The Italian Job

Factual error: In the flashback scene of Lyle when his roommate steals the Napster code, the caption says Northeast University - 1999. The computer Lyle is sleeping at is running Windows XP, which was not commercially available at the time. (00:29:30)

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Suggested correction: Actually that is not Win XP on Lyle's computer, based upon the Dell XPS D233 shown on his right, Win NT4 SP2 is what is running on the display. I had a similar D266 running NT4 SP3 back in 98.

Factual error: When Mark Wahlberg is trying to evade the helicopter, he runs into a dead end made up of two buses attached to a tow truck. The problem is that they're MUNI buses, and MUNI only runs in the San Francisco bay area, so these would be no where in the Los Angeles area.

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Suggested correction: The Muni bus is not exclusive to San Fran. I lived north of Halifax NS, and there were 18 GMC silverside MUNI buses.

"Muni" buses aren't a brand or model. Muni is short for San Francisco Municipal Railway, which is a transit service owned by the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority. The SFMTA does not operate anywhere else in California, and certainly not in a foreign country. Los Angeles is served by Metro, not Muni.

Bishop73

Other mistake: In the opening boat chase in Venice, the safe is supposedly represented by a metal pipe structure covered by cloth. But it doesn't flap or wave in the wind at all. On the contrary it has completely straight sides. It is quite clear that there must be a box underneath. (00:10:00)

Jacob La Cour

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Suggested correction: It may seem like that, in actuality there is a military grade fabric Lycra-Kevline that does not buckle or wave like ordinary fabrics.

This correction seems to have been made without watching the scene and understanding the mistake. Plus I think they meant to say "Kevlar." But, whatever material they're thinking of wouldn't behave like a solid piece of wood by not moving in the wind. And, the material wouldn't magically make rounded corners straight edged.

Bishop73

Agreed. The cloth in the film has perfectly crisp uniform edges. The steel poles are rounded whereas the 'safe' isn't.

Ssiscool

Factual error: When Steve is measuring the position of the safe, 14' 8" is depicted as 14.8 and 8' 5" is shown as 8.5. This is completely wrong. (00:08:50)

throcko

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Suggested correction: They wrote it that way because they wanted to. They do not have to write it as 8'5." Short forming would be 8.5 since they know what scale they are using to measure with.

Factual error: During the escape at the end of the movie, when the Minis come out of the pipe and drop down into the basin of the LA River they fall nose first into the pavement. However, with approximately 9 million dollars worth of gold in the trunks of the cars, they would be back heavy, not front heavy, and fall more evenly or even back first. It's been suggested that Wrench could have put a ton of weight up front to balance the cars properly, but the amount of gold carried in those special boxes loaded into the back end of the very short wheelbase Minis could not be balanced even by the legendary Wrench without severely re-engineering the vehicle. If that was possible, the handling of the unladen Mini would be woeful, and the chase scene BEFORE the subway gold heist would be impossible. The Minis would have fallen like bricks nose-first onto the subway track when jumping from the platform.

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Suggested correction: I have spoken with an expert in vehicle dynamics and physics, and he said that the falling of the vehicles is absolutely correct. He has seen the movie and finds nothing wrong with the scene. The front of the car starts falling first, and therefore will land first. The cars would have to fall a much greater distance for the weight to take over and cause the back of the car to drop and hit first - it would have to have fallen perhaps as much as 25-30 feet. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but in reality it was real as presented.

Sorry, your expert must have been a friend of the stunt coordinator. It was the worst car stunt mistake of all time and why they never balanced the cars and reshot the scene is anybody's guess.

Of course the front end starts to fall first, that's the point of the mistake, it should be backend heavy. If you watch the scene, it's clear there's a ramp at the end of the tube (whether intentionally done by the characters or for stunt purposes). When the cars hit the ramp, they fly up so that the front end is up in the air above the back end. Then the cars fall front end first, fairly quickly, that if even if they fell from higher up, the back end would never fall faster than the front.

Bishop73

Factual error: The safe at the end is a very high end model with a glass relocker if you break the pane. However, in this type of safe, as an extra security measure, the glass is a small pane put somewhere randomly in the door by the safe door assembler, not one large pane as depicted in the movie.

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Suggested correction: The glass relocker is located in an area that is vulnerable to attack. In this case, the entire area around the dial is vulnerable to attack as a drill would allow access to the inner mechanism. It would not make sense to be in a random spot as you could figure out where the glass is with special depth gauge and acoustic devices.

Factual error: When Charlie hands off the case of gold at the end, he easily spins it around as if it's empty. Bars of gold aren't light by any means.

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Suggested correction: When they put the gold into the Minis, we only see silver metal boxes in the trunks, not the black one Charlie hands over to the Ukrainian. Also the time span between getting on the train and the confrontation with Steve was too short to put the barrels into the black box. It's more likely that the box is full of money and was prepared before the Minis entered the subway system.

Not likely. Gold would be worth more than cash in that box. And gold would make more sense as then they don't have to carry cash and take up space in the minis.

Ssiscool

Character mistake: When Charlie is calling out the brick count to Napster from the subway, he describes it as being "13 across, 4 high, 4 deep". The bricks appear to be 2 deep in the safe (13x4x2), so he could just be lumping two shelves together, which works (13x4x4 = 13x4x2x2). The problem is that when the camera pans down there are 3 shelves in the safe. This means that there are more than the 208 bricks that Napster announces. (01:33:40)

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Left Ear: We're in Italy. Speak English.

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Trivia: Shawn Fanning plays himself in the flashback scene where Lyle describes how Fanning stole the Napster code from him while the two of them roomed together in college.

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Question: When Charlie and Steve have their discussion about the gold and Charlie punches Steve in the face, Charlie takes several bills out of his pocket, puts them on the table, then leaves. What does he put money on the table for? It's not like he broke anything with his punch, and surely not to pay for Stella's meal, and especially not for Steve's meal either.

Answer: Actually, it almost certainly is to pay for Stella's meal. It's a point of principle - they don't owe Steve anything, so they won't even let him pay for the meal that she ate. He's the one who owes them, big time - paying for the meal makes the point that there's no debt of any kind going the other way.

Tailkinker

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