Paycheck

Paycheck (2003)

36 mistakes - chronological order

(2 votes)

Visible crew/equipment: When Ben is on the motorcycle getting chased, and the camera is shooting him out of the cop's car, you can see the cameraman's refelection of himself sitting in the front seat.

Continuity mistake: When Michael Jennings first realizes that the stamps on his envelope are one of the items and he looks at the faces on the stamps through the magnifying glass lens, you see one of the eyes consisting of 9 black squares with each square being a newspaper. In the next scene, with Michael and Rachel at the school, the eye is now a round black eye with 6 white squares, with the first five being newspapers and the last being a picture of the time device screen.

Continuity mistake: When Michael and Shorty are having lunch, Michael watches the lottery numbers on the TV. He confirms the numbers on his fortune tag that has the phrase on the back, "If you only look where you cannot go, you will miss the riches below". The shot goes back to the TV, and then back to the fortune paper. If you look through the paper to the phrase on the back, it says something about a "wise man". Obviously a different piece of paper.

cplbilllynn

Other mistake: Several times, Jennings sees himself being shot on the catwalk, and each time there is a closeup on the flying bullet as it travels toward his chest. But in the following shots, as he falls to the ground, there is never any indication of a wound where the bullet should have hit. The time viewer is always perfectly accurate and bases its predictions on the determined actions of the present, not theories of what actions could take place in the future. There is no way the time viewer could simply be omitting this detail.

Phoenix

Continuity mistake: When Jennings is being "hung" by Ekhert's character, the fiber-optic cabling is wrapped around his neck. When he gets up to the catwalk and he pulls it off, the cabling has all of a sudden become a well spliced loop on the end of the cabling.

Continuity mistake: In the final fight in the greenhouse, towards the end, Michael picks up a Glock 17 off a dead or incapacitated guard. In the next scene that he emerges with the pistol, the scene involving the standoff between Michael and Rethrick, it has suddenly changed to a Browning BDM.

Continuity mistake: In the bike chase scene the bikes tires change from normal road tires to knobbly off road tires.

Factual error: In the scene where Mike is in the subway trying to short the controls with a paperclip; the circuit board appears to be an ATX computer motherboard. The cards he pulls out appear to be PCI cards. Also, the motherboard is missing RAM and has no power supply attached to it. Furthermore, why would sensitive electrical circuit boards be mounted in a locked metal box in a damp subway?

tavenger5

Factual error: When Ben finally uses the machine, we see a lot of flashes of events, some from the recent past (the items he sent himself), and some from the future (war). However, one shot of a future nuclear blast is actually a famous picture of a specific explosion from the '60s, I think (an above ground test on an island somewhere), just with a city superimposed at the front of the photo instead of some watery flat land. I've got a poster of that very explosion on my wall. Hardly a future event.

Continuity mistake: Seattle seems to have a great number of blue Dodge Neons. During the motorcycle chase scene, we see a blue Dodge neon sedan no less then 5 times.

Michael Westpy

Audio problem: When Jennings finally reaches the machine and tries to see his future, before fixing it, we see him activating the machine. There are seven clicks as he flips on the switches at his right hand, however, there are only six switches.

Garlonuss

Continuity mistake: When Michael gets on the at the transit station, the camera pans down the bus aisle. The thief is not in the scene. The camera pans back to Michael then back down the aisle. The thief is now sitting in his seat.

Factual error: The setting isn't right at all. When the shot of the Space Needle is shown, there aren't nearly enough tall buildings shown, and you should be able to see at least a little water somewhere.

Continuity mistake: Throughout most of the movie Michael is wearing a white dress shirt that no matter what he does never seems to get any dirt or markings on it whatsoever. (This mistake pertains to after he does the 3 year job).

Tobin OReilly

Shorty: C'mon, don't be mean to the one that does everything for you.

More quotes from Paycheck

Question: Ben Affleck first met Uma Thurman at a party just before he was offered and accepted the three year job. Surely he would have recognized her after having his memory wiped even if he could not remember any of the time they spent together.

Answer: He does recognize Rachel from the party as well as when he when he saw her at Allcom. The only things he doesn't remember are the last three years of his life since starting the project. So, while he does remember her, the three years they spent together while at Allcom are a total blank. This recognition is shown when he meets with Porter who helps him escape.

But later, when he is going through her stuff, he says he doesn't remember her. Also, if he did remember her, he would have known it wasn't her when the imposter was in the restaurant (also no need to have the imposter try to dress like her either).

Answer: Do you remember every person you've ever talked to at a party? Didn't think so. His memory isn't restored back to perfect condition - he's still had three years to forget about details at the party. He remembers things like the origins of the deal because it was important.

Nick N.

More questions & answers from Paycheck

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.