Factual error: Harry is a LAPD SWAT team member. SWAT trains and trains and trains, then exercises and trains some more. Harry would not be investigating the case as shown when he asked to see the files for the last 10 years. If he was on desk duty for his injury, yes, he could be working the investigation. But soon after, he was on the entry team at Payne's house. That would have required more prep work by the SWAT team that Harry would have had to be doing instead of looking through the files.
Factual error: In the bus freeway gap jump, a second after driving off the freeway edge, the bus has fallen beneath that edge level of the freeway. It would be impossible for it to have regained altitude to be above the freeway on the other side. It would have hit at best halfway between the wheels of the bus, if at all.
Factual error: As long as gravity is a constant, there is no physical way that the bus (traveling at 68 mph) could possibly jump the level, 50-foot horizontal gap in the freeway. Even at triple or quadruple that speed, the bus would invariably drop vertically by as much as a meter, with catastrophic results.
Revealing mistake: Before Jack rips the door off the Jaguar, he speeds ahead of the bus and then opens the driver's door at highway speed. At 50 MPH there would be a lot of air resistance, yet Jack opens the door effortlessly.
Other mistake: As Traven is about to slide under the bus on the small trolley, you can see his feet are only just going to get under the bus. Cut to a camera shot from the side, and now the front of the bus is significantly higher.
Continuity mistake: When Jack and Harry are pulling people out of the elevator there are two men offering to help the stubborn lady out of the elevator. 2 seconds later there is only one man jumping to get out. (00:15:50)
Audio problem: When Jack is under the bus trying to diffuse the bomb and the piece of rubber hits him he says "F*ck Me" but his lips don't move. (01:14:30)
Continuity mistake: When Keanu Reeves is on the payphone with Dennis Hopper, his lips appear increasingly redder throughout the scene. (00:28:00)
Continuity mistake: When Jack is on the bus and is coming up to the construction site, if you look out of the bus to the left the scenery changes, from having grass on the left before the construction site, to having dirt between shots. (00:49:30)
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.
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.
Visible crew/equipment: After Tuneman's Jaguar hits the water barrels, a film crew's truck can be seen out the bus's rear window just before the shot cuts away. (00:40:05)
Visible crew/equipment: When Harry's colleague hands him a printout of Howard Payne's newspaper article, a boom mic reflection is visible on the window right above the bomb schematic diagram. (01:15:15)
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 its 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, it's 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.
