Goofs

When Garber is shown the gun to be hidden in one of the money bags, it is a Walther PPK .380. Later, when he obtains the gun from the bag, it is a Kahr K9 9mm.

Ryder wears different watches. One a silver faced Brietling with no sub dials and when he is quizzing Garber about the phone he has a dark faced chronography with silver sub dials.

When Ryder is first recognized by folks at master control on the internet feed, he is in a short sleeve shirt. Then, on the next view of the same shot, he is wearing a jacket.

In the shootout between Emri and Bashkin and the police, the two bad guys get shot several times and you see the blood splatter from their bodies, although you have seen the two bad guys wear Kevlar vests in the train where they zip down their shirts.

When the money car is struck and rolls over, the light bar is knocked off the roof. When the car is shown flipping through the air and when it falls to the street, the bar is back on.

You cannot actually have a "2-way conversation" on a 2-way radio at the same time, meaning one person must speak at a time, release the talk button, and then must wait for a reply. During the movie, on several occasions, you see conversations with the subway car and central command speaking over each other like in a phone conversation. This is not possible using a 2-way radio.

The hijacked subway car is operated several times by a person sitting on the left hand side of the operating cab. All NYC subway cars are operated from the right side.

Towards the end of the film (1 hr 31m), Ryder checks his 'Gold Shares Activity' which reveals he turned a $2m purchase into more than $307m. This is an increase of over 15,000% and would never occur in reality.

Subway trains are numbered by the time they leave the originating station, on a 24 hour clock. Pelham 123 would leave Pelham Bay at 1:23 am. A train originating at 1:23 pm would be Pelham 1323.

The sniper accidentally shoots Ramos due to a rat crawling up his trouser leg, this would not have happened in a real life situation as a trained sniper would have been taught to keep his trigger finger on the trigger guard and only place his finger on the trigger once he was ready to shoot.

During the hostage situation, the kidnappers have net connection to buy stocks and watch the news about the incident. The girlfriend of George shares the the web camera feed online, so that the news stations can show them. But the kidnappers never see the feed on the channels they are watching. However, whichever station the girlfriend contacted may be keeping the feed as an exclusive, or the hijackers may not have watched that one channel out of the numerous options available.

There are no direct track connections between the Coney Island station and the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, but this is considered to be deliberate creative or logistical decisions by the film makers.

On the train there is a boy who has his girlfriend on webcam via laptop. Midway through the movie the laptop's battery dies and shows 0% power left. However closer towards the end the boy is somehow able to turn on the laptop, reconnect to the webcam service, and even utter a few words before it cuts to another scene. With 0% battery power this would be impossible.

When the police are racing through town to deliver the money a police car crashes into a taxi. The door flies off and it is very clear that there is no driver in the taxi.

Many times during the picture, the horns from Amtrak trains are heard - horns which could never be heard on a subway system.

It is clear that Denzel deliberately dumps the cup of coffee on himself. He holds the cup and tips it over.

Despite being killed by a direct head shot from the sniper, Ramos is clearly breathing when Ryder is checking the gold futures and talking to Garber.

The train hijacked was the 6 train. After the Mayor's staff leaves the train after informing him of the situation, the shot from outside the train shows that to also be a 6 train. With the situation at hand, the train the Mayor was on couldn't be the 6 and still running it's full route as indicated.

As they race the ransom money to the station, the police motorcycles all sound like high performance four-cylinder Japanese machines. They are clearly all twin cylinder BMW "R" series bikes. Fast enough - but quite different sounding.

When Walter is chasing Ryder through New York in the taxi cab, the truck makes the sounds of a V8 gasoline vehicle. The truck that he commandeers is a Ford Super Duty with a diesel Powerstroke engine.

The hijackers make their escape through a secret tunnel connecting the NYC subway system to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and this occurs around 33rd St. In fact, the Waldorf-Astoria is between 49th and 50th Sts; moreover, there is no such tunnel, although there is a tunnel connecting the Metro North Park Avenue train tunnel (not part of the NYC subway system) to the Waldorf-Astoria.

The exterior of the control room is the new South Ferry Terminal, not Grand Central Terminal as stated.

When the train is going really fast, you see a quick shot of Shea Stadium (blue facade showing a gate). Shea Stadium was located in Queens (it was demolished before the film's release), and the 6 line does not enter Queens at any point along the line. You also see a quick shot of it passing a 7 train which is the Flushing Line train that runs to Shea Stadium.

From the time the hijackers leave the train until just before the brakes are tripped, every station displayed in the control center to monitor the train's movement is in Manhattan and underground. However, numerous shots show the train above ground.

When the police pick up the money from the Federal Reserve, they are actually at the Federal Building/Post Office on Church Street, near the Trade Center.

When Garber is instructed by Lt. Staley in the use of the Walther PPK .380 he is told that the safety is on when the lever is up and off when it is down. This is the opposite of the safety's actual operation. When the lever is up, exposing a red dot, the safety is off. When down it is in the SAFE position.