Blooper

(at around 12 mins) When Swagger advises Payne not to call his dog, you can see that there is no license plate on the front of the vehicle; however, when Swagger comes out and takes a photo with his cell phone, it is magically there.

(at around 34 mins) When Swagger backs the car into the river, the trunk is open and you can see that there is no upholstery and it is empty. While in the car wash we see there are miscellaneous items and upholstery in the trunk.

(at around 1h 8 mins) When the three men torture Memphis, they shove water down his throat, but when they pull it away the bottle is full.

(at around 5 mins) Early on, when the two snipers face enemy hostiles, Donnie says, "Position to the machine gun. 900, three-quarter value. Fire when ready." Bob takes the shot and the machine gunner is killed, but in the next scene when Donnie says "Jefe. 920. Three quarter value," the same machine gunner is in the scene.

(at around 1h 7 mins) When Memphis is taken away in the van, you can see he drops his phone in the middle of the sidewalk, but in the next shot when the van is driving away it is on the curb.

(at around 27 mins) When the archbishop is shot, the sound of the rifle shot is heard at the same time as the bullet strikes. Depending on the speed of the bullet, it would take at least several seconds for the sound to reach the target.

(at around 1h 15 mins) The old man says they have used the "paper patching" method, which is wrapping a bullet in paper and shooting it, to shoot Swagger's bullet from the rifle that killed the Ethiopian archbishop. Such a method would drastically decrease the accuracy of the shot, making it actually impossible to make accurate shots at farther distances, like doing a headshot at 2 km away.

(at around 55 mins) When Nick investigates the church tower, he's interrupted by the church bells ringing a rather elaborate song. The camera then zooms out to an exterior of the tower with a clock that shows 2:40 - not the sort of time that would be marked by a special chime.

(at around 1h 50 mins) During the last DC meeting of the movie, the US Attorney General claims to have no jurisdiction over Colonel Johnson's crimes because they were committed outside the United States. This is incorrect. All military members serving on active duty (like the Colonel) are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice anywhere.

(at around 3 mins) In opening shots, Camp Lemonier is shown to be in Ethiopia. Camp Lemonier is located in Dijobuti.

When the "Ethiopian" archbishop appears with the President and is subsequently shot, the flag on the stage is actually the flag of Senegal rather than Ethiopia.

The above is not true. There are several flags surrounding the stage, e.g. the ones of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Angola, Somalia... The ones closest to the lectern are the American flag, the Ethiopian flag, the flag of Pennsylvania, and indeed the one of Senegal. When Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) looks at archbishop Mutumbo through binoculars, and he says, "And it is our responsibility," three flags can be spotted in the (16:9) frame: Stars and Stripes, Pennsylvania and Ethiopia, recognizable by its blue circle. There's no blue in the Senegalese flag.

(at around 9 mins) In the beginning when the guys who set up Swagger discuss him, they refer to him as the best USMC sniper, but his fatigues in the opening scene are in fact Army. The rest of the film calls him a Marine and refers to him as a Gunnery Sergeant, a Marine-only rank. This was a CIA-sponsored mission, and changing uniform would be a logical step in deflection, deception, and deniability.

(at around 1h 30 mins) In the shootout scene in Virginia, as Swagger runs for cover from the house, he changes a mag. When he pulls the charging handle, one can see a round eject from the rifle. If the magazine was empty, it would hold the bolt open with an empty chamber, and cycling the charging handle would not eject either an empty or full case.

Changing magazines even when the previous one it not fully empty is not uncommon in this situation. It ensures that Swagger enters the next engagement with a full magazine, while waiting until the magazine was empty would risk him running out of bullets at a critical moment.

(at around 7 mins) When the helicopter comes at the beginning of the movie, Swagger switches to a Barrett M82, which is a semi-auto rifle, but he is seen cycling the rifle by hand because the blanks being shot for filming did not produce enough pressure to work the action.

On the run after the assassination, Swagger is shot in the upper part of his right chest and his gray t-shirt is bloodied; however, when he enters the room from the alley to patch himself up, his t-shirt shows no sign of a bullet hole or any blood.

(at around 44 mins) When Nick Memphis scans through documents about Swagger, there is an article about Wimbledon Cup Winners. The photo shows Swagger, and the caption reads "Winner of the Wimbledon Cup" Sgt. Major Bob Lee Swagger. This is incorrect as Swagger is a Gunnery Sergeant, not a Sergeant Major.

Near the end of the movie after Swagger kills the Senator, Colonel Johnson, and their men and he breaks the gas line. If you pause the scene when the explosion goes off it shows 3 mannequins instead of the actors.

(at around 1h 30 mins) During the ranch scene just after the flashback to the helicopter gun-run, if one looks carefully enough, one can see on Swagger's M4 Carbine that the selector switch is on Semi-Automatic. Throughout the shootout, he fires on full-auto or in bursts.

When Swagger is watching the coffee shop where Sarah is giving Nick information he is challenged by two police officers, one being a dog handler. When it gets physical, the dog handler releases his dog which promptly grips an arm of the other police officer. During initial training of police dogs, they are trained to recognize the uniform of the agency of their handler so that if their handler is wounded another officer of the same agency can safely control the dog and secure it. This is also done to prevent the dog from attacking a police officer in the same agency. So in this scene, the dog would have immediately latched onto one of Swagger's arms or legs and not the other police officer.

During the ranch shootout, the henchmen can be seen using M4A1 carbines fitted with PVS-14 night vision optics despite the battle being in broad daylight.

When Swagger and Memphis spray the camouflage patterns on their rifles they use leaf fronds. But later, when they attack the ranch the camouflage patterns don't match to the use of Fronds.

Bob Lee Swagger is from Arkansas in the novels. Mark Wahlberg was born in Boston.

The movie offers no explanation as to why a protagonist who speaks with a noticeable northeastern accent shares a name with a Confederate war hero (Robert Lee).

When Swagger is watching the coffee shop where Sarah is giving Nick information he is challenged by two police officers, one being a dog handler. When it gets physical, the dog handler releases his dog which promptly grips an arm of the other police officer. During initial training of police dogs, they are trained to recognize the uniform of the agency of their handler so that if their handler is wounded another officer of the same agency can safely control the dog and secure it. This is also done to prevent the dog from attacking a police officer in the same agency. So in this scene, the dog would have immediately latched onto one of Swagger's arms or legs and not the other police officer.

Swagger refers to the Colonel's Chevrolet Suburban SUV as "new" but the vehicle was several years old by that point.

(at around 34 mins) When Swagger backs the car into the river, you can see a metal bar attached to the back bumper which was used to brace the impact of the car hitting the water, and to level out the car so it would sink evenly.

(at around 33 mins) During the Philadelphia chase scene, a sign for Hyack Tire can be seen, which is a Canadian store in British Columbia.

(at around 1h 35 mins) Lynchburg, Virginia and Bozeman Mt are 2,100 miles apart. There is no way that two drivers could cover that distance as discussed in the phone call to FBI HQ in 24 hours.

(at around 1h 35 mins) Towards the end of the movie, Memphis and Swagger stand on a bridge that is supposedly located outside of Bozeman, MT. (1) The terrain is not even close to that of the city of Bozeman. (2) There are three interstate overpasses in the city of Bozeman, and again, the terrain does not match any of the corresponding overpasses.

(at around 34 mins) When the Crown Vic is backed into the river, various camera angles show a very flat topography, which is consistent with Philadelphia. After the car is in the river, the first shot back toward the bridge clearly shows tall mountains in the background. No such mountains exist near Philadelphia.

(at around 34 mins) In the first car chase when Swagger tries to escape from the set-up, he is cornered by multiple police cars (just before he backs his car into the river). You can hear the police dispatcher call out over the scanner, "Suspect vehicle collided with a truck under the 95. He's at Market and Columbus." A Philadelphian would not refer to I-95 as "the" 95, but simply "95." The use of "the" to refer to a highway/freeway (e.g. "the 10", "the 405") is unique to Southern California.

(at around 1h 9 mins) Inexplicably, the three men who plan to kill Memphis and make it look like a suicide beat him bruised and bloody beforehand. These wounds would surely raise unwanted questions about the circumstances of his death.

(at around 1h 40 mins) In the mountain scene, Memphis walks toward the helicopter when he is shot. He later gets up and shows an armor plate on his chest with a shot center mass. Trouble is, all the snipers were behind him, not in front, and would have taken a head shot.

The bad guys possessed Swagger's rifle well before shooting. They could shoot from this very rifle. Therefore there would be no need in paper patch and they would find out that the rifle had been tampered with. So Bob Lee would have much more troubles claiming he is not guilty.

If the whole reason for the intravenous injection was to get a little bit of sugar and salt directly through the veins, Bob went to a lot of trouble and should have bought some Gatorade to drink by little sips instead so as not to risk a massive infection or electrolytes unbalance.

(at around 3 mins) When the Spotter (Donnie Fenn) gives his Sniper (Bob Lee Swagger) range info to their first target, he says "870 yards and closing" when in fact the target is moving AWAY from their position. Swagger shoots both the gunner in the back of the truck and the driver from behind. Subsequent targets approach in a "closing" direction of travel.

(at around 21 mins) When Swagger says the bullets are turned to make them slippery to lower Ballistic coefficient, he is wrong. The higher the number the better. If he had said coefficient of drag, that would be correct.

(at around 6 mins) During the first helicopter attack scene, snipers would never stand up and reveal their position while trying to shoot down a helicopter.

(at around 42 mins) When Swagger makes the supposed intravenous needle stick, he pushes the needle straight down. A properly made puncture runs parallel to the skin surface, not deeply perpendicular as was shown.

(at around 1h 45 mins) When Fenn fires the senator's sidearm on the mountaintop, only four rounds fire before the gun clicks empty and the slides goes back, meaning that either the senator had been busy with his gun earlier or he's in the habit of carrying around a barely loaded weapon.