Goofs

During the initial shootout, the bad guys tear out the windshield of the armored truck; however, while they are driving away, the windshield is shown intact multiple times.

Throughout the entire movie Big Nick's chest tattoo keeps disappearing and then reappearing.

When Nick is putting on his vest at the police station, it does not say Sheriff on it, while all the other officers' vests say Sheriff. When he is standing over Merrimen his vest says Sheriff.

Donnie wakes up from being tased and knocked out by Nick and walks out of the bedroom. Directly behind him, Murph walks out of the same bedroom, clearly alone. In the next shot, Murph walks by Donnie holding the hand of one of the girls at the party. An instant earlier, she was nowhere to be seen.

Before the final shootout, LASD officers warn the occupants of many civilian vehicles to get down, and a mere handful of civilians are seen fleeing. The shooting starts and the civilians presumably occupying the remaining vehicles seemingly disappear. Nobody is seen hunkering down in their vehicles, screaming, or panicking. After the incident, it seems that few civilians are being treated for injuries from gunfire, shrapnel, or flying glass, and the cops do not seem busy corralling and interviewing what should be dozens of witnesses.

While LA has had the title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World," given in 1963 and it does have a history of infamous bank heists, it does not have a "robbery occur every 48 minutes" as it says in the opening title. Only in it's greatest year (1992) does it come close, with 2,641 bank robberies in the seven-county region of LA (1~ every 66 minutes).

The leader of the gang, Merriman, says the federal reserve bank deletes the serial numbers of bills when they are shredded.

This is not true.

The federal reserve bank does not do this, it would be the Treasury that could do it but they do not do it since they need to keep a record of all serial numbers ever printed.

Several police vehicles in the movie (most notably unmarked cars and a SWAT truck) have only blue emergency lights. California law requires all emergency vehicles to have one steady burning red light, and virtually every law enforcement agency in California (including the LAPD and LASD) use red and blue light setups on all their vehicles. Blue-only light setups are more consistent with Georgia, where the movie was shot.

The bank robbery stats in the opening credits were correct for 1992 only, that being the worst ever year for recorded offences. The current figure is less than a tenth of that volume.

Throughout the film, the license plates for the majority of the vehicles all share a close version of 4PCI*** with the last three numbers being slightly different. This includes several different armored trucks which, in reality, would bear commercial, not passenger, license plates. The marked police cars should display California Exempt license plates too.

In the final shootout, gunfire is exchanged lengthwise along cars stopped in traffic. All of the bullet holes are neat and round, even in hoods and closed doors. This indicates the bullets passed through perpendicular to the metal, i.e. from right above or across the cars. This is obviously not the case.

None of the numerous missed shots seem to hit the gas tanker truck behind the bad guys.

When Merrimen is driving the armored truck at the second checkpoint, as it enters the Federal Reserve Bank building, a subway train can be seen running through what is supposed to be the bank building in the distance above.

During the final shootout whilst walking between the cars approaching a downed suspect, Big Nick's FN SCAR-L is momentarily seen without a magazine but seen with magazine again in the next shot.

In the shoot out while the traffic is stopped and Ray Merrimen sets up the M249 (SAW) on the hood and pulls back on the cocking handle assembly, two sounds are heard.. Normally when a closed bolt weapon's cocking handle is pulled back it will make two sounds, the first would be the bolt being pulled back and a second sound when the bolt closes as it chambers the round. However the M249 is a gas-operated weapon that fires from the open bolt position, so there would only be a single sound made when the cocking handle is pulled back locking the bolt into the open position and it will only close when the trigger is pulled.

The film is set in Los Angeles, but during the final shootout, the Atlanta MARTA train can be seen.

The location in Pico Rivera is given as the intersection of Atlantic and Wilcox. These streets do not intersect, but run parallel and are located in cities west of Pico Rivera. However, this may be an example of "movie geography" where a realistic-sounding but imaginary location is devised to create a setting for fictional events.

At the one hours 47 minute mark a Georgia State University Police car is seen driving past some downtown businesses in what is supposed to be Los Angeles.

High security facilities like the Federal Reserve would not allow a guest like Donnie (or any food deliveryman) to walk around unescorted. If an employee ordered food, they would most likely have to come down to the front desk and pick it up themselves. Either that or the deliveryman would be escorted by security the entire time they are in a secure area.

Any IT system for destruction of the old bills would not take effect, would not delete them from a database before confirmed deleted. They would be pending delete. Also any IT system doing that would have backups, so they could easily restore the database and find all the serial numbers of the stolen bills.

When leaving the Federal Reserve building, Donnie hands over to the guard the security pass he received one day earlier. In a high-security environment, the use of security passes by outsiders is scrupulously monitored so one such pass missing at the end of the day would put the guards on alert. In particular, since Donnie visibly did not check in on the day of the heist.

During the armored truck hijack, the robbers warn the driver that they will fire armor piercing (AP) rounds through the windshield, but they instead tear out the windshield with a drill contraption. Despite this, the cops later say that the windshield was shot out, although no rounds were actually fired at it.

Big Nick tells his guys "they're wearing vests, no center mass shots" but he shoots several rounds at Merrimen that are center-mass.

During a final scene in the movie, Big Nick is seen, from a front camera shot, visibly holding his handgun with his right hand and supporting the grip with his left. However, when the camera cuts to an "over the shoulder" shot, the handgun is now being gripped in his left hand and supported by his right. This camera shot transition happens several times during this scene and each time the handgun switches hands.

As the hijacked truck turns right into Dotty the street lights reflect off the front and up the windscreen to the roof. But the windscreen had been ripped out minutes before.

When Big Nick's crew are tooling up Big Nick exits 'his office', is handed a mag from Tony Z(?) and loads the mag as he flags Tony.