Shoot 'Em Up goofs

Mr Smith and Donna supply baby food for the newborn while he remains concealed in the tank over several days. Newborns do not take solid food; at this stage they are fed solely on breast milk or infant formula.

Smith mistakenly refers to Hertz's Desert Eagle as a "six-shooter." The term six-shooter denotes a revolver whose cylinder holds six rounds.

When Hertz asserts that Mr Smith's pistol is empty, he also claims Smith fired eight shots from the rooftops. This is incorrect — Smith actually fires eleven rounds during the rooftop gunfight.

After Mr Smith's dramatic backwards slide through a puddle of used engine oil during the warehouse shoot-out, his clothes are immaculate as soon as he is back on his feet.

In the scene where Smith and DQ reunite, DQ drops the ice-cream glasses and they begin to kiss; in the initial shot her fingernails are painted with pink nail varnish, but in the subsequent kissing close-up the varnish has disappeared.

Although DQ is shown descending in the lift, the shot returns to her while she's still inside it, yet the bricks scrolling by behind her indicate she is actually ascending rather than descending.

In the sex-and-gunfight sequence, Smith is initially shown wearing boxer shorts and is then suddenly without them.

In the final scene at the café, an overweight man is sipping his milkshake; more than half of the glass is empty. When Smith, provoked by a string of irritations, opens fire, a bullet shatters the overweight man's glass — which is unexpectedly full. Furthermore, the type of glass appears to change: the glass that explodes is smooth on the outside rather than knurled. It also prompts questions about the bullet's trajectory and where it ended up.

During the shoot-out at Smith's house, the lighting abruptly shifts from utter darkness outside to bright daylight.

When Smith first confronts the "Lone Man" in the lavatory shoot‑out, the Lone Man inspects his revolver, steps in, fires four shots and then reloads, clearly showing that his gun holds six rounds. Smith then attacks him and, during the ensuing struggle, the revolver is discharged eight times — which would seem to account for the first two missing rounds.

In the brothel corridor, while Hertz walks backwards and mentions the fingerprint guns, the indicator on Smith's weapon is lit green (signifying a print has been detected), but it switches to red in the close-up when Smith pulls his hand out of his pocket.

When Mr Smith shoots Hertz at the brothel, the bullet strikes the right-hand side of Hertz's chest. But when Hertz regains consciousness, the gunshot wound is on the left-hand side.

The hammer of Smith's SIG Sauer repeatedly rises and falls throughout the scene in which he holds Senator Rutledge hostage aboard the aeroplane.

During a conversation in the tank, Donna's long hair, depending on the camera angle, alternates between hanging forward and being swept back, repeatedly switching between the two styles.

At the start of the film Hertz is seen with a Nokia 6680-series mobile, but in the scene depicting his death his handset is a different model.

When Mr Smith leaps from the bridge he fires at the car’s upper pane, leaving several bullet marks; however, in the subsequent shot of him actually going through that same pane, those marks are not visible.

When Smith places Oliver on the roundabout, the sock being used as a hat is draped over Smith's arm as they approach it, yet in the next shot it is tucked beneath him.

In the opening shot where Smith is sitting on the bench, he's holding an Anthora coffee cup. Cut to a close-up of him taking a sip and the cup appears as a Greek-style imitation of the iconic Anthora. Cut back to him on the bench and the cup has reverted to an Anthora once more.

Although the film is set in New York City and its environs, the CN Tower in Toronto is clearly visible in an establishing shot of the city.

In the lavatory scene between Smith and the Lone Man, Smith drops his semi-automatic pistol into the toilet and then takes it apart on the changing table to clean and dry it for no obvious reason. The firearm would almost certainly have worked even if it had been buried in sand, submerged or frozen and then thawed. After he cleans and dries it there is no realistic reason the weapon wouldn't operate, and holding the Firing Pin / Transfer Bar area under a hand dryer has no technical justification beyond cinematic flair. Yes, yes, I accept it was only one of several firearms blunders in the film, but as an instructor this one really stood out. I enjoyed the romp for what it was, though — simply fun...

Even if the bullets wedged between Smith's broken fingers had gone off so quickly when he held them close to the fire — which is most unlikely — without a barrel to channel the energy they would have been little more than firecrackers.

When Smith is busy shooting the criminals in the warehouse, the last two trigger pulls produce the sound of dry-firing — the hammer striking an empty breech. Shortly afterwards it is shown that the slide is locked back, which happens when the pistol has run out of rounds. In that condition the hammer cannot fall, and pulling the trigger would not produce any sound.

When Smith and Hertz level their firearms at one another, Smith asserts his Desert Eagle pistol is a six‑shooter. In fact, a .357 Magnum Desert Eagle typically holds nine rounds, the .44 Magnum version eight, and the .50 AE model seven. That also does not account for the additional round that can be chambered on top of a fully loaded magazine.

In the opening sequence, Smith discharges a Walther PPK no fewer than 21 times before reloading. Depending on the calibre, a Walther PPK's magazine capacity is 10 rounds in .22 LR, 7 rounds in .32 ACP and 6 rounds in .380 ACP.

Hertz reminds Smith that his 9mm pistol was empty during his time at the brothel: 8 rounds on the roof (though it was actually 11), 1 in the gents' lavatory, and the second cartridge had been discharged on the playground. When he referred to the gents' lavatory in the preceding scene, Hertz was neither close to Smith nor in the same vicinity.

Throughout the film, particularly in wide shots, the infant held by Smith or DQ is plainly a doll or dummy.

Hertz is driving around with the body of the baby's mother the following morning, several hours after she had been shot dead, yet there are no signs of rigor mortis (stiffening) or livor mortis (post-mortem discolouration).

In the car scene where Smith shoots out the windscreen of his car and that of the van full of assassins, the glass fragments into a few large pieces which easily fall away. Windscreens on cars (and vans) are made from two sheets of glass with a polymer laminate sandwiched between them. This means that when broken (even by gunfire) the windscreen will shatter into many small fragments, but those fragments are held in place by the laminate. The glass used in the two vehicles for this scene is clearly not 'real' windscreen glass. Furthermore, in a head-on collision between two vehicles travelling at the speed shown, Smith would likely have been propelled all the way through the van's cabin, probably striking his head against the rear door.

When the Lone Man reloads his S&W Model 629 revolver in the bathroom, the primers on the cartridges are visibly indented. This shows they are dummy rounds with no powder charge.