Errores

When Harry is following Scorpio's instructions to run from phone booth to phone booth, he boards the subway. When he arrives at his destination, it is the exact same station as the one where he boarded.

Callahan finds the note at the beginning stuck on the prong of an antenna. While the note is being reviewed in the Mayor's office, there's no visible hole made by the prong.

Before Harry clicks on the empty chamber for the bank robber, you hear and see him pull the hammer back to fire in single-action mode. However, when the camera faces Harry and he actually does pull the trigger, it is in double action, indicated by the fact that you see the cylinder spin again.

The white pillarless sedan seen during the bank robbery scene (not the getaway car - which is a 1966 Ford Galaxie 500) changes from a 1970 Ford Galaxie to a Torino (where Harry walks up to the bank robber where he does the famous line of 'six shots or only five').

In the scene where Harry is preparing to deliver the ransom money to Scorpio, he tapes a switchblade knife to his leg. The knife is positioned with the bolster or tip pointing upward. In the later scene at the cross, Harry pulls up his pant leg and exposes the knife - it is clearly pointing downward, the opposite of the way he taped it earlier.

Some considerable time after the first shooting, the police have arrived and Callaghan has climbed up to the roof from where the shooting took place. Yet when he looks down to the rooftop swimming pool, the blood in the pool is still only in one small area, instead of having been dispersed in the water.

Despite the fact that the "Chief" wears the correct 'star' of the SFPD, he only wears three gold stars on his lapels; three stars is the insignia for Assistant Chief; an actual Chief would wear four stars.

The mayor's explanation of why Scorpio's rights were violated and he will be set free makes no exception for the fact that Callahan was assaulted during the money drop. Harry was following proper police procedure and the assailant was clearly proven to be Scorpio after he was treated at the hospital for a leg wound.

When Scorpio is baited to come after the priest, Harry is wielding a Winchester Model 70 in .458 Winchester Magnum. In the ensuing shootout, Harry fires 6 rounds without reloading. In reality, the size of the .458 Win Mag case is so large that it limits the magazine capacity to 3 (2 in some rifles). With one round in the chamber, the maximum number of rounds he could have fired without reloading is four.

The killer is quickly identified as using a 30.06 rifle, one of the most powerful in the world with an effective range up to 3,500 yards, having a muzzle velocity of about 2,700 feet-per-second and over 2,400 foot-pounds of force. In the first scene, the killer is only 300 yards from his target, and from that distance, the bullet (150-grain) would have traveled completely through the woman's body and kept going, and not just stopped after hitting her scapula (shoulder blade bone).

It is often claimed that Harry is incorrect when he refers to the .44 Magnum as the most powerful handgun in the world. Technically, he is and he isn't. In 1971, the .44 Magnum (developed in 1957) was the most powerful commercially available handgun in the world, meaning it fired the most powerful production cartridge. This means it was the most powerful handgun round made by ammo companies and sold on the market. In 1971, the .454 Casull (developed in 1959) was more powerful than the .44 Magnum, but the .454 Casull wasn't produced commercially until 1983, so Harry is inaccurate in stating that it is the most powerful handgun in the world, but he is accurate in stating that it is the most powerful handgun available for use.

Harry Callahan is referred to several times as Inspector 71 but when we see his badge at the end of the film it clearly says Inspector 2211. However, many police departments have set radio IDs for certain positions (e.g. Homicide detectives), and these have nothing to do with the badge number of the person filling that role.

At the end of the bank robbery Harry delivers his famous line which includes "Did I fire 5 times or 6"? Some viewers have suggested that Harry fired only 4 times, but in actuality you only see Harry fire 4 times - if you listen carefully you hear 6 shots.

When Harry is waiting for the school bus to drive under the bridge, you see Harry crouch as the bus approaches, as if to jump on the roof. In the next shot, you can see Harry in the reflection of the bus windscreen, actually standing upright.

He wasn't crouching, he was stepping down to the lower part of the overpass. Then he stood upright (at 01:36:00).

When the police officer on the rooftop where Scorpio shot the Russell boy calls down to the scene and Harry Callahan on the handheld radio, there is a noticeable delay especially obvious when the officer on the roof points to the 30-06 shell casing. The radios are line of sight (not through a dispatch or tower arrangement) and thus the timing of dialog and motion would be in sync, not displaced in time as if routing through connection centers (as in police headquarters for car radios).

Car or hand-held, the radios have to go through dispatch to avoid confusing cross talk between each of them.

Throughout the first scene in the police station (where Harry first meets Chico), Harry is "drinking" from an empty coffee cup.

During Harry's visit to the Mayor's office, cable car bells are heard ringing intermittently. This particular sound would, in reality, be inaudible since the cable car routes don't pass anywhere near City Hall. Closest routes on California and Powell streets are several blocks away.

As the dead girl is being put onto the stretcher, she moves her foot.

When the Ford sedan at the bank robbery hits the flower stand and fire hydrant you can see the smoke from the "log cannon" used to flip the car coming out from underneath. Then, in an overhead shot, the wire coming from the trunk used to set off the charge is visible running off screen left.

At the cross on Mount Davidson, Scorpio makes Harry toss his gun a good distance away onto concrete, which would cause noticeable damage to the revolver's blued finish. However, in the final scene (when Harry again delivers his famous speech,) there is no visible damage to the weapon.

The family portrait of two children in the office of both Lt. Bressler and in the office of District Attorney Rothko is the same.

When Harry is at hospital after initial bank robbery scene where he was shot in the leg, the Dr. goes to cut off Harry's slacks to tend to the bullet wound, Harry objects stating the price of the slacks being costly thus not wanting to ruin them, so he takes them off himself. The slacks are already ruined do to the bullet hole, so cutting them off shouldn't be an issue.

In the opening scene, Scorpio is tracking the swimming girl through his scope, which provide the POV for the camera. As he shoots, the cross hairs are removed and the camera shows the girl from the same angle. However, when the girl is hit, the bullet hole is below the right shoulder and as such has to be from a bullet fired from at least 90 degrees to the right of the camera, there is no way Scorpio could have hit her where he hit from his supposed position on the other building.

If you watch the scene again Scorpio is positioned to her left when she jumps in the pool and she is swimming her 3rd length of the pool when Scorpio shoots her putting him to her left again. Scorpio then shoots her in her left shoulder as opposed to her right shoulder which is certainly possible from where he was positioned.

The angle of a shot can't be determined by a quick look at a bullet hole. Bullets don't have to enter at 90°.

In the scene where Harry Callahan shoots Scorpio in the leg on the football field, as he walks towards him, Scorpio shouts out, "Don't do anything more! No! No!" If you look at his face however, you can see his mouth is not moving to what he is saying.

When Scorpio is singing row, row, row your boat on the bus(134:08), the camera cuts to him sitting with the driver and his mouth movements don't fit to the audio track.

When Harry caused the car to crash into the fire hydrant, a cable can be seen attached to the back of the car, that was used to help pull the car onto its side.

Scorpio is released from custody despite:

1. Possessing an illegal machine gun 2. Shooting a police officer 3. Shooting AT two police officers 4. Fleeing the scene of a crime. 5. Being the suspect in multiple homicides

The film doesn't explain why he was released from custody, regardless of Harry's actions, especially since the first crime was a federal, not a state, offense.

Near the end of the movie, Scorpio directs the mayor to provide an airplane for his escape at Santa Rosa airport. When he hijacks the bus, he directs the bus driver to exit the 101 northbound at Sir Francis Drake Blvd - which makes no sense, as Santa Rosa Airport is some 50 miles north of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

The children on the hijacked bus sing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm". Normally somebody would need to lead and say what specific barnyard animal was owned by Old MacDonald. Instead the entire choir picks the same animal in unison and without prompting.

When Scorpio hits the liquor store owner with the bottle of Seagrams, no liquid from the bottle spills about, on the counter, clothing or his hands.