the road by putting it against his forehead and firing it. Problem: since the bolt only extends an inch or two and them immediately retracts - we know it does that as it has virtually no recoil - it can't be used to kill. It isn't even a very effective stun weapon and it certainly can't penetrate a skull, much less destroy the brain tissue underneath. That guy would wake up a few hours later with a bad headache and that would be it. Nor would there be an entry wound, just a skin hematoma.
Correction: I worked in a meat packing plant for years slaughtering cattle. Don't tell me that bolt gun won't penetrate a human skull! It will kill you if you get hit in the head with it. I have seen it take knee caps off people by accident.
Character mistake: When Moss is arguing with the border guard at the Eagle Pass international bridge, he claims that he is a veteran of the "12th Infantry Battalion." There has never been such a thing as the 12th Infantry Battalion in either the Army or the Marines. Rather, they are based on a structure of 3-4 battalions per numbered regiment (i.e., 1st Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment/2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, etc). The film takes this seriously, as the guard, a veteran himself, buys Moss' story.
Suggested correction: He might have meant 12th Infantry Regiment. From Wikipedia: "Three 12th Infantry battalions deployed to South Vietnam with the 4th Division from August through October 1966."
If he said "battalion" but meant "regiment", then it's still a valid mistake for saying it wrong and being believed.
Regiments have not existed as functional units in the US Army since shortly after Korea; they are simply historic names associated with various battalions. Marine battalions are not numbered higher than 4 in any regiment, and in any case do not carry an explicit designation of "infantry."
Audio problem: When, at the end of the movie, Chigurh leaves the accident site after he said to one of the boys: "You didn't see me, I was already gone", the boy answers saying: "Yessir", but his lips don't move.
Suggested correction: The boy's mouth is open. You can say "Yessir" with your mouth open without moving your lips. Try it.
I can't.
Corrected entry: As Sheriff Bell approaches the door of the motel room in El Paso, we see Chigurh hiding behind it with his shotgun. However when the door is opened, we see no evidence of Chigurh - the light streams across the floor where his feet should be, but we don't see any feet. Also, the door bangs against the back wall, which it could not do if Chigurh were there.
Correction: This scene is meant to be symbolic - Chigurh is not really there, it's Bell imagining him being there, and "not seeing" him whether he's there or not - that ties in with the dreams in the end, of Bell feeling guilty because he consciously let someone get away with murder.
Correction: Chigurh was in the adjoining room. In the shots before Bell enters the hotel room, you see the police tape covers both room 114 and 112. Moss had likely rented both rooms, as he'd done before. Chigurh has taken out the lock in the adjoining room door and was behind that ready to shoot should Bell open that door as well.
No, he's not. If he was in the adjoining room, he would be behind the door, looking to his right. As shown, he is looking to his left as the door swings open to the right of the room. The adjoining room would have the door swinging open to the left.
Corrected entry: The first motel where Josh Brolin hides out advertises "Free HBO" on its sign (I believe it was best shown in the scene where Brolin is in the cab and chooses to drive by). While HBO may have existed as a company in 1980, it was not widely used or known at the time (let alone available and affordable to a cheap motel in rural Texas).
Correction: HBO began in 1972 and was widespread by 1975. Through the late 1970s, everybody I knew was watching HBO, and I recall many a motel advertising it on their signs near my home town, long before the events of this film.
Correction: HBO was first made available to motels in 1978.
Correction: This is not a mistake, but a realistic representation of the real-life way rigged money stacks are prepared. The outside bills will be real, large denomination bills while the inside bills are real bills with the center carved out, making them useless. Since ruining an entire stack of $100 bills would be expensive, the carved out bills are of the lowest denomination possible. Rigged stacks are not meant to pass scrutiny, as the movie shows. They are designed to go unnoticed when grouped together with other money stacks.
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