Goofs for
American Gangster (2007)
Revealing mistakes: Moses Jones (played by RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan) sports a prominent Wu-Tang Clan tattoo on his left upper arm, especially visible in the first briefing scene of the newly formed narcotics unit. Additionally, upon close examination, the tattoo features his name ‘RZA’ set inside the Wu-Tang Clan logo.
Anachronisms: Just after Frank hears the news of the imminent fall of Saigon on TV and goes to ring his contact, we see a modern car drive past the window.
Anachronisms: The subway train shown going into the Manhattan Valley tunnel was built in 1986.
Errors in geography: The scene where Richie and his partner find money in the trunk of a car has a caption that says “New Jersey”. The view in the beginning of the scene is of the Williamsburg Bridge, which connects Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to the Lower East Side in Manhattan.
Anachronisms: In some scenes we can see Citicorp Center. This building was not present in the early 1970s.
Revealing mistakes: In some scenes when snow is falling, the broad-leaf trees in the background have green (summer) leaves.
Anachronisms: In the scene set in 1968 where Frank prepares to call his cousin in Bangkok for the first time, an Internet URL is clearly seen on a billboard across the street.
Anachronisms: Frank drives past a sign saying I-395, when in fact, the road in Washington, D.C. was not named so until the late seventies.
Anachronisms: The law books Richie Roberts is studying for class are festooned with 3M Post-it notes: they weren’t invented until 1977, and were available nationally in 1980.
Continuity: When detective Richie is chasing the guy in the apartment complex he pumps his shot gun and points it in the face of a woman. After realizing this mistake he resumes his pursuit and pumps the shotgun yet again in the face of the man on the ground without firing a round.
Errors in geography: A distant mountain range is visible in a location identified as Fort Bragg, NC; no such mountains exist around Pope Air Force Base which serves Ft. Bragg.
Anachronisms: On the payphone the label “A NYNEX Company” is visible; NYNEX didn’t exist until after the AT&T breakup in 1984.
Anachronisms: When Javier jumps from the ambulance, a postal service truck with the current logo is visible; this logo wasn’t used until the 1990s.
Anachronisms: Frank Lucas uses a small electronic adding machine with digital numbers. Those didn’t come on the market till the mid 70’s at the earliest.
Factual errors: When speaking with his nephew the baseball player, Frank confronts him because the nephew missed a meeting with the New York Yankees and Billy Martin. Billy Martin did not manage the Yankees until 1975. This conversation took place prior to then.
Errors in geography: When Richie and Javier go to search the car of the bookie in the early scenes, the bridge seen behind them is the Williamsburg bridge, revealing them clearly to be in Brooklyn, not New Jersey.
Continuity: In the movie they said Stevie is a southpaw, but you can see that when he throws the ball in the backyard of Frank’s house, he is clearly right handed.
Anachronisms: Early in the film, about 1970, we see the Staten Island Ferry passing the Statue of Liberty holding a gilded torch. The statue’s internally lit torch wasn’t replaced with the gilded one until 1986.
Errors in geography: When Ritchie chases the car over the George Washington Bridge, the film claims that Ritchie is coming from New Jersey to Manhattan, where he doesn’t have jurisdiction. In fact, he begins to tail the suspect on the Manhattan side of the George Washington Bridge going into New Jersey, then winds back up in New York.
Factual errors: There is a scene of Frank Lucas watching Nicky Barnes passing out copies of the NY Times magazine where he was the cover story. The issue with Barnes on the cover was not published until 1977, Lucas was arrested and convicted before 1977.
Factual errors: When Frank first calls his cousin in Bangkok, he gives the operator the country code for Thailand as 376. Later, as the war is ending, he gives the operator the country code as 367. (Thailand’s actual calling code is 66).
Anachronisms: In one of the scenes at Fort Bragg/Pope AFB, you can clearly see a modern-day C-17 Globemaster III in the background. These planes weren’t added to the Air Forces inventory until 1993.
Factual errors: In the movie, Frank Lucas was said to have been incarcerated from 1976 to 1991 continuously. In real life, Lucas was in fact paroled in 1981. He remained free for three years until he was arrested and convicted of parole violations and drug offenses in 1984 and was sent back to prison until he was released in 1991.
Continuity: In the first courtroom scene, when Richie is speaking with his attorney, the camera angle alternates between a wide shot of both and one of Richie from behind his attorney. In the wide shot, his arm is straight across the bench behind her, while in the shot from her back, his arm is hanging behind the bench. This alternation between shots occurs many times.
Continuity: In the scene where Frank Lucas confronts ‘Tango’ outside the shop, he pulls out a chrome .45 Colt automatic, then the weapon changes to a chrome Browning Hi-Power in the subsequent scene.
Anachronisms: Night time shots clearly show streets lit with high pressure sodium lamps that give a warm red/orange glow. These were not introduced until the mid 1980’s.
