Continuity mistake: When Willy says "I don't know" to the judge's question about Nunally being present at the interrogation, Ryan Gosling changes position all of a sudden, from tucking his chin between thumb and fingers to having his knuckles against the side of his mouth. (00:49:45)
Continuity mistake: When Willy opens the box with the eggshells Crawford sent him to taunt him, the cardboard flaps have been properly spread out for the close-up instead of being partially up like they were before. In the same close-up, he also pulls out a broken bit that loses the straw that was covering it, but in the next shot featuring Ryan Gosling's face, a straw wrapped on top of the broken eggshell falls off it anyway. (00:56:10)
Continuity mistake: Lobruto asks Beachum, "You want it back?" after telling him the high stakes of staying committed to the case. Gosling nods, hand over his mouth in close-up. In the wider angle of the room, his hand is on his knee. (00:57:45)
Revealing mistake: Willy is poolside at Crawford's when Detective Flores tells him the negative outcome of the umpteenth search for the gun. Gosling is waiting for the news with his hands crossed behind his neck, his big wristwatch on display, showing that the filming happened around 11am, and it is colour filtered to make it look like it happened later in the day. (01:02:50)
Revealing mistake: Out of ideas, Willy rummages through Jennifer Crawford's belongings and finds an old copy of Dr. Seuss' "Oh, the Places You'll Go." It's a teal hardcover book with the front recognizable because of the cover picture. Later on, a sleepy Willy is surprised by the doctor as he reads the book to Jennifer. He closes it, and it has the splint on his right side, no cover picture. You don't get a good view of the other half of the book, but if he was reading it, he was then doing it while holding it upside down. (01:03:55 - 01:04:50)
Other mistake: Willy just rebuffed Nunally's offer of fabricating evidence. He listens to Nikki Gardner's phone call; he doesn't pick it up, it gets to his answering machine. After that, the answering machine tells him he has one unheard message (the 4:10 one from the hotel concierge), but it should be two: the hotel's and Nikki's. (01:13:20)
Continuity mistake: Beachum and Flores are looking at the security camera footage from Nov 10. Willy enhances the picture (the mouse pointer gets gigantic along with the picture, funnily enough), but when it cuts to a different angle, the image is zoomed out again, only to be zoomed in again a few seconds later when Willy angrily throws his bag across the room. Nobody touched the PowerBook during any of that. (01:13:45)
Continuity mistake: Crawford taunts Beachum, waking him up by his comatose wife's hospital bed. Beachum slides his left hand under the jacket he had draped over himself, but in the next shot, his hand is raised. (01:27:05)
Other mistake: One of the shots during the montage of Beachum driving to the hospital to try and stop the euthanasia is flipped; the writing on the desk is mirrored. It comes after Willy leaves Judge Gardner's yard and a close-up on Embeth Davidtz's face. (01:32:10)
Other mistake: When Beachum grabs the Nunally case file next to multitasking Flores, the date on the folder is November 5th, which is patently absurd considering the murder took place on the 10th, and the suicide the Monday after Thanksgiving. (01:37:35)
Continuity mistake: In Willy's flashback when he speaks to Crawford for the denouement, his SPH-a900 flip phone and Flores' swap position compared to how the actual scene went. Just look at the position of the three buttons; the buttons of Beachum's faced him originally, they face Flores when he grabs it by mistake in the flashback. (01:37:55 - 01:41:55)
Continuity mistake: When Willy rings Crawford's doorbell, notice a white control panel below the CCTV screen. Hopkins then answers the door in a different shot, with the panel missing. The panel was always there during his earlier scene with Nunally, and it is still there for the rest of the scene, missing again only in a later zoom-in on the monitor as Crawford checks on the prosecutor. Probably those were later reshoots. (01:39:25)
Continuity mistake: In the end of the film where Willy and Ted stand together in Ted's house, Ted says to Willy "See, you can't touch me, ever". The shot goes to Willy and you can see his finger off the trigger, yet in the close-up on the trigger you can see that Willy's finger is inside the trigger-guard and he pulls it out. (01:46:15)
Continuity mistake: When Crawford sees Willy out after telling him to get the eff out, Hopkins turns towards the door, fully lit. He then peeks out of the door, now showing a more dramatic shadow on it. (01:47:50)
Continuity mistake: In the glimpse of the last trial, the bailiff says, "All rise," as Judge Pincus walks in, and people behind the prosecution bench take the instruction all too zealously as they do it twice - in different ways. Check out the guy with a jacket on his arm next to the woman in red - in separate shots. (01:48:20)
Other mistake: In the end credits, the opera song is listed as "Ombra fedel anch'io." It's "fedele" with a closing E. While the apocope (elision) of the last vowel is perfectly acceptable in Italian, especially archaic literary Italian, the song (from "Idaspe," by famous castrato Farinelli's brother) is always listed with the final "e." (01:52:15)
Plot hole: The villain's plan can work and fool the judiciary system because of extraordinary coincidences out of his control. He needs to steal the gun of his wife's lover in broad daylight without employing any modicum of stealth; he needs said lover to be the particular negotiator assigned to that case. He then needs the two agents standing by the door to be unable to hear any part of the confession he spews out, and to be absolutely sure that the detective has no recording device or radio contact throughout the ordeal. Not just that, but the spry septuagenarian also switches guns with cat-like ability - Nunally left his gun by the open door, where the other two agents are waiting. So the other two policemen had to be deaf and blind for his plan to work. He does not even have any time to switch guns with Nunally from our perspective as viewers; for the tiny five seconds when he is off camera and out of Nunally's direct eyesight, he is taunting him while supposedly moving around the large entrance to grab the gun.
Other mistake: The Italian version redubs the antagonist as "Thomas" and "Tom," localizing the movie title to "The Thomas Crawford Affair," in an obvious attempt to capitalize on the fame of the cinema classic "The Thomas Crown Affair." However, end credits (and obviously the police report) still list Hopkins' character as Ted Crawford.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Plot hole: In this film, a murderer (Mr. Crowford) goes free after recanting his confession (alleging duress) and concealing the murder weapon. The film forgets the most damning evidence: The perp and the victim had been alone in a closed room from which witnesses had heard shots fired. The perp himself establishes that he had motives. He cannot go free without an astounding alibi.
