The radio used in the film is a Heathkit SB-301 receiver only, and is, in reality, incapable of transmitting. See more...
Directed by Gregory Hoblit, starring Andre Braugher, Dennis Quaid, Elizabeth Mitchell, James Caviezel, Noah Emmerich (add more)
Genres: Action, Crime, Drama, Sci-fi, Thriller
Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.
In the scene where the killer and the father fight by the dock, you can see graffiti in the background. The tag name "Ness" is a name that is seen often in the New York area today, not in 1969. [So you are saying or suggesting that the name "Ness" didn't exist in 1969, neither did spraying a name on a wall.]
During the bit of the film where you see Dennis Quaid in the fire in the old warehouse, there is an explosion and one of the firemen gets caught in the back draught and is thrown to the floor but he is wearing a modern day fire suit when the incident happens in 1969. [The only fireman who hits the ground in the Buxton fire scene is wearing the exact same kind of gear as everyone else. Considering there were no firefighting scenes in 'modern day' in the movie, it would seem rather unlikely for there even to be a modern suit on set.]
In the scene when the fuel tanker is crash and has flipped, you can see a cable attached to the end of it, pulling it along. [That's not any kind of a pulling cable, that's the umbilical where the cab used to be attached to the trailer. After the jackknife, the cab separates and is off-screen to the right, moving away, and you see the umbilical snap.]
In the burning fire in the warehouse, Dennis Quaid throws his helmet out of the top floor window then grabs the small child and goes down a helter skelter type slide. Inexplicably he and the child reach ground level before his helmet despite the helmet getting a good head start and a helping hand from gravity. [Actually, you see the helmet reach the ground once (at 0:41:21), quite a bit earlier than the two do. However, the shot is later repeated, to artistically coincide with Dennis and the child splashing down, and Jim Caviezel's drink hitting the bar floor in 1999 (around 0:42:03).]
In the scene when he wants to interrupt the 2nd murderer he uses a Mastercard to open the door - at that time they were still called MasterCharge. [In frame-by-frame viewing on DVD, it shows as the era-correct "MasterCharge".]
Father and son talk with each other via a old-fashioned 60's radio and don't need to press the button. They sometimes even talk both at the same time without having a full-duplex radio. [The actors show astonishment and make a deliberate point to accentuate the fact that they don't have to push the buttons to talk. I think this clearly shows that something "magical" is happening and should be cut some slack from the realm of electronics.]
When Dennis Quaid is locked in the room in the police station he sets off a sprinkler with a flame from an aerosol can in 1969. Surely it would have been filled with CFC gas as a propellant which is not flammable. Aerosol cans burn today as the propellant is butane and propane. I believe the first non-CFC aerosols were introduced in the early 1980s. [I used to do this with hairspray in the 1960's. It wasn't the cfc gas that ignited, but the other substance in the can itself.]
When the son contacts the father and saves him from the fire, that causes the mother to fall victim to the serial killer. After that transmission, the son calls his mom and gets her answering machine. In the morning he calls again and it's a deli instead. The event causing his mom to fall victim should have been initiated right after the transmission; therefore, he wouldn't have got her answering machine. [The son calls the mom before the dad visits her in the hospital. When the dad visits later, she is still at the hospital to save the killer's life from the doctor. Only when the killer's life is extended is the mother's life affected.]
How could the killer have left fingerprints on the wallet if he got his hand blown off? [The fingerprints were left on the wallet when Frank was beaten up in the bathroom before getting framed for the murder of Sissy Clark. The hand wasn't blown off until Frank convinced Satch of the real killer who later showed up at the Sullivan household. Even if the order was the other way round, fingerprints are found on both hands and he only lost one.]
Corrected by Garlonuss
In the scene where the father is in the burning building, he throws his helmet out the window before he jumps out. You see the helmet fall and hit the ground, him hit the water, then the helmet hit the ground again. [The scene is intentionally replayed, because the second time the helmet hits the ground, it shows that he has a picture of his family inside it.]
After Dennis Quaid tells the cop (the friend of the families) about the radio he tells him what is going to happen in the baseball game which is being showed on the television to try prove it to him, then later when the same cop is talking to Dennis Quaid's wife in the restaurant about what is going to happen to her husband, which is a sensitive subject, he stands up and leaves the table to watch the game. We, know why he is doing this but she seems quite content to let him leave an important conversation just to watch a game. [The wife is noticibly confused by his withdrawal to go and watch a game, but she is also just now hearing her husband is accused of murder. She is still in total shock and disbelief.]
How is it that chief didn't know that murderer was going to be there in present time? And if he didn't, how did Dennis Quaid know? And don't you think think thirty years would have been plenty of time for the murderer to exact his revenge? It seems to me that they folded time one time too many and didn't figure out whether or not a one-handed identified serial killer would have been caught. [The time in the film crosses over by exactly thirty years. Dennis Quaid's character heard the shots coming over the radio as he wrestled with the killer so he would be able to work out the date and time thirty years in the future at which John was attacked by the murderer.]
In the scene where the Father decides to give up smoking, his wife handed him a pack of Marlboro's, but when they show them again crumpled and being thrown in the trash, they are Camel's. [I am not sure if this was changed for the video release but I just watched the movie and they are Camels throughout.]
When Frank is teaching his son to ride the bike both times, John is wearing a helmet. Kids didn't wear helmets on bikes in the sixties. [John is wearing a baseball helmet rather than a bike helmet. More than likely his dad got him to wear it because he keeps falling off.]
When Frank goes to the Buxton fire he is remembering what John told him about how he died/will die in the fire by going the wrong way to get out. So Frank, when confronted with a choice of two exits, chooses one and reaches safety. How could he be sure that his choice was right, since this is the first time he has been in this particular situation, and he has no idea which exit he took/will take, to reach safety the first time, since there wasn't a first time as far as he is concerned? THIS is his first time. This would be the classic dilemma, and totally unsolvable. [It's not quite as simple as that, since the son told the father that "you went with your instincts, if you'd have gone the other way..." The father's instincts as a firefighter would have made him take the route with fewer flames, the way he starts going. He doesn't "remember" a wrong choice but he remembers the conversation he had the night before and goes against his instinctive choice.]
You may also like: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me | South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut | Dangerous Minds | Twilight | Where The Heart Is
