Pearl howlers to make you cringe

Richard Simpson10 April 2012

Pearl Harbor is the most expensive film ever shot - but that didn't stop a string of glaring errors appearing in it.

Film fans have spotted more than 27 howlers in the £120 million war epic, which is set to become this year's big summer blockbuster.

In an article slating the film, website www.movie-mistakes.com has listed the errors in detail - everything from the wrong number of stars on the American flag to blanks being fired from anti-aircraft cannon.

The bloopers include a scene where Ben Affleck's character Rafe breaks his nose with a champagne cork - in one scene there is blood running down his right cheek. It disappears when the camera cuts back to him.

In another scene where Affleck's character is fighting for Britain, his plane is hit. As it goes down into the water, it is day. Later, when they show him swimming out of the plane and to the surface, it is night.

When Josh Hartnett's character, Danny, takes Kate Beckinsale's character, Evelyn, for a ride in a plane, there obviously has to be two people in the plane.

However, when the aircraft takes off, there is only one person inside.

In a scene in front of a hotel on the night before Affleck's character ships out to England, Kate Beckinsale puts a scarf around his neck. There is a camera shot from his back where he has no scarf, then another one from his front, and he's wearing the scarf again.

During the actual attack on Pearl Harbor, Affleck, along with a couple of others, jumps into a convertible car to drive to another airfield. The actual set they depart from, which is exploding all around them, is the same set they arrive at minutes later, but this time everything is intact.

And when Dorie, played by Cuba Gooding Jnr, fires an anti-aircraft cannon at the passing Japanese planes, you can clearly see the ammunition feed tray at the bottom right of the picture, full of crimp-ended - in other words blank - ammunition. No wonder he's not hitting anything.

Even the president - played by Jon Voight - cannot escape the howlers. When he is making his moving second speech, he says: "Tell that to the boys in the Flying Fortresses," and the film switches to a shot of General Doolittle's attack group flying above the Japanese coast. Sorry Mr President, the planes General Doolittle was in command of were B-25 Mitchells, not Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses.

And if that isn't bad enough, in one scene a very large American flag is hanging on the wall. It has 50 stars, but there should be 48 - Hawaii and Alaska were not states until 1959.

Movie-mistakes.com has been running since September 1996, and currently has 8,700 mistakes listed from 1,400 films.

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