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Thad Luckinbill, Lauren Chavez-Myers, Elsa Pataky, Michael Peña, Michael Shannon, Geoff Stults, Navid Negahban, Chris Hemsworth, Allison Gabriel, Kenneth Miller, Austin Stowell, Austin Hébert, and Trevante Rhodes in 12 Strong (2018)

Goofs

12 Strong

Edit

Continuity

The footage of an enemy soldier being shot at 54:13 is used again at 55:12.
When Lt. Col. Bowers, played by Rob Riggle, sips from a paper cup of coffee, you can tell that the coffee either wasn't in the cup at all or it was not at the level he pretended to sip out of. Because of the camera angle, we see that while he barely tips it to drink, below the rim the white inside of the coffee cup goes quite a ways down.

Factual errors

Since the BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher is a long range weapon, there is no point waiting for its reload time to attack the weapon. At close range, operators can be taken out any time.
When the SF members are dropping in at night, they all put on PVS14 night vision devices, and you can see a green glow from the front all the way to the eyepiece. This is incorrect because the PVS14 does glow green from the front lens. The idea of NVGs are they take light from the front lens, amplify it and it gives a green image through the eyepiece. You might be able to see the green glow on the operator's eye, depending on the angle you look at him, but you will never be able to see a green glow if you look at NODs from the front.
When the teams are calling in heavy bombers to engage targets, they state the target is "danger close". Danger close is within 600 meters, and the targets in this scene appear to be about 75-100 meters away. The bombs are dropped and the enemy is taken out. In fact, the bombs would also have killed the friendly forces, as the concussion of 250-lb. bombs (the smallest carried by heavy bombers) would kill within a 100-meter radius.

Incorrectly regarded as goofs

CNN does not broadcast cartoon shows. In spite of this, the television set in Captain Nelson's house switches from cartoons to breaking CNN news coverage of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. However, Nelson's daughter was holding the remote and pressing buttons, so it's very easy to assume she simply changed the channel from something that plays cartoons to CNN.

Revealing mistakes

In the close combat scenes, there are many instances of troops from both sides standing out in the open while firing, even though there's much rubble and many large rocks that they could use as cover. If real troops fought exposed like that, most would become casualties.
Although the film contains dozens of combat scenes during which hundreds of thousands of rounds are fired by the rifles and machine guns of both sides, nobody can be seen reloading.
Fairly early on, Capt. Nelson talks about "missiles" with a long i in the second syllable.

Audio/visual unsynchronised

When initially inserting in an open MH-47G, the team can be heard singing "The Ballad of the Green Berets". In fact, the inside of an aircraft like this is much too loud to hear people talking to you unless you are very close to them and practically screaming.
There's a clip of the BM-21 firing missiles where two soldiers' weapons appears be recoiling from firing multiple shots, however, there's no muzzle flash nor any sounds of gunfire. This very same clip is used two times throughout the fight.
There is an obvious voice over at, just after about 1:07 (maybe just before 1:07:15 exactly, depending on which version of the film you see). The speech changes, and sounds very superimposed. He gives a name, but the voice is different, and sounds in a studio.

Errors in geography

The opening scene has "September 11th, 2001, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, 7:45AM" when the child turns the TV to the news channel that reports "two planes hit the World Trade Center". Fort Campbell is in the Central Time Zone, which would make it 8:45AM New York time. The first plane hit the World Trade Center at 8:45AM, and the second plane hit at 9:03AM, both local time. If there was anything on the news at the time, it would have mentioned only the first plane, not both.

Character error

When Capt. Nelson is spotting for Air Support by heavy bombers, he states he needs to get closer to get the actual coordinates. In fact, if you can see the target and you have a map--which Nelson did--you can plot the coordinates easily on the map and give them to the aircraft or the Joint Air Controller. There is no need to 'get closer'.
In the description the warlord is called an Afghani. Afghani is the name of the currency of Afghanistan. A person from Afghanistan is called an Afghan.

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