Continuity mistake: When the bus jumps over the gap in the freeway, when they take off, Jack shields Annie with his own body, but when it shows an exterior shot of the bus when they have landed, Jack is gone, then he comes back again in a different shot.
Continuity mistake: After the first bus blows up, Jack hears the phone ringing. It is a two phone stand. When Jack first reaches for the phone to answer it you can see he answers the phone on the right hand side. To the right of the phone you can only see trees to the right side. In every scene after that, he is on the left hand side phone.
Plot hole: Payne's finger prints would've been all over the elevator, on his shotgun, and near the area where he killed the security guard as he was never shown wearing gloves. Since he was a former police officer, I would assume his prints would've been on file with the FBI and in a multitude of databases. You would think they would've been able to identify him much earlier in the movie than they did by running the prints through all databases of finger prints.
Suggested correction: IAFIS, the FBI fingerprint database, wasn't implemented until 1999. At the time this film was released, the LA police would have to individually run any prints found through the databases they wanted to search. Essentially, they would have to know beforehand that Howard Payne was a former Atlanta police officer or have made a wild guess.
Factual error: The bomber wants his money by 11 am. The sun should be almost directly overhead. Why then are there late afternoon-early evening shadows at the end of the film?
Continuity mistake: When Jack and Annie arrive in the ambulance, as Jack leaves the ambulance he closes the side door. However, when Annie gets bored and gets up to leave the ambulance via the same exit that Jack did earlier, that door is now open.
Continuity mistake: Traven drives at high speed down the hard shoulder of the freeway to get to the bus to avoid the big traffic jam. When Traven cannot get on the bus, the black Jaguar XJS is now close at hand, which would have been impossible - it was way back in the traffic and couldn't have got to him that quickly.
Continuity mistake: When Annie swerves to avoid the schoolteacher and the kids, in the previous shot of the kids and the schoolteacher, they have already stepped out onto the road and are crossing, yet when the camera cuts to a view looking out the bus the schoolteacher and the kids are just stepping off the curb and walking across. (00:48:50)
Continuity mistake: When Howard Payne gets off the elevator with Harry held hostage, Jack walks off the elevator and there is a light on the wall that Jack passes twice and/or turns the small corner twice. (00:21:10)
Revealing mistake: The Boeing 707 freighter that gets blown up by the bus bomb is obviously a "scrapped" plane (A plane that has lived out it's usefulness and is being readied to be scrapped). One good way of telling this is the plane's exterior shows heavy weathering wear from being stored a long time. But someone told me the way it looks could also be a hasty paint job using ordinary house paint. Either way, still something to look for.
Plot hole: The police thought they could catch the bomber at the ransom drop because he did not know that the bus had exploded. However, the exploding bus would have created a huge plume of smoke that would have been reported by the media. (01:30:00)
Suggested correction: The news reporters at the airport had been blocked by the Police from reporting. Reporters that weren't at the airport would see a cloud of smoke but wouldn't know what was causing it.
Yes, but the reporters would still report it, and the bomber would know what had caused it.
Continuity mistake: When Jack has caught up to the bus on the freeway then asks the driver to open up, the driver starts driving off, and Jack tries to catch it but fails. When he is standing on the freeway, look behind him, the red car with its passenger window down is driving past him, but in the following shot the red car is there again swerving to avoid him. (00:33:30)
Revealing mistake: At the beginning, when they're talking about "shoot the hostage," the angle of Keanu Reeves is out of focus for a good five seconds. It drifts into focus.
Visible crew/equipment: The camera operator and camera are visible reflected in Tuneman's sunglasses. It's especially evident right before he crashes into the water barrels.
Revealing mistake: When the bus jumps the gap and comes into land, you can see there are no passengers, not even dummies.
Continuity mistake: In the cafe, Jack shouts to Bob "Have a good one" and holds his arm out with his coffee in his hand. When the shot changes and Jack is turning back to the counter, his coffee has swapped hands. (00:26:20)
Audio problem: Right before they get off on the first exit to city streets, there's a shot of one of the passengers (Helen) who makes a distressed moaning noise. Her moan has an odd noticeable echo that is very out of place.
Revealing mistake: In the elevator, Payne grabs Detective Temple by his nose holes, but it's very obvious that Payne is not grabbing his nose and Temple is pushing himself sideways and upwards with his left arm.
Revealing mistake: When Howard shoots the subway driver near the end, we see the driver collapse and die. Where did the damage from the bullets go? There's not much in the way of bullet holes or broken glass. Certainly an automatic weapon would've produced some damage.
Continuity mistake: After Jack discovers the camera, we see what the camera is seeing in Howard's apartment on the screen. Where is Jack? He was just standing next to Annie. He should be front and center in the shot but he is nowhere to be found. The shot is wide enough that even if he was leaning out the door we'd still see him. When we see the monitor again later, he is there.
