Goofs for
Speed (1994/I) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: Extra beep of elevator passing a floor.
  
  
• Continuity: In one of the quick scenes of the elevator falling, you see that there's no one in the elevator, through a hole in the floor. However, in the next shot the elevator is overcrowded with people again.
  
  
• Continuity: The windshield on Tunemans' car is wet when it shows him upclose. However it was a sunny day and he had not hit the yellow barrels of water on the freeway. He doesn't hit them until a few scenes later.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: When the elderly woman refuses to be helped out of the elevator that is about to drop twenty floors, the floor outside the elevator can be seen through a hole in the bottom left hand corner of the elevator, revealing the fact that it is only one or, at most, two floors up.
  
  
• Continuity: After the elevator starts from floor 46, we see it from below; the motion of its counterweight, in the foreground, lets us easily see that the speed is somewhat more than one floor per second. The next shot is inside the elevator, where the floor indicator is changing at about half that rate, slower than one floor per second.
  
  
• Continuity: As Jack and Harry rush onto the roof, a third arm and gun are briefly visible to the right. This is the arm of a third SWAT team member who has otherwise been completely deleted from the scene and who, as far as the viewer is concerned, isn't there.
  
  
• Continuity: The elevator is at or below floor 41 when the first bomb explodes. In a view from above, we see it fall about 12 floors, without sparks. We then see the emergency brakes engage, with lots of sparks. But then an interior shot then shows the elevator passing 35, and indeed, after sliding past several more floors it stops between 29 and 30.
  
  
• Factual errors: Elevators' emergency brakes must engage faster than that, otherwise they would be useless if the car fell when nearer the base of the shaft.
  
  
• Continuity: When the passengers are being rescued as the crane that pulls off the roof is wedged near the top of the elevator shaft, the elevator is at floor 23. The roof access is at 53, so there are about 30 floors of cable extended from the crane. But when crane and elevator fall together, as seen inside the elevator shaft, they are only about 15 floors apart, and the cable is only a little bit slack.
  
  
• Continuity: Before Jack and Harry get to Payne's elevator, it's at floor 20. But just Payne keys in 46 as his next destination, his indicator shows 28.
  
  
• Continuity: Payne picks 46 because, as we see, it's the top floor and Jack will have to get off the roof or be crushed. But a little later, we see from a label on the elevator monitor board that the other police are watching that this elevator's top floor is 52.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The chain pulling the first exploding bus is clearly visible.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the bus is driving by itself heading towards the plane at the airport, there are cables pulling the bus into the plane. Yet when the bus first plunges into the plane, the cables are gone.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In one of the scenes in the bus, a camera man is visible in the convex mirror of the rear doors stairwell.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Just before the bus drives into the courier plane at the end, there is a cable visible on the left of the screen.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Camera visible strapped to the side of the bus when it lands back down off two wheels, visible just after hitting the cop car in the way.
  
  
• Factual errors: A bus jumping a gap in an unfinished freeway would nosedive, not jump up and soar across to the other side. Director Jan de Bont has admitted getting around this by having the bus drive up a ramp.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the front door of the house explodes, a wire is clearly visible pulling the cop that is "blown back" by the force of the explosion.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: Jack checks his watch, but it is showing the alarm time.
  
  
• Continuity: The state of repair of the bus door that Jack punches.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Jack and Annie leave the bus, small wheels are visible on the bottom of the trap door they are riding on.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack slams on the brakes to rip the Jaguar's door off against the bus, the Ford Taurus just behind them changes color from light blue to dark green.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Camera visible strapped to the side of the bus as it leaves the highway.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Reflected in the bus door as Jack runs along side it.
  
  
• Continuity: When Annie is running for the bus, she passes notice boards as such, yet when it cuts to a side shot of Annie at the door to the bus, the massive notice boards have suddenly disappeared and all it is now is bushes and gardens
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning of the movie after Jack has hooked up the crane from outside to the lift, there is a shot of the crane outside, and the line going through the vent. If you look closely there is a pipe in front of the vent, yet when the crane goes through the vent, the pipe has vanished.
  
  
• Continuity: When the bus is driving by itself, it appears to be driving through a hangar. When the bus enters the hangar, the hangar door is fully open. But when the bus exits the hangar from the other side, in the background you can see the hangar door fully closed.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the bus jumps the gap in the freeway it is clear that there are no passengers aboard and only the stunt driver.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: Several times throughout the film characters say things when their lips do not move. For example, when Jack is under the bus defusing the bomb, a piece of rubber runs up under his cart. Jack says, "Fuck me!" but his lips do not move.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack receives Payne's phone call after the first bus explodes, the bus is on the right-hand side of the road. However when we see Jack and the bus through Payne's window while he is talking, the bus is nearer to Jack on the left hand side of the road.
  
  
• Continuity: Harry gets shot in his left leg. On the way to the podium at the award ceremony he is limping on his right leg, but later in the bar he is limping on his left leg.
  
  
• Continuity: When the bus makes its jump across the freeway gap the poster on its side was loosened and dangled by a single bolt. But later as the bus heads down the runway at LAX the sign is back in place.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Annie and Jack are skidding along on the bus hatch to escape, you can briefly see the track the platform is riding on as they go through the road cones.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: As Jack is driving his truck up the freeway on ramp, the camera switches to a side on view. Jack sounds his horn several times, but both of his hands remain on the steering wheel. In previous/subsequent shots, when Jack sounds the horn, his hands leave the wheel and press the horn ring inside the steering wheel.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The freeway that the bus first goes onto is supposed to be I-10, but there is a light rail line down the middle. That makes it I-105, which according to the movie was not yet open at the time the story was taking place.
  
  
• Continuity: Tuneman slips and loses the paper, knocking off a rearview mirror that reappears in the next shot.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Camera is visible in Tuneman's sunglasses in some closeups on his face.
  
  
• Continuity: Annie's ring changes frequently.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obvious stunt player driving the bus during action scenes.
  
  
• Continuity: Throughout the film we can see a black and white zebra print poster on the side of the bus. During the airport scenes the poster disappears and then reappears.
  
  
• Continuity: When Helen tries to get off, Jack moves forward and grabs her left shoulder. After a brief cutaway to Payne, Jack is standing farther back and his hand has not yet reached her shoulder when the bomb under the steps explodes.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Although the last shot from inside the bus before the jump shows the roadway simply ending, once looking from outside the bus we see it run over something just at the end of the road, then rise suddenly above road level. Obviously this is an end view of a ramp.
  
  
• Continuity: The bumper bar that the bus loses when swerving to avoid the garbage truck reappears on the bus.
  
  
• Continuity: Size, direction, and orientation of shadows throughout the film.
  
  
• Continuity: Sign on the left-hand side of the bus which disappears and reappears.
  
  
• Continuity: Annie's earrings.
  
  
• Continuity: The handcuffs on Annie's wrists in the subway car are tighter in some shots than others.
  
  
• Continuity: The cut on Annie's forehead disappears and reappears during the subway scene, as well as changing its size.
  
  
• Factual errors: Jack steps off the moving bus at the airport via the rear doors, since there are no front door steps, and they stay open afterwards until Stephens steps into the opening. Annie could not have operated the door switch as would be done at a normal stop, since this would also have applied the bus's brakes; therefore the doors should close themselves as soon as they are not being held (as we see them do a few minutes later during the setup for evacuating the bus).
  
  
• Factual errors: Several scenes are shown of the bus with its rear doors open while moving. A safety feature does not allow the rear doors of transit buses to open until the bus is at a dead stop, with the brakes applied.
  
  
• Continuity: Jack (on the sliding floorboard) momentarily disappears from under the bus.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack and Annie slide out from under the bus and into the dirt, we can see the stuntman's wedding ring. Jack is not wearing a ring.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the bus goes around the 90 degree turn and the bus tips up its side wheels, an extra set of wheels are visible underneath the bus.
  
  
• Factual errors: Subway systems have fail-safe precautions which prevent runaways.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Sparks from the sliding subway car obviously not generated by friction against the ground.
  
  
• Continuity: 'Joe Morton''s character is referred to as "Lieutenant McMahon" throughout the film, but in the credits the character is listed as "Captain McMahon."
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The plane clearly has no windows along its sides, and yet debris after the explosion seems to include rows of windowframes. But most aircraft are designed for both freight and passenger use, and the internal structure of the fuselage includes the window-shaped holes seen in the debris.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Payne clearly doesn't have the dead man's handle in his hands just before and after boarding the subway train. However, since he never said he was intending suicide, he conceivably provided a way to deactivate the trigger; he could have used this and put it in his pocket for this short time when he needed both hands free.
  
  
• Continuity: When Payne "loses his head" on top of the subway train, the light doesn't get damaged.
  
  
• Continuity: When Payne shoots the subway train driver, the glass to the drivers cab doesn't shatter and the bullet holes are too high in comparison to the drivers wounds.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the bus enters LAX the right rear tire is torn by the security spikes in the driveway, but does not rupture immediately; we later see it peeling apart as the passengers are retrieved, until it bursts completely and sends the bus lurching to the left, away from the retrieval vehicle, with Jack and Annie still aboard. However, a tire that bursts on the *right* side of a vehicle at high speed will cause that vehicle to skid to the *right*, which in this case is *into* the retrieval vehicle - not away from it. (Of course, it's possible the bus's wild skid to the left is the result of Annie, who is an inexperienced driver, overcompensating - but we don't see even a hint of the fishtail that would produce.)
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the last shot of the film, with the camera moving away from the train on Hollywood Blvd., a long length of dolly track can be seen on the sidewalk on the left side of the frame.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Reflected in the other bus that rescues the passengers from the bomb bus.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the bus jump on the freeway, the missing bridge section is cut out digitally. However, the shadow of that part of the bridge is still visible.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Payne says to Jack, "Ok, but I want you back *real fast*," what he is actually saying is, "I want you back in 10 minutes." The scene was dubbed to give Jack a little more leeway - he is obviously gone longer than the allotted 10 minutes.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Jack is unhandcuffing someone on the bus, just before they have to jump the gap in the freeway, you can just see the top of someone's head as it disappears into the stairwell.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: A break in the seam of the prosthetic covering of Payne's hand is visible when he lifts the venetian blind to check out Pershing Square.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In a quick shot of the platform truck loaded with police officers riding alongside the bus in an attempt to rescue passengers of the bus, you can clearly tell that the film was undercranked to simulate a higher rate of travel. This is apparent by the unnatural, quick movement of the police officers on the platform truck bed.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Supposedly the bus is traveling in one general direction on the freeway but in actuality they keep passing the same spots on the 105 freeway and changing direction. Sometimes the bus is heading east and sometimes west on the 105.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack and Harry are rescuing the people from the elevator, at one point there are clearly four people in the elevator; two men and two women. A woman gets out and then only one man and one woman are left in the elevator.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Camera Dolly reflected behind Jack and Harry when they stop to look at the crane on the roof.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Lieutenant MacMahon first talks to Jack from the helicopter, the helicopter filming him is reflected in the glass.
  
  
• Continuity: Near the end when Payne is talking to Jack on the phone he is seen holding the phone on the left side of his face with his right hand. While he is talking, he snaps his fingers with his other hand, however, this would have been impossible considering he was missing a thumb on that hand.
  
  
• Continuity: Just before Jack boards the bus, he tells the driver to open his doors. In the preceding shot which moves around the front of the bus, the doors are already open.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): At the end of the movie, when Annie and Jack are kissing in the destroyed subway train, one of the tourists that almost crashed with their van is taking pictures of the couple with a closed Polaroid camera.
  
  
• Continuity: Upon pulling the first passenger - the blonde woman - from the elevator, the following passenger - the brunette - can be seen sliding entirely out of the elevator all by herself. Yet, in the next shot, we have a backside angle of her being helped out by Travers.
  
  
• Continuity: The amount and condition of the cuts on Jack's arm as he chases and fights Payne.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: When Jack is talking to Howard Payne at the pay phone, the boom mic is reflected in the phone in several shots.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: On the subway you can see when the fake police officer takes the bomb remote back that he clearly let go of the button and then quickly grabs it again.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the bus is landing after jumping over the gap in the freeway, you can see that it is completely empty with nobody on board.
  
  
• Continuity: Shortly after the bus narrowly avoids the dustbin lorry, there is a shot of Jack on the phone to Mac, shown from outside the bus. In the next shot, from the camera inside the bus, he has only just picked the phone up to start the telephone conversation with Mac, when he says "Mac, get me out of here!"
  
  
• Continuity: Skid marks are already visible on the tarmac when Jack and Harry turn up at the building where the bombed elevator is.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack runs across a busy street after Payne, the red car stopping for him changes from a Ford Tempo to a Mazda Protege between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: In the subway terminal scene Annie has at least one cuff attached to her wrist but when she gets on board the subway there is nothing until she's cuffed to a pole.
  
  
• Continuity: After the bus makes the jump, all the passengers are celebrating. Watch Terry (the young guy). At one point he falls to his knees. Immediately after, the show a different view, and Terry is standing once again, without us seeing him stand up.
  
  
• Continuity: The time is set for 11:00 am for Howard's money. When the bus is driving, if you look closely into the distance from the freeway and Airport, you can tell it's sunset.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When we see the front of Jack's car it has a blue licence plate, typical of Michigan, yet the story is set in Los Angeles. However, it is a blue plate with yellow letters that is a very common California plate. Michigan is blue with white letters.
  
  
• Continuity: In the Long Beach scenes, where the bus goes onto the opposite side of the road, a car screeches to a halt, leaving skid marks. Skids marks are still visible from previous takes.
  
  
• Continuity: While Jack is talking to the bomber when the bus is at LAX, the bomber snaps his fingers (impossible without a thumb) but is shown holding his cell with his non-injured hand.
  
  
• Continuity: You know there are other ways to avoid the gap in the freeway. When the rescue vehicles are falling back, the camera zooms to a big part of the freeway where there are a few other on ramps to other roads that they should have used to avoid the gap, but they chose to speed up and jump the gap.
  
  
• Continuity: Harry is shot in the leg, and hobbles with a cane at the award ceremony. The next day he is leading the crew that is blown up at Payne's house. He would still be restricted to office duty and not leading that operation. Also, he's not limping in Payne's house.
  
  
• Factual errors: After Jack punctures the bus' fuel tank and is rescued by Ortiz, Annie punches him and asks him, "What's that smell?" Jack tells her, "It's gas," yet the bus is a GMC 'New Look' model which is powered by Detroit Diesel engine.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After the bus lands on the other side of the gap, a shot shows the inside of the bus through the windshield and you can clearly see there's no body inside, except a stunt driver.
  
  
• Continuity: When the bus takes the off ramp into the city, it slams into a few cars and if you look clearly when the bus hits a car before plowing through the caution signs, the right front corner of the bus is caved in from the impact. but throughout the movie, the bus seems to be in perfect shape.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the bus launches the car off the ramp, you can clearly see the guide wheels underneath the car.
  
  
• Plot holes: Why does the bus have to jump the gap in the road when the team of police take the exit before? Couldn't the bus just take the exit too?
  
  
• Plot holes: A public subway car wouldn't be running on an unfinished track. And why does the subway car have to be sped up to jump the track? Why didn't they just turn it off and let it slow to a crawl?
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Keanu Reeves character is being towed by a cable under the bus at the airport, the bus manages to make turns.
  
  
• Continuity: When the bus is heading towards the gap, a sign is infront of it. When the bus gets closer to the gap, the sign disappears.
  
  
• Continuity: The ramp that the bus jumps off of appears in the last scene when the bus hits it, before it, its just an ended road.
  
  
• Continuity: The weather changes between shots when the bus is in the city, for instance before the bus goes by the school its a nice sunny day. But the scene before that shot its dark, and looks like its a dark cloudy that's about to rain.
  
  
• Factual errors: Jack tells Annie that he doesn't have the key for her handcuffs when they are trapped on the subway. Most handcuffs will open using a standard model key. In addition, there are several easy ways to open a set of cuffs without the key.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Jack first approaches the bus while driving Tuneman's Jag, he yells as loudly as he can to the driver "THERE'S A BOMB ON THE BUS!" The driver can't hear him, even with the window open. He also can't hear Tuneman who is another foot closer. But when Jack maneuvers around to the other side of the bus where the door is, the driver can suddenly hear him clearly say "stay above 50 mph" even though there is now several additional feet separating them and he is not yelling.
  
  
• Continuity: After Jack tried to defuse the bomb under the bus, he punctured the fuel tank. When he told Annie what had happened, the fuel gauge is shown and the needle quickly advanced toward empty. For how much fuel was lost during a very short cut away from the fuel gauge and back to it, it would have emptied out within no more than two minutes. Yet several long minutes went by between the last shot of the fuel gauge and when the bus finally ran out of gas.
  
  
• Continuity: When the bus hit the airplane and both blew up, the impact from the blast would easily have also blown up the vehicle pushing the airplane. Yet several moments after the plane and bus blew up, the driver of the vehicle jumped out unscathed and ran for cover.
  
  
• Continuity: During the award ceremony, Harry holds his cane in his right hand. In the following scene, when he leaves the bar, he holds it in his left hand.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Harry and Jack are fighting on top of the train you can see the lines on top of the train pointing horizontal and then vertical without them shifting in position.
  
  
• Continuity: When the ambulance parks up and Jack gets out, he shuts the door behind him. When Annie gets out of the ambulance later the door is already open.
  
  
• Continuity: Just before the bus gets onto the empty freeway, you can clearly see the bus slamming on its brakes to avoid hitting the slow-moving police car directly in front of it (the front end of the bus dives down). It is obviously no longer going the required "50 mph" as required by the bomber.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): After the passengers get transferred off the bus safely, the tire pops. Annie says "Jack, I can't hold anymore" which Jack responds to after with "Hold on!"
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When they reach the 90 degree turn, and are about to turn Annie says "Here we go!" then with the next shot from inside the bus, the exact sentence is repeated identically.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack is lowered to the fallen elevator, he uses a hook to hold the elevator and as we see that, the hook is facing right, however when the emergency brakes are blown up and the elevator falls, the hook is facing left.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: Shortly after Jack shoots Harry in the leg and Payne goes to make his mistake, there was originally a scene that showed Jack shooting Payne in the neck. Although this scene was eventually deleted, you can still see the smoke from the shot Jack fired while he watches Payne run into the garage.
  
  

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