Goofs

During the Cortez/Cutter conversation in the Panama hotel room, Cortez says, "No more senseless violence, you'll have your victory." When Ryan plays the tape to distract Cortez, the tape has Cortez saying, "No more violence," missing out on the "senseless".

In the beginning of the film, the Coast Guard cutter is pursuing the Enchanter in seas that are at least 10 to 15 feet. Yet when the small boat is deployed to board the Enchanter, the ocean is flat calm.

When Cortez arrives at Moira's house in the woods, there is frost on the hood of his car. Even if we ignore the fact that it should have been thawed from the drive, it's gone in the next shot.

In the opening sequence, the dinghy's line of approach towards the Enchanter is totally different in the onboard shot and the aerial shot.

In the beginning of the film, two Coast Guardsmen are sent to man the forward gun. As they leave the hatch, the first is wearing an orange jacket while the second wears an orange vest over a dark blue shirt. In the next shot as they move forward along the rail, the man in the orange jacket is now behind the man in the vest. In the next shot as they approach the gun, both are now wearing orange vests over dark blue shirts. Next, we see a tighter shot as the man in the orange jacket mans the gun, followed by a longer shot where both are now back to wearing the vests.

In the scene where Jack has access to Ritter's computer, Jack is seen viewing and printing files. Then Ritter discovers Jack's diversionary phone call, so Ritter begins to delete the same files from the disk, and eventually clears the screen of the file Jack was accessing. Disk operating systems of all kinds do not allow an open file, the file Jack was printing, to be deleted; thus, Jack should have been able to keep the file open as long as he wanted to and print or copy to another disk to use as evidence against Ritter.

The apparent 'supercomputer/codebreaker' that Petey uses to hack into Ritter's system is actually the Powderhorn system, a tape backup library made by StorageTek that includes magnetic tape cartridges and a robotic arm to retrieve the cartridges and load into a tape drive. So unless Ritter saved his password on a hard drive and it was backed up to a tape cartridge, this data storage system would not help Petey hack into Ritter's system.

A motorcade containing VIPs at the level of the FBI director would never have taken backstreets to reach any location. Major roadways and highways would be cleared and secured simply because they would be easier to protect and because they would allow for faster transit. Or, failing that, the VIPs would have been transported by helicopter to get them to their destination(s) faster and safer.

After the ambush, Jack checks for a pulse with his thumb. As a former marine and husband to a doctor he should have enough knowledge to know to never check for a pulse with the thumb as this is basic medical knowledge.

After Petey is assigned his "special program" to break into Ritter's computer, he is seen typing a code that is non-functional. He is assigning constant values to a character variable that is 13 digits long, which is a base 10 number so large that a computer at that time could not possibly address it or store it in memory, and, furthermore, there is no known computer language that includes two equals signs as modals between the variable (e.g., "x") and the numeric constant - the assigned number; only one equals sign is used to assign variables, regardless of the computer language or platform. What is shown is all gibberish.

When Ryan confronts Ritter about the Reciprocity operation, Ritter brandishes his autographed "Get out of jail free card", which says that the President has authorized Reciprocity as it is important to national security. In that case, even if Ryan does not have a copy himself, the existence of that paper means that Ryan's actions are legitimate - unless the President's actions are deemed to be illegal as well. This wouldn't shield Jack from Congressional action regarding his testimony that there would be "no troops", however. The president can authorize military action, but when testifying before Congress, you tell them that's what's happening, even if you need to do so behind closed doors.

The skipper of the Coast Guard cutter is wearing the Officer Corps emblem on her ballcap. Officers in the Coast Guard always wear their rank devices on their ballcaps.

When Ryan buried the dead soldier near the river, Chavez told Ryan and Clark that "They were taking Captain Oso". Oso or Julio Vega was a sergeant. Ramirez was the captain and the credit title agrees with this.

If you listen carefully, as is confirmed by the closed captioning on the DVD, Chavez actually says "They were taking the Captain and Oso" not "Captain Oso."

At one point, Jack Jr. says of the toy sub he is playing with in the sink, "It won't float," to which Jack replies, "It's a submarine, it goes under water, it's not supposed to float." Submarines both submerge and float, as when running surfaced, so Jack's claim is inaccurate.

Jack was explaining a simple concept to a toddler who was expecting the submarine to float like a conventional boat, clearly there was no need to go overboard in his explanation to the child.

When the President enter the press room for the press conference, protocol dictates that everyone in the room stand up but nobody attempts to do so.

This protocol is not always observed when the press conference is held in the press room because the reporters up front need to give the cameras in the back of the room full access to photograph and film the President as he approaches the lectern.

The laser-guided bomb dropped by the F/A-18 has a blue casing, which means that it is a dummy/practice round. Live bombs are painted olive green.

When the US squad is ambushed, the point man who was a mile away rushes back. In the scene that he first views the enemy over his squad mates, He hunkers down behind a rock supposedly at a sufficient distance he remains undetected. Unfortunately, for a couple of seconds an enemy soldier is visible moving up and down on the rocks directly behind him.

When Jack Ryan is printing the Reciprocity files he finds he needs paper for the printer. When he opens the printer tray there is already paper in the tray and he then loads more and closes the tray, but fails to do so properly. In this position the printer would fail to print.

The laser guiding the cellulose bomb was aimed clearly on the large yellow pick-up truck in the driveway in front of the hacienda. This leads to the media speculation that a truck bomb went off. Yet, Ryan's intelligence photos of the aftermath of the explosion clearly shows a crater in the center of the compound, away from where the laser was aimed.

During the battle at the cocaine processing facility, one soldier's rifle has a quadrant sight for the M203 grenade launcher mounted to the carry handle, yet there is no M203 on the rifle.

Clark cannot contact his commando team after Ritter and Cutter shut down the satellite feed. Yet, the CIA station chief (Jean Fowler) in Bogota can pick up their pleas for support on her station's receiver. She plays them for Jack over the telephone, which is how he finds out the commandos have been abandoned. She should have lost contact, too.

When Cutter ends the sat transmissions between the troops performing Operation Reciprocity and Clark, the soldier's mission didn't end. There should have been a contingency for this event including the troops evacuating themselves to a nearby city and Clark then using local resources to extricate them.

The F/A-18 used to drop the cellulose bomb is clearly marked as a VFA-125 aircraft. VFA-125 is a training squadron and their aircraft would never be used in an operational environment.

When the President and Cutter are alone in the conference room talking about their "little war" and Cutter suggests, "I think it's time the whole thing went away," the President replies, "Then it should go away. It never happened..." to which Cutter replies, "Yes, sir", but Cutter's lips don't move.

After the special operations team drops the satchel charge into the cocaine processing facility, a soldier on the right side of the frame can be seen firing his rifle to cover the team's retreat, but the rifle's report cannot be heard.

During the scene in which Ryan's motorcade is being attacked from the rooftops, many of the motorcade people jump out of their vehicles, and return fire with handguns. In one shot, a ground shooter fires at one of the thugs, and apparently hits him. However, the target grasps his abdomen, and plunges off the roof... before the shot is heard.

As the rescue helicopter approaches the village to pick up Clark, Ryan, and the prisoners, a reflection of the crew's helicopter is briefly visible in its side window.

Bell helicopters are flown from the right seat, as is properly depicted in the final rescue sequence where scroungy pilot Tom Bower is shown alone at the controls. There are however, several fly-bys where another person can be seen in the left seat. In a dual control cockpit, this is where a co-pilot would sit, or in this case, the film pilot who was doing the actual flying.

When Clark is trying to get hold of the team from his hotel room in Colombia, you can clearly see out the window a billboard that says "Colosio", a Mexican presidential candidate.

After the ambush in Colombia, European-style Doppler sirens are heard. All Latin American police uses American-made klaxon sirens.

When Clark's black-ops team blows up the Colombian drug plane, the aircraft's tail number is clearly visible. A tail number is similar to a license plate on a car and each aircraft has its own unique number. All civil aircraft registered in the US will have a tail number beginning with N. The tail number of the aircraft in this scene is N825WD. Since the plane is on a Colombian drug plantation, the aircraft would likely have a Colombian tail number beginning with the letters HK, not N. In real life, the aircraft is registered to a private aviation business in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.

The picture on the wall when Ryan visits Escobedo's house to prove Cortez's foul play, is of Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, a prominent 19th century Mexican politician (the action supposedly takes place in Colombia.)

Even though the satellite link was shut down, Clark's men were still using hand-held radios which transmit over the airwaves; thus, Clark should have had no problem communicating with them using the equipment shown in his hotel room.

Felix Cortez was shown to be an exceptional intelligence agent, but then is shown making three serious errors:

1) He allows himself to be recorded speak to the National Security Adviser in a Panama hotel - If anything Cortez would have suggested using another room to discuss sensitive matters as his room or the adviser's may have been bugged. 2) He leaves Moira's body in the open - Had he placed her in the bed or disposed of her remains outside and nearby the cabin, it could have slowed the or halted any investigation into her death. As it was he made the connection between himself and Moira when his actions were meant to prevent such a link being made. 3) He had no operatives within Escobedo's inner circle to contact him if/when something went wrong - When Jack Ryan arrived at the Escobedo estate, Cortez should have been informed instead of being surprised when Ryan was at Lindo Coffee before he arrived.

Felix Cortez is supposed to be a master at spy craft, yet he allows his voice to be recorded on Moira's answering machine, which had beeped and picked up before she answered the phone. He even indicates awareness of the recording device when he tells Moira to shut it off. He should have simply hung up without saying a word and called back in this circumstance.

While Ritter and Clark sit in the cafe discussing Clark's new operation, Clark has left an envelope open with the name of the operation clearly and publicly visible in large letters: RECIPROCITY. No trained intelligence operative would ever do something so stupid.

Despite the premise that Clark is an experienced intelligence agent he fails to account for Escobedo's absence from the cartel meeting. This is preposterous given that Escobedo is the cartel member directly connected with Harding's murder and the resulting US operations in Colombia.

Before they knew that Felix Cortez was the unidentified inside man for Escobado's drug cartel before he turned on him, at the cafe earlier when he met Moira inside, Cathy got a full second or two look at him, since he was turned towards her while she was approaching. Therefore, it is not believable that she could not identify his photograph after Jack returned from the ambush fiasco in Colombia that got Dan and his team killed.