Continuity mistake: In the beginning when Novalee and Willy Jack are leaving to go to California, Novalee asks Willy Jack to take a picture of her friends. When he takes the picture, she's almost entirely facing him. However, when the picture is on the visor on Novalee's side of the car, her back is completely turned away from him and all you see is her back and the back of her head. (00:01:40 - 00:03:05)
Continuity mistake: In the scenes at the beginning where Willy Jack is in the car his shirt changes 3 times before he's finally pulled over with the 14 year old girl. It's all one day. (00:14:00)
Suggested correction: This is not entirely unusual. A person might change their shirt, more than once, if the weather is making them sweat. Especially if the car does not have AC. Novalee said that Willy Jack bought the car very cheap, and there is a hole in the floor, so I would not be surprised if the AC was broken.
I second this. My husband owned a car that didn't have AC, and it was not unusual for him to change his shirt on hot days.
Factual error: When Novalee is locked inside Wal-mart during a storm she looks out the front. Water is streaming down the front doors. The problem with this is that the doors of the Wal-mart are very far under an awning and would never see that sort of rain. The awning is shown a minute or so before and is a standard Wal-mart feature. (00:16:45)
Continuity mistake: When Sally Fields visits Natalie Portman in the hospital she is smoking a cigarette. If you watch at one point she supposedly throws the cigarette down and steps on it but when the camera shoots back at her she has the cigarette in her hand. Then the cigarette goes from not being lit to being lit and Sally again throws it down and steps on it.
Suggested correction: What Sally Field actually does is flick ashes on the floor and rub them into the floor. She doesn't throw the full cigarette down until she and Novalee discuss moving in together. She throws the cigarette down a few moments before taking the five hundred dollars from Novalee.
Continuity mistake: Near the end of the film Forney leaves his group of fellow students to chase after Novalee. The group of students shifts to the left in the next scene when Novalee and Forney are talking.
Other mistake: The timing was way off from the couple visiting from midnight Mississippi, to the actual kidnapping, and she said they had visited last week.
