Goofs

In the scene where Hank Deerfield is trying to access his son's financial records via his laptop, he is talking to his wife on the phone. When the camera is on him, he is holding the handset to his ear but when the camera is on the laptop, the phone is visible to the right of the laptop and the handset is on-hook. The logo of a dial-up ISP is displayed on the laptop as it's downloading e-mail. If the laptop is connected to the ISP, he couldn't be using the phone line to make a voice call.

The position of Sanders' arms and the way she is carrying the Bible change between shots as she says goodbye to Deerfield.

Evie (aka "Madame") identifies Penning in the photo with Mike with the photo in the middle of a pile and under some other photos. In a the longer shot, she is seen to have her finger on a photo which is on top of all the others and which actually has three soldiers in the photo.

When Sanders hears about the drowning, she is in an office building with daylight outside. But by the time she gets to the scene, it appears to be the middle of the night. The passage of time expected would be too short for this to occur.

When Sanders is looking at the murder scene in the daylight, the shadows are diffuse when looking towards her from the car and there is a large shadow between her and the car. The next shot from behind her shows brighter sunlight with sharp distinct shadows, and the shadow between her and the car has disappeared.

Hank, a truck driver, reads an email discussing a "weigh bill." The proper term is "waybill."

Tommy Lee Jones says a soldier is "back from liberty." "Liberty" is a Navy/Marine term, and would never be used by a career Army man.

Barry Corbin says a soldier "joined the 82nd Airborne." You can't "join" a unit in the Army. You join the Army and the Army assigns you to a unit.

The photo of the boy lying in the street is in landscape/horizontal format. When Mike takes the photo with his phone he takes in portrait/vertical format.

Actually, many phones from that time period took landscape photos when held vertically. The phone in question, the Nokia 3650, worked like this.

The first video downloaded from the camera phone shows elaborate well-focused telephoto work, as well as a high crane shot of the native people. This type of video could not be shot by the tiny cell phone or by person less than about fifteen feet tall.

After the crime scene is handed to the army, Hank Deerfield is seen rolling out of bed, a shot of his feet landing on the carpet shows pressure imprints of socks on his ankles indicating he had just removed socks, which as he just rolled out of bed wouldn't be the case.

The envelope holding the folded flag would have to be much larger than the prop used in the film.

Hank checks his web-mail in one of the opening scenes early in the morning. His inbox shows just one unread mail. However in the top-right of the screen is displayed that he has of 1 of 2 messages.

The opening subtitle says that the Deerfields live in "Munro, Tennessee", but the address on the side of Hank's truck says "Munroe, Tennessee".

Hank checks his web-mail in one of the opening scenes early in the morning. The laptop screen shows it's November 1st, 2004. Hank has one unread email in his inbox. When opening that mail it shows that it has been sent later that day in the afternoon.

When Hank and Det. Sanders go to the chicken restaurant, they ask elaborate questions to try to track the associations of Mike. However, they never ask if surveillance video exists, and do not notice the very obvious security camera domes on the soffit over the cash register. These are (probably) to see customers and to see the cash register (to keep employees from skimming or short changing), and would have answered many questions immediately.