Best thriller movie plot holes of 2007

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Spider-Man 3 picture

Plot hole: In this movie Goblin was able to sneak up on Peter. But in the previous movies Peter was able to sense danger from quite a distance away; Green Goblin from a few blocks and the train barricade from over a mile.

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Premonition picture

Plot hole: When Bridgette ran through the glass and Linda and Jim were at the hospital Jim tells Linda he called her mom and told her what happened and she was coming to stay over the next day. Yet apparently her mom forgot what happened because she had her committed because Linda didn't remember what happened to Bridgette's face. Also, Bridgette was like 9. How come no-one just asked her what happened?

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Live Free or Die Hard picture

Plot hole: Since they took down the telephone network, it would have been impossible for Justin Long to even be speaking to the emergency response woman for the car, much less send a signal to start the car up.

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Suggested correction: Is it possible this is a satellite phone call akin to Onstar?

manthabeat

No, the BMW system requires a cell signal to work, which was taken down earlier in the movie.

BaconIsMyBFF

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Flight of Fury picture

Plot hole: The admiral receives the news of the stolen aircraft from the general over an open radio, with umpteen enlisted personnel within earshot. However, when the air group commander asks what the OP is about, the admiral tells him that it is on a need-to-know basis.

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National Treasure: Book of Secrets picture

Plot hole: The idea that Ben Gates had to run away despite the President's being okay with the kidnapping does not make sense. The President could simply pardon him if necessary. However, when he ran away, he would likely be committing other crimes (fleeing and eluding police, reckless driving, etc.) that would not be federal crimes and so would not be pardonable.

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Suggested correction: That's basically what he did at the end. Even though the President was OK with Ben "kidnapping" him, if Ben didn't find the lost city of gold he would have been arrested and charged for kidnapping the President (amongst other charges). However, because Ben was able to find the city the President gave him and his crew a full pardon and explained that it was a misunderstanding.

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War (2007)

War picture

Plot hole: Spoiler! We find out that "Rogue" is actually Tom Lone, who killed the real Rogue and destroyed his face to prevent identification, then had plastic surgery and went underground to get revenge. But how is the body never identified? Lone was a cop, they'd have blood type, DNA etc. on file, which would have proved the body wasn't his.

Jon Sandys

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Resident Evil: Extinction picture

Plot hole: When the survivors break into the Umbrella compound, Alice helps load survivors onto the helicopter. The helicopter portrayed has a max occupancy of 6, and somehow Alice manages to squeeze 20+ survivors onto the helicopter, with no problems whatsoever. (01:11:05)

Razvaluha

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Wrong Turn 2: Dead End picture

Plot hole: If Nina was hiding where she couldn't see the truck, how did she know that Mara was tied to the hood of it?

sunfox35

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Ocean's Thirteen picture

Plot hole: To rig blackjack card shuffling machines to make the dealer bust and everyone else get 20 or 21, its success would depend entirely on knowing the exact number of people at the table at that time. Perhaps the filmmaker is assuming all seats at the high-stakes blackjack tables would always be filled during a "soft" opening, but that seems extremely unlikely.

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Disturbia picture

Plot hole: Turner locks himself and Ashley in her car so he can confront her. However after his speech, Turner somehow manages to open the door without unlocking it.

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Suggested correction: It is accurate that Turner can open the door without unlocking it, all modern cars can be opened from the inside whether the door is locked or not. Ashley never actually tries to open the door, she reaches for the handle and stops once Turner locks the door. Since the movie never actually shows Ashley try to open the door, this doesn't count as a plot hole. If anything this is a character mistake, Ashley should be well aware that she can't be "locked in" a car that new.

BaconIsMyBFF

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28 Weeks Later picture

Plot hole: There is no way Don could have met his children at the underground station at the end of the film, with no way of knowing where they were going, and with no means of transport to get there that quickly.

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White Noise 2: The Light picture

Plot hole: After Abe is shot, an ambulance shows up, throws Sherry in the back and leaves. There is no way that the paramedics would leave without first speaking to the police on site, making sure that no one else there needed medical help and confirming Abe was dead. I've ridden with an ambulance 4 or 5 times and they never stay at a scene less than 15-20 minutes.

Grumpy Scot

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Hostel: Part II picture

Plot hole: When Whitney leaves her train carriage to go and look for a policeman, the 3 drunk sleazy Italian guys are at most five metres away and have clear visibility of the corridor. It is unrealistic how they would not have been able to see her.

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Saw IV picture

Plot hole: Rigg plays the woman's tape without rewinding it and it starts at the start of the tape. The woman would have listened to the tape to know the knife was under the TV. But why would she rewind the tape to the beginning after? (00:27:00)

Ssiscool

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The Bourne Ultimatum picture

Plot hole: Landy uses the code 4/15/71 to point Bourne to the training site address. But how does he know it is on the East side?

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Shooter picture

Plot hole: When Agent Memphis is about to be executed they ask him if he needs to "Piss" so as to not have government-used drugs in his system before he commits suicide. They even mention writing a suicide note for him. He's had seven shades beaten out of him though and was kidnapped whilst on the phone, mid-conversation and with possible witnesses. Surely if it wasn't the first time they had done this then they would have taken more care to make sure it wasn't a complete fake-out.

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Fracture picture

Plot hole: *SPOILER* Toward the end of the movie, Ryan Gosling goes to Hopkins' house where Hopkins is tricked into not only confessing again, but giving Gosling the murder weapon, after they are back in court and Gosling is the acting prosecutor. This would be a conflict of interest due to the fact that Gosling is a witness.

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Suggested correction: First, the gun that Beachum took from Crowford's house was not the murder weapon. It was Crowford's unfired gun. He only took it out of the fear of his life. Second, Beachum entered Crowford's house with police supervision. If he plays it by the book, Crowford's confession is valid. In that case, supervising officers will stand witness, along with a recording confirming their testimony. Third, Beachum doesn't need the confession anymore. He was amply clear on that matter.

FleetCommand

You are on point for the corrections, but they involve just mostly context/details, don't they? The text of the entry should be polished a little, but the core issue is valid, I think; Beachum would never be the acting prosecutor in a case when he is the key witness as well. If it's a case for the "murder," he has to be on the stand for practically everything; even if we exclude him from the confession to the shooting, as you suggest (and even if it should never be litigated to begin with), he still is integral to the pulling the plug phase (he was literally there as it happened and did everything to prevent it). We can just assume that he will be forced to hand the prosecuting role over to someone else later, and he was just there for 5 minutes to gloat before the movie credits run, but it's kind of funny.

Sammo

Beachum doesn't have to testify, neither for the confession part nor for the "pulling of the plug." I've already covered the former. For the latter, the fact that the woman is now dead is enough. If necessary, the attending doctors could testify that the woman "would have outlived all of them."

FleetCommand

Beachum received the confession under "police supervision," as you called it, which still involved him being the only person in the house with the defendant. You mentioned a recording in the earlier comment; are we just to assume he took one, or is there a visual hint I missed? He was also the person who fought for the court order to the point of being physically tackled in front of the victim's deathbed—so doctors and security staff defiant of such an order would be on trial too, I suppose? Since, again, this 'murder' was not even committed by Crawford. So how would Beachum not be a crucial witness, often the only witness to cover that part of the story?

Sammo

OK. You want to assume Crawford's confession was for the viewer's benefit entirely, and there was no wiretapping? Fine. The police have the gun now, hence proof of the first actus reus. Hospital staff tackled Beachum, but Crawford can't pin the murder on them when he has two counts of actus reus and twice demonstrated mens rea. Courts always hear such nonsense as "I didn't kill him; I shot him. The bullet and the fall killed him" (Collateral, 2006). Shooting someone is actus reus.

FleetCommand

I am sure you are right on the Latin, especially since it's hard to imagine the trial going the way it went the first time around to begin with, and I am not getting into the rabbit hole of what exactly could legally be relitigated. But still and again, what does this have to do with the original point being made, that some other guy would be the one leading the trial, since Beachum would be realistically called in as a witness, even a hostile one? I mean, I honestly didn't think it would be much of a point of contention; it's just something there for the audience. I followed the lead about the 'witness' part the OP ended on, but seriously, a conflict of interest would be invoked just because of all the personal first-hand, hands-on involvement in the facts.

Sammo

I explicitly told you what happens if the court struck the confession from the record. (The gun happens.) And yet, here you are, saying "Beachum would be realistically called in as a witness"! This correction is turning into a confrontation. Also, don't conflate "involvement" with "conflict of interest." The latter means someone has different de facto and de jure motives. Beachum always had one motive: to convict Crawford.

FleetCommand

Far from me to be confrontational, and sorry if I came across that way. I guess I simply don't get it; it happens. Specifically, if I stated again the point about the witness, it wasn't because I was blindly disregarding what you said (check the words immediately after the ones you quoted), but it's pointless to delve further into something that goes beyond the original mistake. You just directly addressed the meaning of conflict of interest, which was what the OP talked about. I simply felt the initial correction posted was not doing that; now it does, and I am not disputing your knowledge on the topic, especially not having any of my own. Cheers.

Sammo

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Hitman picture Hitman mistake picture

Plot hole: In the scene where 47 swings out of the hotel window, we see the booby trap starting to explode as he's still in the room. Then in the shot from outside, the explosion extends out the window - so how on Earth did he outrun it and get out completely unscathed?

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Suggested correction: He escaped before the debris from the explosion reached him. If you watch in slow motion, you can see that he was ahead of the debris whilst in the room, then below it when out of the window. And even if he had been hit by some, it wouldn't have been a plot hole, unless he was killed or seriously injured.

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1408 picture

Plot hole: Time inside room 1408 moves differently than time outside it, as evidenced by the fact that Mike spends weeks or even months in what he thinks is his home in California, while in reality he is still "in" the room. The Hotel's manager states that no one has ever lasted more than an hour inside 1408. He goes on to cite many examples where the guests died after just a few minutes. No previously sane individual commits suicide after spending a few minutes in an eerie room, obviously, so the only explanation is the one offered by the "receptionist" over the phone, albeit in fewer words: guests in room 1408, while experiencing their own time frame inside the room, are in fact reliving the same hour over and over according to the rest of the world's time frame. This being the case, Mike's ex-wife should not have showed up at the climax since Mike's hour had just started over, undoing the call he placed to her earlier in the film but later in the hour. Whether or not the film makers intended this inference is irrelevant as the movie plainly lays out these conditions and must therefore adhere to them lest a plot hole be created. [This keeps being debated back and forth - ultimately there's not going to be any absolute resolution, so it's being locked down as a mistake and viewers will just have to make up their own minds - Jon.]

Phixius

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Sleuth picture

Plot hole: No matter how impressionable Milo can be, if Andrew shot him with a blank, the way he flies off his feet and onto the wall is unexplainable; he does not just faint, he catapults himself back, at distance, not even in a muscle spasm. (00:35:00)

Sammo

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