Goofs for
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

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• 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 6 feet in front of him. So, why was the delivery truck running so fast to begin with? Then, in the long shot after the driver moves on, he takes off at a very fast rate, as if there was no car stopped in front of him.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• Continuity: In the second scene of the film, Thomas Crown gets out of his chauffeured automobile to walk to the museum. He almost gets hit by a green delivery truck. From inside the truck's cab, looking down on Thomas Crown, we can see that there is a car roughly 9 feet in front of the truck. Then, in the next instant, Thomas Crown waves the truck onward, and the truck proceeds to drive forward as if there is no traffic whatsoever in front of it.
  
  
• 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.
  
  

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