Goofs for
Paycheck (2003)

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• Continuity: When Michael and Rachel are being chased in the tunnel, the lights are knocked off the top of the police car. They subsequently reappear and disappear between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: Fairly early in the movie, when Jennings is having lunch with Troy, he dumps out the contents of the manila envelope on the table. When the two notice that they're being watched, Jennings hastily scoops the items back into the envelope; however, we see that he misses the bullet. In the next shot, the bullet is still on the table, albeit partially obscured by a napkin. The two men flee, leaving the bullet on the table, yet somehow Jennings has and uses it later in the movie.
  
  
• Continuity: In the train yard, damage from a previous take is apparent on the car the jumps over the coal/cinder pile; the bottom of the nose is already bent upward indicating a previous landing.
  
  

• Continuity: At the beginning of the motorcycle chase, a blue Dodge Neon can be seen forced off the road by a pursuing Lincoln. A moment later on a straight stretch of road, the same car has a close call with the same black Lincoln.
  
  
• Continuity: Rachel's necklace while she is in the hotel room.
  
  
• Continuity: When Michael Jennings looks carefully at the Einstein stamps through a magnifying glass, in one of the stamps Einstein has a squared eye, formed by six little black squares (the newspaper pages). Later, when viewing the stamps through the microscope, the eye is rounded, with six white squares inside.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The title of the article on the newspaper clip "Nexim announces it's answer to ARC's living display" should, of course, be "its answer".
  
  
• Continuity: As Michael runs away from the approaching train, he leaves behind the guy who just got electrocuted on the tracks. Presumably the train would run over the body, but it keeps coming unimpeded until Michael short-circuits the switch.
  
  
• Continuity: The clock is 9.00 at Union station but the digital message board announces train departures to Spokane 8.30 and Yakima 8.55.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Michael studies the items in the envelope and is looking through the glass prism, a spotlight is reflected.
  
  
• Errors in geography: Supposedly set in Seattle, yet there are many clues giving away the Vancouver, BC filming location. For example: the mountain range visible in the background during the motorcycle chase sequence, and the pamphlet holder on the bus labeled "The Buzzer" (BC Transit's newsletter). Other attempts to add Seattle flavor don't quite work: during the chase through an industrial area Wolfe mentions the intersection of "Pine and 6th" (which is in the heart of downtown Seattle); an FBI agent mentions "Southgate BWM", a fictional location probably based on actual Seattle-area locations "Northgate" and "Southcenter".
  
  
• Factual errors: Fiberoptics do not make sparkling/fizzing electrical sounds.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The first time Jennings uses the Allcom security card he swipes it the wrong way. It's very obvious that the bar code is not going through the reader.
  
  
• Factual errors: The key to the BMW is that of a BMW car. It has the standard Trunk/Lock/Unlock buttons on the key. A BMW motorcycle key is quite a bit smaller with only a silver metal case at the top of the key. Further as Jennings runs around the car lot he is pushing the BMW logo in the middle of the key, this is the Lock part of the key which would not reveal the vehicle he was seeking anyway. The action of the lock part of the key on already locked BMW 3 series is to turn the interior light on. Not visible in daylight.
  
  
• Continuity: As Rachel pulls out some of Jennings' clothes from the rucksack she takes to the hotel room, you can see there is a silver photo box on the bed. After she asks if he remembers her, she then opens the rucksack again and removes the silver photo box and places it back on the bed for a second time, saying it was for him.
  
  
• Continuity: During the motorcycle chase scene, one of the bike's headlights is shot out. In all subsequent shots, it is intact.
  
  
• Factual errors: When footage of the nuclear explosion is shown, the mushroom cloud appears, fully formed, immediately following the flash. Mushroom clouds, which are caused by debris being sucked into the powerful vacuum created by the blast, take several seconds to form.
  
  
• Factual errors: The final booby-trap of the coolant cylinder with the cartridge is implausible. Even if the 9mm bullet had been fired from a pistol or carbine, it is sincerely doubtful that it would penetrate the curved surface of a thick-walled or double-walled pressurized cylinder. In addition, since the bullet was tied down vertically, upon firing it would have traveled vertically, not horizontally.
  
  
• Continuity: When Michael saves Rachel from falling (both were hanging on plastic curtains) they are actually centimeters above the ground as seen in the next shot.
  
  
• Continuity: The Diamond ring that was stolen can later be seen when Jennings empties his "belongings" onto the bed, it disappears in the next shot.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the fight in the mall, when Jennings is kicked through a window, we see the envelope and it looks flat. Yet moments later, he takes out the round container of hairspray.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obvious stunt double when Jennings falls from the catwalk.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Stunt doubles obvious during fight between Michael and Jimmy.
  
  
• Plot holes: The envelope of Jennings's belongings supposedly consists only of ordinary, harmless items that wouldn't raise Allcom's suspicions, yet somehow this highly security-conscious company lets him keep his access pass, and a bullet.
  
  
• Factual errors: From the date on his first paycheck we know it is 2004 but the calendar board says it is Friday December 22. 22 December 2004 was a Wednesday.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the opening credits, when Michael is electronically disassembling the 3D screen, he drags a component with the pointer held in his left hand, but its image moves less than halfway.
  
  
• Factual errors: The "checkpoint" from where Michael's memory was supposed to be erased after finishing his first job is shown in a monitor as him walking with the box under his arm. However, he wouldn't have this image in his brain, but instead one from his own point of view.
  
  
• Plot holes: The newspaper that lines the bottom of the birdcage at the end of the movie is clean. It would be certain that the birds would have covered it with dropping by that time if no one was attending to them. The lottery tickets would have been discovered if anyone was maintaining the cage.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jennings is examining the Einstein stamps, there is a red line across Einstein's face from the post office seal, but when magnified, Einstein's face is clear.
  
  
• Continuity: When the secretary shows Michael the form for sending his envelope it is a DHL Waybill. The envelope was mailed using the US Postal Service, not DHL.
  
  
• Factual errors: The mechanism of action by which the machine is supposed to work is flat out impossible. The universe is too big to see all the way around it, even if it were curved, which it does not appear to be. And even if it were possible to see all the way around the universe, we would be looking billions of years into the past, not the future.
  
  
• Continuity: The ID card that Michael sends himself gets used twice in the movie - once to access the restricted area, second to access the machine. Both times the card (prop) is different from the originally shown on FBI surveillance, and other "envelope inventory" shots (the number of the card that appears first several times is 071486036043).
  
  
• Factual errors: The keycard Jennings uses has a barcode on it however he runs it through a magnetic strip reader.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: The camera crew is reflected in the magnifying glass several times throughout the movie.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Jennings and Shorty are meeting at the terminal the camera is reflected in the screen they are sitting next to.
  
  
• Factual errors: Shorty cuts the power at the terminal however the Pepsi cooler's lights are still on when Jennings throws the guy into it.
  
  
• Factual errors: In one shot the Metro train is four carriages long. However, in the shots where Jennings jams the signal circuits, the distance between signals is only long enough for one coach.
  
  
• Continuity: The wording on the bullet changes every time the camera is focused on it.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: The studio lights are reflected in the magnifying lens several times.
  
  
• Continuity: The Metro train number changes from 172 to 167 just before it hits Jennings.
  
  
• Factual errors: The rear-hinged half-doors on the Honda Element will not open unless the front doors have been opened first. However, when Jennings first arrives at the bank in an Element taxicab, he is seen getting out of the cab through a rear door even though the front doors remain closed.
  
  

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