Goofs for
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) More at IMDbPro »

• Factual errors: When Banning has taken Crown's keys, and her people are making duplicates, a close-up is shown on the machine cutting the duplicate key. They are gliding the head across the grooves to cut the slug into the same shape. This is how many keys are duplicated, but not the Medeco high-security model that is shown in the movie. The Medecos are cut one groove at a time, because each groove can be angled in one of three positions.
  
  
• Continuity: When breakfast is served, Catherine's health drink starts as being dark green when served and then becomes a mint green when she drinks it.
  
  
• Factual errors: The titanium structure in Crown's briefcase would only hold the door if it were oriented vertically, instead of horizontally as shown.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: When Crown is racing on his yacht, we see him grinding on a self-tailing winch that does not have a line running around the winch or through the tailer. In effect, he is doing absolutely nothing while looking very busy.
  
  
• Continuity: When Thomas steals the Monet in the first theft, he puts the painting with wooden canvas stretcher into his briefcase and folds it closed. When he opens the briefcase later, the canvas stretcher is not broken.
  
  
• Factual errors: The picture Crown steals is not the painting "Impression, Soleil Levant" that gave impressionism its name, but a picture of Venice, painted about 30 years later.
  
  
• Continuity: When Crown walks in front of the delivery truck, the shot from the cab clearly shows that a car is stopped 9 feet in front of the truck. So, why was the delivery truck traveling so fast to begin with? Then, in the long shot after the driver moves on, he accelerates at a high rate, as if there was no car stopped in front of him. If there is a traffic-jam, the car would not have traveled far at all during that time.
  
  
• Continuity: When the thieves first cut a hole in the wall with a cutting torch, the piece they cut out pivots to the viewer's left. In the next shot, it pivots towards the floor and in the third shot it pivots to the right.
  
  
• Factual errors: Banning is impressed that Crown got "from Glasgow to Oxford on a boxing scholorship". UK universities do not offer sporting scholarships.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The team of agents that inspect Crown's house emerge from a truck that displays the false company name "Aladdin Cleaning Services". However, the company name is misspelled on the agents' jackets, reading "Alladin".
  
  
• Continuity: During the love scene, the paperback book "High Fidelity" (easily recognizable with its neon green/orange cover) is seen in different locations.
  
  
• Continuity: The promotional banners hanging outside the museum change throughout the movie even though the events depicted take place over only a week or so, a result of the filmmakers taking exterior shots over a relatively long period of time.
  
  
• Continuity: During the glider scenes, there's one point where Crown motions for Banning to look to her left but both actors seem to turn their heads to their right. Actually, because of the size constraints of the cockpit, all the interior shots were filmed using a mirror with the camera mounted at an angle. Since the camera sees a mirror image, the actors look to their left out of natural instinct, but appear to look to their right.
  
  
• Continuity: When Crown is racing his yacht, the sky turns from dark and stormy to sunny and back again from one shot to the next.
  
  
• Continuity: Just before Crown steals the painting, he tells the guard (looking at his watch) that it's quarter to five. But when Catherine and Michael are reviewing the security tape, the tape notes "the time of the robbery" as 5:54.
  
  
• Continuity: The coffee cup Catherine is sipping from as she watches Crown leave the police station changes from standard NYC "Greek-style," to plain, back to "Greek-style" between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: On the golf course, Crown bets on his ability to throw the ball by half-burying it into the sand. Yet on he next shot the ball is not buried, but just lying on the ground.
  
  
• Continuity: Towards end of movie when Catherine runs to heliport to meet Thomas, man on pier is holding regular briefcase. When Catherine approaches him he hands her very large case holding painting Thomas stole for her.
  
  
• Continuity: After Thomas Crown ducks under the descending barriers to steal the Monet, as he is running towards the painting he pulls out a single white latex glove from his pocket and puts it on his hand. He uses this hand to touch the frame which he leaves behind. Once he has put the painting in the briefcase the glove has disappeared without him taking it off.
  
  
• Continuity: Catherine's health drink during breakfast appears on the table only 3/4 full. When she drinks it, the drink is almost to the top of the glass.
  
  
• Factual errors: Crown serves "Krug Grande Cuvee 1981". However, Grande Cuvee is a non-vintage blend so this is an oxymoron.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Catherine Banning is from Lima, Ohio. Thomas Crown mispronounces the name as LEE-ma. It's actually LIE-ma.
  
  
• Plot holes: Once the police had identified Crown as a suspect, they could have easily tied him to the theft. They could have taken his fingerprints from the briefcase that stopped the gate (he was not wearing gloves during that scene), and checked them against the prints he left on the paper he signed after identifying one of the criminals.
  
  
• Continuity: Banning’s towel, that she holds around her neck, goes from straight to twisted in following scenes.
  
  
• Factual errors: Scene where key is being cut. Even if this type key was cut in this fashion, it would not produce sparks. With the exception of old steel skeleton keys, which were usually molded, or stamped; key blanks are almost always made of brass, although a few are aluminum. Neither brass, nor aluminum, will produce sparks when ground, cut, drilled, or filed.
  
  
• Plot holes: While looking at the thermal tape the technician says that the whole screen is whited out because it needs a ten degree difference in temperature to discern between humans and walls. If this is true, you would not be able to see the benches and paintings in the thermal video, because they would not have a 10 degree temperature difference from the walls either.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The scene where hundreds of men in bowler-hats cause confusion, carrying with them copies of a painting depicting a business man with an apple obstructing his face, Michael McCann incorrectly calls the painting the Man in the Bowler Hat, a painting by René Magritte. The painting is in-fact The Son of Man, a similar painting by the same artist.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: After the initial theft, as Thomas leaves the Museum and climbs into a very convenient cab, you can see a crew member in coveralls on a ledge on the building diagonally across 5th Avenue.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Catherine Banning, whilst picking holes in the investigating detectives theory, says that "the thieves prepared a load, conservatively, 1,000 lbs of paintings and 800lbs of men that we know about in a chopper with a 600lbs useful load", suggesting that this could never happen.The chopper is then correctly described as a Sikorsky S-76. However, there are four men on the job in total (800lbs), plus the load which is stated to weigh the equivalent of five men (1,000lbs). Add the helicopter pilot and you have the equivalent weight therefore of 10 men. Yet the S76 is a 12 man helicopter so should easily cope with this much weight. Catherine's figure refers to the baggage compartment capacity. They'd simply put the pictures inside the aircraft with the passengers.
  
  
• Continuity: When Thomas "folds" the painting into the briefcase in the first theft he takes it out of the briefcase at his home. He then places it on the hidden shelf with rigid sides. If it had been folded in the briefcase the painting's backside frame would have been broken as well as the painting itself would have cracked. And he didn't have time to fix the canvas or the frame if it had been folded.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Having established from the security cameras that someone (Mr. Crown) hid a briefcase under the bench in front of the painting to assist in the robbery, it's curious that the security staff never thinks to wind the tape back far enough to see who put it there. However, under thermal imaging it's impossible to make out people's features, so backing up the video would not have identified Crown.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Mr. Crown incorrectly quotes the Leonard Cohen song 'The Stranger Song' - he says "It's sad to see another tired man lay down his hand and quit the holy game of poker" when the actual words are "You hate to watch another tired man lay down his hand like he was giving up the holy game of poker".
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The "thieves" that are to steal the paintings in the "impressionist"-part of the museum is said to be Romanian, but when Catherine Banning interrogates one of them, they speak German to each other.
  
  

• Plot holes: SPOILER: When Crown goes in to get the Monet, he retrieves the morning briefcase from under the bench, opens it showing it to be empty, and then folds the painting up in it. Later, Banning realizes the briefcase must have been a heater, apparently hot enough to warm a LARGE room by about 10 degrees in less than an hour (from the time the Europeans cut the A/C until they were chased out by the real guard) with no blower to circulate air around it. Not only would the briefcase have been hot enough to sear flesh - it would have been packed solid with batteries or something else to store energy & create heat.
  
  
• Factual errors: SPOILER: We learn from Dennis Leary's character that the thieves Thomas Crown hired are from Romania while he is speaking to Rene Russo's character at the police station. However, earlier in the movie when they are getting ready to set the heist into action and are discussing details with each other in the museum basement, they are actually speaking badly accented Polish.
  
  

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