In the opening scene Lassen has blood all over the front of his shirt after killing a bunch of the German sailors. After they blow up the German patrol boat the blood is suddenly gone from Lassen's shirt.
At 45:48 into the movie, as Heinrich and Marjorie are sitting at a table in Herons' Casino Bar, Heinrich opens his cigarette holder in which there are 10 cigarettes. In the next shot, after he's taken one out, there are only 8 cigarettes left instead of 9.
On the train when Heron takes the suitcase from Stewart after she's stopped by the German officer, he takes it with his left hand while holding his hat in his right hand. The camera angle switches to behind them and suddenly he's holding the suitcase in his right hand and his hat in his left hand.
During the attack at the outpost where Apple was being held, Lassen kills the last 2 soldiers facing each other and has 4 arrows in his hand. Yet after his shot in the next frame he has no arrows left, didn't fire anymore and only dropped his bow.
All the radio messages that are sent to England are portrayed as being sent and received in plain text. However, radio operators receiving wireless messages would have recorded what they received and passed the message on for decoding. Decoding was carried out by other personnel. This protocol was essential for security so that only a few people knew what messages were being received, from where, and from whom.
The head of the Special Operations Executive was known by the initials CD. M was a fiction created by Ian Fleming, for the Bond novels. The head of The Secret Intelligence Service was known as C, after Mansfield Cumming, a former head who signed documents with the first letter of his surname.
"Mack The Knife," from Bertolt Brecht's leftist play The Threepenny Opera, plays twice in Nazi company. Brecht was a communist who fled Nazi Germany, and The Threepenny Opera was in fact banned by the Nazis for being "degenerate art."
The U Boot crews didn't wear "Kulis" (dress uniform) during service. That was reserved for land.
When the team rendezvous with HMS Violet. HMS Violet is flying a Royal Navy white ensign from her bow. However the white ensign is flown from the stern of Royal Navy warships. The bow would be flying the standard union flag. The flag pole at the front of the ship is called the 'Jack staff', and the flag flown from it the 'jack'. Which is the reason the Union Flag is often referred to as the "Union Jack", because historically the first time most of the world's population saw it was when it was flying from the front of a Royal Navy ship.
During a German air raid over London, Prime Minister Winston Churchill is staying at his official residence located at 10 Downing Street in London, risking being killed in the bombing. During the war and especially during air raids, essential British military and government staff worked and slept in a huge underground shelter complex in London. Churchill, however, preferred his own bed on the top floor of his home at 10 Downing Street; he would even go out into the street or on rooftops to watch the bombers fly overhead.
During the raid to steal the freighter which is fully loaded and further weighted down with extra armor the men tow the freighter with only one tugboat, despite having stolen two more tugboats. Once they were clear of the harbor and its breakwater they would have needed the two other tugboats to tow the ship because of currents and weather.
When Churchill is explaining the mission he says "If they're captured by the British..." but Fernando Po is under Spanish control. He's of course referring to the possibility of getting caught by British forces at sea, which almost happens in the movie.
At 40:10, Heinrich Luhr says (in German), "I have to say she's pretty smart... Maybe just a little too smart." If you watch his lips and teeth, you can see they are a VFX shot and don't quite look real. This is possibly because the line was changed after the scene was shot.
At around 31 min, when Freddy is manning the big machine gun and gunning down all soldiers leaving the classroom, while he is panning towards the right, a soldier appears next to a truck and even though the machine gun destroys everything, the soldier remains untouched.
Luhr says "Horowitz and Meyer, West 47th Street. Have you heard of them?"
Marjorie responds, "I am familiar, of course, with Horowitz and Haim.
But they're in the WEST side of the city."
West 47th street is, of course, ON the west side.
West 47th street is, of course, ON the west side.
The film is set during the Blitz of London, which ended in May 1941. However, during the first sequence with Churchill, the newsreel being played shows the sinking of HMS Barham and the attack on Pearl Harbor, which happened in November and December 1941, respectively. Also, it seems odd that Churchill uses a reel of the attack on Pearl Harbor as an example of the casualties of the war in Europe, especially against U-boats.
The cigarette lighters used by both Heinrich and Marjorie are fuelled by liquefied gas that was only adopted in the 1950s.
At the party at Heron's Casino Bar, the jazz band's drummer is seen playing Istanbul cymbals. First Istanbul cymbals were produced in 1980.
When Henry Cavill is talking to Cary Elwes about the mission, he reaches into a box of cigars. The cigars are Fuente OpusX, which weren't produced until 1995. Churchill also only smoked Cuban cigars, usually Romeo y Julieta.
A modern radar mast is visible on La Duchessa in several shots. While radar had been invented by the time the movie is set, it was advanced technology reserved for the military, and impossible to have for an ordinary Italian cargo vessel.
When Heinrich Luhr orders the pursuit of the stolen Duchessa speaking German, English subtitles significantly differ from what Luhr is actually saying. Also U-Boats and S-Boats are mixed up:
"If we don't get the Duchessa back, we'll lose control over the Atlantic entirely. Then the Führer is going to come and will tear up our a...hole personally. So send off the U-Boats, I want my ship back."
"If we don't get the Duchessa back, we'll lose control over the Atlantic entirely. Then the Führer is going to come and will tear up our a...hole personally. So send off the U-Boats, I want my ship back."
When allied agents steal and transmit documents from a Nazi train in the Ivory Coast it is clearly night time. Special Operations receive these by Morse code in real time in London where it is broad daylight. London and Cote d'Ivoire are both geographically GMT time zone.
When the crew are done reviewing the plan to rescue their man from the Nazi garrison, Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) tells one of his men, "Freddy, bag the kit, silence the weapons."
The Sten Mk II(S) sub-machine guns the men are using are integrally suppressed, meaning that the suppressors are permanently built into the firearm at the factory. Other models of Sten sub-machine guns could have a suppressor added to them in the field, but the model used by the members of No. 62 Commando in the film are the integrally suppressed variety, Sten Mk. II(S), so no one would have needed to suppress the weapons as they were already suppressed.
The Sten Mk II(S) sub-machine guns the men are using are integrally suppressed, meaning that the suppressors are permanently built into the firearm at the factory. Other models of Sten sub-machine guns could have a suppressor added to them in the field, but the model used by the members of No. 62 Commando in the film are the integrally suppressed variety, Sten Mk. II(S), so no one would have needed to suppress the weapons as they were already suppressed.
At 28:16 Major Phillipps misidentifies two German generals as Gestapo officers. Both "generals" look quite young for the rank. Gestapo personnel would wear civilian clothing or gray uniforms with black collar tabs denoting rank.
Gustavus "Gus" March-Phillipps, as seen here, spelled his last name with three 'P' and not two, as the movie claims.
Captain Binea is supposed to be a Spanish officer, yet the actor playing him is Brazilian (Henrique Zaga) and when he speaks in Spanish he doesn't have an accent that resembles the way any Spaniard speaks.
When the Swedish military asks him a question, Anders Lassen speaks with a Norwegian accent! But he is Danish.