Factual error: When the agent searches for Abu Ahmed in Peshawar, Pakistan, in one scene he gets out of his car, and a shop named Bhatia sons appear in the background, a company based in Delhi, India. In the next scene he is walking down a market, where a sign board of Jaggi sweets, (existing in Punjab, India) is seen, with words written in Hindi (only to be found in India).
Continuity mistake: Holding Ammar down, Dan tells Maya to grab the bucket. Her being uneasy about the whole situation, she begins walking towards it, but is nervously fidgeting with her shirt like she's trying to button it up. Then the shot changes angles and suddenly her arms are crossed and still. (00:07:45)
Continuity mistake: As the guy in the car is driving into the base, Jessica excitedly runs to a dirt road and pulls out her phone to text Maya. The side shot shows the antenna is extended. It cuts to a view by her shoulder and suddenly the antenna is pushed in. (00:58:25)
Continuity mistake: When Dan is questioning Ammar about the Saudi Group, he holds up a photograph. Between shots, his hand jumps from the top of the picture to the bottom. He also changes from holding his arm out to the side to up close to his face. (00:06:40)
Continuity mistake: The CIA team are in Pakistan in a van to search for a telephone signal, and are blocked by two guys on bikes at front and a car behind. Notice that one of the bikes is a TVS Apache bike, but when those guys blocking the CIA team leave, they leave on different bikes. (01:23:25 - 01:25:05)
Factual error: When agents are searching for Abu Ahmad al Kuwaiti in Peshawar and get blocked by two Pakistani men, the agent that gets out of the car to speak with them starts speaking in Lebanese dialect. In Pakistan they do not speak Arabic, and even if the two Pakistani bikers happened to speak Arabic, it would have been literary Arabic, which is totally different from the Lebanese dialect. (01:22:10)
Character mistake: Dan is supposedly such an expert in Pakistan, but he hands Ammar the cigarette pack with his left hand (unclean to Muslims, and therefore not much of a gesture of hospitality).
Factual error: When Maya and team first enter the hangar at Area 51 to see the helicopters, mechanics are working on them with socket wrenches. However, when they use the socket wrenches, they turn them one way to make the ratchet sound, then lift the wrenches up off the bolts to put them back in their original position, and do it again. In fact, the way they are holding the wrenches with both hands indicates there might be no bolt there at all. In other words, they are doing absolutely nothing...just making a ratchet noise.
Continuity mistake: As the movie starts, Ammar is being tortured and questioned. The men drag him to the middle of the room and begin tying his arms up. The shot from behind Ammar when they finish show that the ropes are holding his arms high enough where his shoulders are up, with his arms making a Y shape over his head. It then switches to show security camera footage of Ammar from the front as Dan is watching. This view shows that Ammar's arms are not held as high, with his shoulders slumped and his arms bent at the elbows with his forearms held up, making him have a W shape instead of a Y. (00:03:15)
Character mistake: The CIA determines that there must be a third male living in the compound because three women are observed living there and according to Muslim law a woman must either live with her family or husband and cannot live alone. However Bin Laden had two wives living with him at the time so it could be possible for that to happen. (01:40:55)
Continuity mistake: After Ammar says he won't talk, Dan and the masked man drag him to the ground onto some mats. Dan then gags Ammar's mouth with a wet cloth of some sort. The shot cuts and suddenly Ammar is screaming with nothing in his mouth. (00:07:35)
Continuity mistake: When Dan begins to interrogate Ammar he puts on black rubber gloves. The gloves are last seen when he undoes the ropes holding Ammar. When the scene cuts, he is not wearing them and they are suddenly in his back pocket. (00:07:20)
Audio problem: After Abrar is shot, his wife starts to shout and runs to grab a weapon. When she does, the angle changes while she looks at the Navy Seals, her mouth is closed, but her previous cries keep on sounding. (02:09:40)
Continuity mistake: After Bin Laden is killed, the Seals confirm his identity asking a woman who the man is. She lies saying it's Noori Hasan. When she does, her left arm swaps from lowered to raised between shots. (02:16:55)
Continuity mistake: In the first scene when Dan is interrogating the terrorist, he asks Maya to fill a plastic jug for waterboarding. She fills it, then in the next shot when Maya hands the jug to Dan, there is a different amount of water in it. (00:08:00)
Continuity mistake: When Abrar is killed he has a long streak of blood on his shoulder and faces his wife. A shot later the blood is gone and he is facing the opposite side. (02:09:50)
Continuity mistake: When Dan approaches a higher CIA agent saying he needs "A couple hundred thousand bucks", the other guy gets up and walks to a cabinet to put his prayer rug in it. It cuts to Dan, and the reflection in the glass of the world map behind him shows the guy with the rug repeating the action of putting away his rug. (01:10:05)
Continuity mistake: Maya is with a translator questioning a guy that is handcuffed to a table. The translator pushes a picture to the man who picks it up and then lies it down. He identifies the man as Abu Ahmed and taps the picture with his finger on his left hand. The shot cuts to a close up, and suddenly his left hand is up on the bar with fingers fidgeting. (00:31:40)
Revealing mistake: The SEALs assaulting Bin Laden's compound are using infrared lasers on their rifles, which can only be seen under night vision. The lasers being AN/PEQ-15s which the SEALs have attached to the top of their rifles. However, most if not all of the rifles have the laser beam coming from the bottom left of the hand guard, not from the top mounted laser unit. It's possible the/PEQ-15s were faux units and different lasers mounted to the rifles were used to give the effect.
Continuity mistake: When Bin Laden is first shot, they show a close up of him and the Team leader shoots him in the upper chest close to his neck several times. He gets on Coms and says "We have a possible jackpot" and shoots him again in the high upper body. After he takes some pictures you can see in the photos that Bin Laden is only shot twice near the belly button and below his left nipple and of course in the head, but not 2 or 3 times where the team leader shot him in the upper chest.
Chosen answer: Most likely to conceal her naturally bright red hair. If that fact is known, it would make it easier for the enemy to identify and target her, either for surveillance, to be kidnapped, killed, etc.
raywest ★