Goofs for
Magnum Force (1973) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: When Callahan is in the car with Lieutenant Briggs after they pick up the bomb they drive by the 76 service station three times in about 30 seconds.
  
  
• Continuity: In the car with Callahan, after picking up the bomb, Briggs puts his glasses on twice.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: After Harry discovers that there's a bomb in his mailbox, he goes upstairs to his room and pulls out his Smith & Wesson. He then puts it on top of his chest of drawers and searches for a screwdriver. Finding the screwdriver, he picks up his gun to leave, and puts his thumb on the hammer. The sound of a Model 29 uncocking is heard, but Harry doesn't actually uncock it because it was never cocked.
  
  

• Crew or equipment visible: After Callahan removes the bomb from his own mailbox, he looks up at a man on the nearby stairs. As a car drives by on the street, the lights from it cast the shadow of the boom operator onto the wall.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Reflected in the glass in the shooting practice room.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Reflected in the mirrored sunglasses.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: A metal ramp is seen bolted to the front bumper of the 1972 Ford Galaxie sedan when it rams the motorcycle head on.
  
  
• Continuity: The condition of the rear door on the Ford sedan when Harry makes a U-turn. The door is damaged when Harry sideswipes a stack of railroad ties, and Lt. Briggs falls out of the car.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Reflected in J.J. Wilson's car after he is shot.
  
  
• Continuity: When the prostitute is picked up by the cab, the exterior shots of the car are of 1963 Chevrolet. When the interior shots are seen, the car is actually a 1972 Ford with the seat from the 63 Chevy installed that are of the same interior color.
  
  
• Continuity: When Callahan jumps onto the hood of Palancio's car after the police raid, he is facing the rear of the car, grabbing the hood near the windshield. A few seconds later, he is seen sprawled across the hood, facing the front of the car, and then seconds later he is back in his original position.
  
  
• Continuity: When the pimp is driving across the Golden Gate bridge, he looks into his rear view mirror to check out the motorcycle cop following him. Cars that appear around the cop in the mirror are different than the cars around the cop in the non-mirror shot. (A small, red foreign car is visible in the mirror. When the shot immediately returns to normal, the red car is not there).
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Sweet shoots the pimp, you can see the reflection of the cameraman in Sweet's sunglasses.
  
  
• Continuity: When the pimp is being followed on the Golden Gate Bridge by one of the motorcycle cops, the shot starts near the center span but in the next couple of shots, they are at the beginning of the bridge.
  
  
• Continuity: The motorcycles used by the vigilantes in the final chase are Guzzi model 850 T3 California. However after entering the aircraft carrier they turn into Triumph T120 Bonneville.
  
  
• Continuity: In the pool scene, the bullet wound of the girl shot in the center of the chest disappears when she is floating in the pool.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the final car chase, there are multiple sets of skid marks on the winding road from previous takes.
  
  
• Continuity: When the officer shoots the pimp he fires only five shots. When they examine the car we see six strings representing the bullet paths.
  
  
• Continuity: When Harry is being chased down the steep winding street he hits a car with the driver's side of his car. In one subsequent shot, the damage is shown to the passenger side instead.
  
  
• Continuity: Harry Callahan's surname is misspelled as "Calahan" in the closing credits.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Instead of damage from a shotgun blast, the door to Palancio's office features a neatly drilled round hole and evidence of the adhesive tape that had previously concealed the effects pyrotechnic.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Davis kills the Mob Boss in his apartment and kills McCoy in the garage, he can be seen putting a silencer on his .357 revolver. Once the silencer is attached, the shots he fires are very quiet. It is impossible to silence a revolver as most of the sound would still escape from the gap that is always present between the barrel and the cylinder.
  
  
• Continuity: When the cop pulls over the mob's limo, he parks his motorcycle parallel to the vehicle, but in the next shot it is parked perpendicular the limo.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Crew member is seen moving around after the swimming pool massacre.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During Davis's combat pistol round, we see him shoot a standup target from the target's perspective. He fires twice, but we see a second bullet hole pop out before the second shot is fired for a total of three holes from only two bullets.
  
  
• Continuity: In the first appearance of a vigilante cop, his pistol holster is sometimes on his right side and sometimes on his left side.
  
  
• Continuity: Near the end of the movie when the back windshield is shot out, the bullet passes close to Callahan in the front seat. Yet later when Briggs is driving away, the bullet hole is close to the passenger side of the car.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where the vigilante cops come to arrest the mob boss at the warehouse, one of the cops stands to the right side of the door facing sideways and knocks. When the mob boss fires the shotgun through the door, the cop is standing directly in front of and facing the door and gets hit square in the chest.
  
  
• Continuity: During the hijacking sequence, Insp. Callahan is eating a hamburger at San Francisco International airport. When he walks out of the terminal to board the hijacked plane, he's at the Oakland International Airport across the bay.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the chase scene with the officers on motorcycles, the motor cycles had no windshields. For police officers, it is mandatory for their motorcycles to have windshields. They probably omitted the windshields for stunt drivers.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Harry walks up to the limousine in which Ricca and his men have been murdered, he puts his hands on the car's door sill and partially rolled-down window, contaminating an active crime scene which is still under investigation. No veteran homicide detective would do this.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Ricca and his men are killed in the car, when the police officer shoots the front seat passenger in the head, blood spatters on the window because it is rolled all the way up. When Harry walks up to the car to view the crime scene the window is rolled all the way down and the dead man’s head is resting on it.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Just before the car explodes with the time bomb Callahan put in there, you can clearly see wires at the rear of the car.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Just after Harry gets word there's trouble in the airport, we hear a female voice over the public address system: "American Airlines Flight 557, Electra II Flagship, nonstop for Washington, now boarding at Gate 5." American Airlines stopped using Electra IIs in 1969. In fact, the full-size Lockheed Electra II turboprop had virtually disappeared from all U.S. airlines by the time of "Magnum Force."
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Ricca gives his statement to the press, he is surrounded by reporters on the court steps. A reporter holds up a tape recorder with no tape in it.
  
  
• Factual errors: The motorcycle cop is following the pimp over the Golden Gate Bridge, and eventually stops him. He followed him north into Marin County, out of the City and County of San Francisco. The San Francisco Police Department has no jurisdiction in Marin County.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Harry is killing the hijackers on the plane, he has left his .44 magnum behind to disguise himself as a pilot, and is using a smaller revolver, probably a .38, but when he shoots, the gun makes the loud characteristic .44 magnum report.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the "try knocking on the door" dialogue, a trolley can be seen passing by on the street outside. One of the trolley patrons waves directly at the camera, obviously aware that a film was being shot.
  
  
• Continuity: The Sovereign Airways plane when moving down the runway with the front-on shot, has one engine under each wing, when the plane comes to a halt, after "Captain" Harry applies the brakes, there is another partial front-on shot of the right-hand wing, and there are two engines quite visible under the wing!
  
  
• Continuity: In the pool scene, after the bomb has exploded and the rookie cop has finished firing his machine gun, you can clearly see a man at the far left of the picture still standing up.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the opening scene of Ricca leaving the courthouse, just after the man yells at the TV Reporter "Fuck the courts!" there is a quick crowd shot before a shot of Ricca trying to muscle his way to his car. In that quick moment, there someone holding a sign that is meant to say "UP YOURS RICCA" but contains a grammatical error as it actually reads "UP YOUR RICCA".
  
  
• Continuity: In the chase with Harry and Briggs, Harry's car passes the same Austin 1300, parked on the left, twice.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: Callaghan visits the forensics's lab after the pimp is shot in the pink car. The bullets traces (strings) are all aimed in to an individual lying on the passenger seat and come from a variety of angles. Yet he was shot from a single angle from outside the car whilst in the driver seat.
  
  

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