Goofs for
Sahara (2005) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: When on the yacht and Al gets a beer, it has a plain red label. In the next shot it's a Budweiser, then it changes back to the red label.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end, when Carl leaves the restaurant and gets into the elevator, he takes of his bow tie. In the next shot of him, he still has his bow tie on.
  
  
• Continuity: The guard on the train has sweat on the front of his shirt all the way down the front of the chest. In the next shot it is gone.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: When Dirk swings from the camels neck, a "hobble" or rope limiting the camels movements is seen pulling out of the sand. It is attached to his right rear leg stretching to a point "off camera" beyond the left side of the frame.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the opening credits (after approx 4.5 minutes) a newspaper titled "Nouvélles de Monde" (French) appears. "Nouvelles" (news) is misspelled (there should be no accent). Moreover "Nouvelles de Monde" is not correct, the adequate form is "Nouvelles du Monde"
  
  
• Continuity: When they climb onto the train car, there are rails/handholds on it - in fact there are similar rails on all of the cars along the entire train - but when we see them on top of the car climbing down the hatch, nearly all the rails are gone.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the last scene of the plane surfing action. The actors are leaning as though the wind is coming from the left of the screen, but it you look at the rooster tail it is blowing from the right.
  
  
• Continuity: After Eva buries the light stick in the sand it reappears/disappears in subsequent shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When riding in the back of the truck when heading toward the solar power/toxic dump site, Al is shown holding an FN-LAR rifle and then, in another shot, an AK-47 and back to the FN-LAR.
  
  
• Continuity: When Eva is testing the water on the steps in the rebel village she is wearing a white turban. In the next scene when she is running to tell the others about her find, the turban is gone.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Dirk, Al, and Eva are driving away from the attack helicopter, in the close up shots, the driver's side is correctly on the right. However, in the longer shots, as the car skids right before entering the desert building, the driver and steering wheel are on the left side. It also appears that only the stunt double is driving the car.
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning of Dirk's and Al's tumble down the sand dune in the pickup bed, their hands are handcuffed together. In the long shot, you can see Dirk's hand un-cuffed.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dirk and Al are in the boat and being shot at by the Military, their window breaks. In the next shot all the windows on the boat are intact.
  
  
• Continuity: The windshield on the yacht breaks in the same place twice.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the trailer you see a man who is reading an Arabic text. He's reading it from the left to the right instead of from the right to the left (the way an Arabic text is read).
  
  
• Miscellaneous: After Sandecker finds Rudi on his couch, Rudi goes to take a shower. Apparently he takes his clothes off, takes a shower, and comes back to get his clothes, when he finds the algae sample.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Dirk and Al are handcuffed to the back of the pickup truck, Dirk uses his Confederate gold coin to unscrew the truck bed. The coin is still shown in his hand after he obviously gives the coin to Al and before Al could possibly have given it back.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dirk is getting pulled over on the river he throws the soldiers a rope which they tie to the near side. When Al floors the yacht the rope is on the other side of the soldiers' boat, thus flipping the boat.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Eva catches herself after slipping during the well-descent. In the next shot, she is seen gripping two handles inside the well to steady herself.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the sarcophagus is brought out of the water the admiral says "the king has an appointment at the museum in five hours". When we see the king at the museum it is completely clean. This type of work would take weeks if not months to complete.
  
  
• Continuity: When they are stopped by the soldiers, the buoy is pulled out of the water and left on the back of the boat. When Al hits the throttle to flip over the other boat, the sonar buoy is gone.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Sandecker is talking to Carl, and he's about to ask him for a favor, and Carl says, "... it's strictly hands-off" his mouth doesn't match the words, and his mouth continues to move after he's finished speaking.
  
  
• Continuity: When the guard is closing the vault's door, his weapon changes from a G36 to an UMP and then back to a G36 again.
  
  
• Continuity: On the river, after Dirk jumps from the boat back to the yacht, he starts to clamber up the side of the boat. He puts his left foot over the side twice, and the second time, there is a rope around his ankle that wasn't there before.
  
  
• Continuity: After the first explosion in the Texas, before Dirk says, "Bring down Kazim, the army will surrender," they all gather and kneel behind the cannon. Eva kneels and puts her left hand on her right shoulder. The next second, she is kneeling upright.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: Going down the Niger, Al is telling his Marlin story. He casts his line to fish with no bait on the hook, but seems to catch fish for dinner.
  
  
• Factual errors: When taking cover in the inside the discovered CSS Texas: When the helicopter was strafing the CSS Texas with bullets, the bullet pattern is not consistent with the type of guns that the helicopter was armed with, nor the rounds per second, nor the velocity/vector that the helicopter was moving- more precisely, the pattern was too wide and uniform to originate from the mounted side arms of the helicopter.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: At the end of the village firefight/fistfight, when Dirk rolls in the sand and grabs what appears to be a Barretta M9, he fires four shots and the gun is empty. No handguns were used until this point, and the slide remained motionless, signifying a rubber gun.
  
  
• Factual errors: The entire opening sequence of the bombardment of Richmond at the end of the Civil War is inaccurate. Richmond was never bombed like this. The Union troops were massed on the outskirts of Richmond and poised to invade. The burning of Richmond that is a familiar sight was the result of self-inflicted torching of warehouses intended to prevent the Union Army from taking supplies held in them. The fire quickly spread to engulf much of the Riverfront area.
  
  
• Continuity: In the well, the position of Eva's mask changes multiple times, even in directly adjacent scenes.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When Dirk, Al and Eva dismount to meet the Touareg, Al drops two obviously empty FN magazines to the ground. Why is he carrying empty mags?
  
  
• Continuity: As they are having dinner while going up the river just before the camera cuts to behind Dirk, Eva reaches for the bottle, as we look over his shoulder she's sitting back against the cushion. When the camera switches back to face Dirk they talk, then it switches to over his shoulder and she takes a swig from a glass, that she never had a chance to fill, and which wasn't even on the table.
  
  
• Continuity: Al, Dirk and Eva get on the train one at a time and the guard at the end of the train sees the now-riderless camels one by one. While Eva is getting on the train, the scene switches to view from the rear of the train. All three camels are seen close together. Shortly thereafter, the scene switches again to the view from the train, and the camels are separated by some distance from each other. The camels would not have been that close together unless all three people had boarded the train simultaneously.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Pitt states the Confederate gold coin was minted just before the end of the war (1865). Jefferson Davis could not have given one to Stonewall Jackson, as Jackson died on May 10, 1863.
  
  
• Factual errors: There are numerous historical errors in the exposition. The following four are the most notable. 1) Given the high pride each state in the Confederacy had in itself, it is highly unlikely that a ship built in Virginia would be named after Texas. 2) The model shown of the "CSS Texas" is that of the Virginia (commonly and improperly called the Merrimack). As this was built on the salvaged hull of the only federal steam frigate available to the Confederacy, its design was unique. 3) None of the Confederacy's casement ironclads were capable of transoceanic travel. a) They did not posses the seaworthiness necessary for such a voyage. b) None had the fuel for more than a few days of steaming, which is insufficient to even begin to cross the Atlantic Ocean. c) The engines in all of the vessels were not dependable enough to function for the time required to cross an ocean. 4) The James River, down which the "CSS Texas" was supposedly sailing, was closed by physical barriers installed by Union forces to prevent exactly what is shown. A few months before the "CSS Texas" is supposed to have sailed, a squadron of three ironclads, plus other vessels, attempted to force their way down river, only to be turned back. All were later scuttled to prevent their capture.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dirk, Al, and Eva are driving in the General's car, they smash through a dirt wall of a deserted town. We see that the car's figurehead piece breaks off from the hood. However, at the end of the film, we see the car again with the emblem back.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As the CSS Texas sets sail from the dock at Richmond she is shown flying the first version of the Confederate national flag. At the time claimed she would have been flying either the second or possibly the third national flag. The shots are from a movie involving the CSS Virginia, which would have flow the first national flag.
  
  
• Factual errors: The James River at Richmond is not deep enough to float an ironclad. This is why the CSS Virginia was burned to prevent her capture as the Union army advanced on the city.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: Dr. Hopper is shot; after Dirk and Al save Eva from the attackers, she runs over and hugs his body. She rips open his shirt, and when she does, there is no bullet wound under the blood on his shirt. Also, the blood on his shirt shows only one 'bullet wound', though he was shot three times at close range.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: When Dirk, Al, and Eva take cover in the CSS Texas, they are being shot at. When Dirk claims the walls are 2 feet think with a double steel coating, there are no bullet holes, even though you hear the bullets hitting the walls, but when they get shot at again, the bullets go through the walls, and the team has to duck. Later in the scene, they are shot at again and the bullets don't pierce the sides.
  
  

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