Goofs for
Enemy of the State (1998)

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• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Dean and Brill enter the "jar" in Brill's home, they close the outer cage door with the cat outside it. But they don't close it tight, and the cat is seen forcing her way in, so when the cat is seen later, it's not unexpected.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Dean drops down into the tunnel in his robe and almost gets hit by a car, his rather visibly overweight body double can be seen in his place as the car swerves to avoid hitting him.
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning when the Congressman is killed, the character with the syringe walks past the dog. As he kills the Congressman, the dog starts barking, yet in the footage when the bird watcher is watching, the dog starts barking as the killer walks toward the Congressman.
  
  

• Continuity: At the beginning when the Senator is killed, the character with the syringe walks past the dog. In the footage he walks on one side of the dog (closer to the lake) before killing the senator, but really he walked on the other side of the dog (farther from the lake).
  
  
• Continuity: Brill's group photograph in Rachel Park's apartment is different from the supposedly identical one in his den - in the apartment his hair is black, in the den it is ginger.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dean and Brill are outside the police station near the end, a glimpse of the sky shows thin clouds and blue sky. Moments later while Brill is running away and is intercepted by the goons in the car it is pouring rain.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dean is in the goons' van we see Lyle escorted to the back of the van sheltered from the pouring rain under an umbrella. While he enters the van we see the rain pouring down behind him yet when we see a close-up of Reynolds, over his left shoulder we see the city skyline with not a drop of rain in sight.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When Zavitz begins to flee, we twice hear satellite surveillance requested at latitude 38°55', longitude 77°00'. That exact position would be around 4th and U Streets Northeast, and giving the coordinates to the minute implies an accuracy of about a mile (a nautical mile, in fact - around 1.15 miles or 1852m). But moments later, as he reaches the roof, the street intersection is given as 18th and Columbia, which is in Washington's northwest quadrant more than 2 miles away.
  
  
• Errors in geography: In different scenes supposed to be in Baltimore, satellite surveillance is requested first at latitude 39°14', longitude 74°39'; then at latitude 39°27', longitude 74°42'. Both positions are about 100 miles east of Baltimore near Atlantic City, NJ, one of them actually in the ocean. The correct longitude for the first location, for instance, would be around 76°37'.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When the NSA agent watching Brill's vehicle on the Satellite imagery dispatches the NSA "hit team" to Brill's secret location (the "Box") he tells them to proceed to Latitude 30 degrees, 64 minutes and Longitude 72 degrees, 29 minutes. Not only is this an incorrect syntax to identify a location using that nomenclature, it also places Brill's location about 547 miles east north east of Jacksonville, Florida at a spot in the Atlantic Ocean.
  
  
• Errors in geography: In a third Baltimore scene, the technician requests surveillance at latitude 30°64', longitude 72°29'; There are only 60 minutes in a degree, so this is like expressing a person's height as 5 feet 14 inches; he obviously misspoke. Yet the reply is simply "Affirmative". And, again, no matter what meaning is intended, the coordinates would not be anywhere near Baltimore.
  
  
• Errors in geography: In Congressman Albert's home address, the city is shown as "Lake Falls, Maine", but the ZIP code is 20015, which would be in Washington, DC.
  
  
• Continuity: When the tape of the conversation from inside Reynolds' van is played at the end for Fiedler and Jamie, the phrase "trust me on this", which Brill said, is missing.
  
  
• Continuity: In the lingerie shop, the blonde that is grilling Robert on his wife's vital statistics has her bangs alternating between tucked over her ear and hanging down over her face between shots.
  
  
• Factual errors: Near the beginning of the movie when the very powerful spy satellite is brought into use, one scene shows that there is a layer of high clouds, probably cirrostratus. Although high clouds can be translucent to the sun, there is no way the satellite could get a crystal clear view of people running around at the surface. Even awesome technology could not accomplish this. It is obviously a visible image because there is full color.
  
  
• Continuity: When Robert and Rachel are walking through the square, at one point "Camera 3" is shown from behind sweeping left-to-right, but the visual on the small monitor to the operator's lower left is moving right-to-left.
  
  
• Continuity: When Thomas Reynolds's daughter is telling him that "we are on TV", he looks over at the set. We cut to the TV itself and see the daughter jumping up and down and Reynolds still looking at his paperwork.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obvious stand-in for Dean when the government tech shows the security camera tape of the encounter with Dean and Zavitz in the lingerie store.
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning when Dean blends his drink and his wife criticizes the congressman on TV, the cupboard Dean that retrieves glasses from closes between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dean is in the ambulance and grabs the gun from the officer, there is an IV going up his sleeve. When he jumps out of the ambulance, the IV is gone.
  
  
• Continuity: During the chase scene in the rail yard, the full size Ford Bronco rolls several times. Toward the end of the roll, it is no longer a Bronco, but a pick-up truck as you can see the truck bed and roll bar in the back.
  
  
• Continuity: When Brill and Dean are running from the burning car towards the trains, you can see Brill put the bag over his left shoulder and look towards Dean twice from different angles while Dean is talking to Brill.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Thomas Reynolds and wife are checking their bank statement for the extra $140,000, Reynolds says, "Two separate $70,000 deposits on the same day." The statement, however, shows the dates of the deposits as 12/09 and 12/11.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end of the film when Dean sits down and switches on the TV he sees himself from a camera in the smoke detector but when he looks at the TV, the angle of the camera is positioned from the TV as he is looking straight forward.
  
  
• Continuity: When Robert finds Rachel's body and turns her over her eyes are open and then closed after the cut to Robert.
  
  
• Continuity: In the opening scene (in which the congressman is killed) the time is given as 0645 hrs (6:45 AM). Later When the congressman's car is being recovered from the lake, the time is given as 1507 hrs (seven minutes after three in the afternoon). But the position of the sun appears to be virtually the same for both scenes. Plus the TV reporter announces the murder took place something like "an hour ago" or words to that effect.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Congressman is killed, the signs identifying the area call it Occoquan Park. Later the TV reporter calls it Loch Raven Reservoir.
  
  
• Continuity: When Zavits is fleeing on the bicycle and gets hit by the fire truck, the quick-shot just before he gets hit clearly shows him clearing the fire truck.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: Rachel tells Robert Dean that when she needs to contact Brill, she "chalks" the mailbox, then Brill crosses the chalk mark and she makes the drop. After Dean discovers that Rachel's been killed, he uses a black, indelible ink marker to signal Brill. Brill is very specific about his procedures, and the reason chalk is used is because it can be easily wiped off so it will be clear when she needs to make a new drop. If they continued to use indelible markers, they wouldn't be able to wipe off the old marks and have any way of knowing when a new one had been made.
  
  
• Continuity: The business card Robert Dean hands Zavitz in the lingerie shop has a different email address from the business card removed from Zavitz's body after the bicycle accident and viewed by Reynolds in his D.C. office.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Brill hijacks the car under the bridge, the car is an E-class Mercedes, with obvious power windows in both front and back seats. However, you can clearly see when Brill tells Dean that he is hypoglycemic, the manual device for the window. That's impossible in an E-class Mercedes.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the conspirators are inspecting the security camera footage of Dean's shopping bag, Fiedler tells the tech to rotate the image 75 degrees around the Z axis, but the image clearly rotates more than that, roughly some 110-120 degrees.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: While NSA agents Jones and Krug are "bugging" Deans house, a shot of a screwdriver screwing in a screw to replace a grill shows the screwdriver turning counter-clockwise and the screw going "in". The screwdriver should be turning "clockwise" while inserting the screw.
  
  
• Continuity: When Brill and Dean are breaking into the Congressman's hotel room, the footage used of Dean waiting by the door is reused from the footage of Dean waiting for Mr. Wu to open the door. The footage is used twice during the break-in within a few seconds. Dean is wearing a tie and dress overcoat while waiting for Mr. Wu, while not wearing a tie nor dress overcoat when breaking in with Brill.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the birdwatcher picks up the videotape from the scene, the "cop" calls on his radio and requests a "10-27" on the vehicle and a "10-28 on the registered owner"...Any police officer knows that "10-27" in the standard ten-code list means "requesting DRIVER information" such as name, date of birth, height, weight, registered address, etc and "10-28" means "requesting VEHICLE information" such as make, model, year, etc...He only needed to switch the two ten codes (10-27 and 10-28) in his lines and then his radio transmission would have been factually correct.
  
  
• Factual errors: It is impossible to obtain a 3D image of the shopping bag (or anything) from one camera feed that the investigators had. Supposing that they had another camera in the store, they would simply have two images from different points of view but the rotating p.o.v. still cannot be achieved this way.
  
  
• Continuity: During the rail yard scene, Brill punches Dean and the camera shot briefly changes to Dean crouching. Before and after this shot there is a moving train behind Dean, during the shot there is an empty track.
  
  

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