Hustle

Hustle (2004)

9 plot holes - chronological order

(2 votes)

Show generally

Plot hole: The team constantly has fake stories about them on news sites, so that when posing as businessmen/investors etc, the mark can look them up on the internet and find out more about them. Obviously, they have a few fake news sites of their own. The problem is persuading the mark that this is genuine. Many of their marks are bankers and businessmen, who would look for reports on legitimate financial/newspaper sites, rather than some random news site they had never heard of before.

swordfish

The Lesson - S2-E3

Plot hole: At the end of the episode Trevor Speed sits with his face in his hands looking like the world has stopped turning. In fact he has just sold a worthless plot of land for £450,000. Okay, he was conned out of £150,000 of that by the grifters, but he is still £300,000 up. A grifter like him would be over the moon - he is used to taking elderly ladies for the occasional short con making him £80 or so. He's just won the lottery. He'd be happy.

Missions - S2-E4

Plot hole: At the end of the episode Stacie says that she has cashed the bank draft used to purchase the forged comic book artwork. Not a chance. The auctioneers establish that the artwork is a forgery within minutes of the sale going through and they would be onto their bank immediately ensuring a stop order was put on the draft. Bank cheques and drafts can be stopped after issue - it happens all time. In fact, simply by presenting the draft Stacie has opened herself up to a world of legal problems - the bank's computers are going to light up like a Christmas tree and the police will be there within minutes.

Getting Even - S4-E3

Plot hole: At the end of the episode, having conned Veronica Powell out of £600,000 - the purchase price of the house and contents they sold her - Danny taunts her by telling her that they did nothing wrong, implying that she has no legal recourse to recovering her money. He's wrong. One of the gang, Billy Bond, bids against her in the auction for the house, boosting her bid from £220,000 to her final offer of £600,000. Bond has no money and no access to any, and no assets that could be realised to cover the bids he made, something that would be easy for a lawyer to prove. It's called shill bidding and it is very illegal indeed. Since Bond and Ash Morgan (who gave Powell false information during the auction, spurring her on to bid against Bond) are both standing next to Danny when he makes his announcement I find it hard to believe that a shrewd, hard-hearted businesswoman like her would not realise that she had been conned and would not get her lawyers and the police on the case on the spot.

Return of the Prodigal - S5-E1

Plot hole: Mickey Bricks returns to England by stealing the uniform of a Commander Cardwell, an officer in the Royal Navy, and taking his place on board an aircraft carrier that is sailing from Australia to the UK, leaving that day, a voyage that would take three to four weeks. During that time, Cardwell does not report his uniform stolen, nor does he report to the aircraft carrier to take up his duties, and since there was a car waiting to take him to the ship he is obviously supposed to be there. Theft of a military uniform is taken extremely seriously and once reported it would take no time at all to establish that "Cardwell" appears to be on board his ship! On top of that, during his entire time at sea nobody on board calls upon Mickey to perform any sort of military duties (of which he would have absolutely no knowledge), he doesn't run into anyone who knows Cardwell, and nobody asks to see his orders, military identification or travel warrant.

Return of the Prodigal - S5-E1

Plot hole: Emma Kennedy gets into the morgue and coroner's office when she is wheeled in on a gurney sealed in a body bag. Mickey distracts the morgue attendant so she can get out of the bag and go to the coroner's filing room. All well and good, but what happens when the attendant goes back into the morgue after Mickey leaves and sees the empty body bag on the gurney? There is no indication that Emma gets back into the body bag and there is no reason for her to do so.

Politics - S5-E5

Plot hole: When Albert, Mickey and Emma are trying to decide which nationality of millionaire Albert will pose as, they decide not to go with an English millionaire, since Albert at this point tries and fails to do a remotely convincing upper-class English accent. However, in many earlier episodes (such as "Gold Mine") he has no problems at all in putting on a convincing upper-class English accent.

swordfish

The Road Less Travelled - S5-E6

Plot hole: The only people who respond to Harry Fielding's classified ad seeking victims of the gang are three people who, it turns out, are actually working with Mickey Bricks. Considering how prolific the grifters are I rather think Fielding would be inundated with genuine people seeking revenge, but not one shows up. Not one? Simply unbelievable.

Gold Finger - S8-E1

Plot hole: The gang plan to sell 100 kilograms of gold to their mark Dexter Gold for £500,000. In fact they show him 100 standard gold ingots, not 100 smaller 1 kilogram ingots which are about the size of a small mobile phone. A standard gold ingot weighs 12.4 kilograms. They are showing him 12,400 kilograms of gold - nearly 12 ½ tonnes! First, Gold is an expert. He would know right away that they couldn't possibly be offering 12 ½ tonnes of gold for half a million pounds. Nobody is that stupid - that amount of gold would be worth two hundred and fifty million pounds! Secondly, he would be aware of the difference between a standard 12.4 kg and a one kg ingot. Thirdly, they have the fake gold stacked on an ordinary wooden pallet. That amount of gold (or anything else) would crush it like tissue paper - and it could not possibly be transported in an ordinary Army truck like the one shown.

The Henderson Challenge - S3-E2

Factual error: Mickey and Danny walk to their local shop to buy ice. We see that the shop is Robis, which is at 106 Brick Lane, in E1. They even show the street name sign just so we can be certain. Mickey and Danny deliver the ice to their flat, which is in the street directly opposite the shop - the camera shows them going into the building. However, a few shots later, the whole crew meet on the roof of the building to discuss The Henderson Challenge. We see that this building overlooks the north side of the river, close to Tower Bridge. We get a clear view of the Greater London Authority building which is on the opposite, south bank. They are suddenly several kilometers from Brick Lane, which is where their flat was just shown as being.

More mistakes in Hustle

Mickey 'Bricks' Stone: Albert, what the hell were you doing in a church today?
Albert Stroller: Gil Stewart died this afternoon. I was there at the end.
Mickey 'Bricks' Stone: Oh God, I'm so sorry Albert. You two were like brothers.
Albert Stroller: We worked Vegas together. That man was made for bright lights. Poor bastard - died of a stroke in a dental surgery.
Mickey 'Bricks' Stone: Well, someone should sue them.
Albert Stroller: Aye, he was pretending to be the dentist.

More quotes from Hustle

The Hustlers News of the Day - S3-E5

Trivia: In some versions of this episode the name of the newspaper the grifters con has been rather clumsily dubbed over as "The Weekend World" rather than the original "The Sunday World", which is a real newspaper.

More trivia for Hustle

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