When Martine is recruiting Terry for the job, he is holding his drink with his left hand (complete with wedding band), then, without changing hands, sets it on the table with his right.
Martine's coat goes from buttoned to unbuttoned several times while she and the other robbers are talking in the warehouse just after the robbery.
While breaking into the safe deposit boxes no one is wearing gloves, and thus all of them would be leaving many instances of their fingerprints. This is bank robbery 101 stuff.
On the end credits, the characters are grouped into categories. The category "VILLAINS" is misspelled as "VILLIANS".
The platform clock in Tottenham Court Road Underground station is marked "Quartz". The London Underground has never used individual quartz clocks, but has always used the master/slave system of clocks, for synchronisation of time throughout the network.
The bank robbing team use a jackhammer to first break through concrete, then continue to use it to tunnel through the soil towards the bank. Jackhammers are of no use in soil. The bit simply plunges in, and accomplishes nothing.
The use of the thermal lance is unrealistic. A skilled operator would check the gases are on and at the correct pressure before ignition, rather than relying on a third party to "turn on the oxygen" at the cylinder. As both the oxy-acetylene torch and the lance have shutoff valves, the operator could isolate all the gases if required. Since Bambas was the expert on drilling / tunneling, it is unlikely he would have allowed anyone else to operate the lance, as they would have had no experience of it.
The movie's opening sequence ("Caribbean 1970") plays the T. Rex song "Bang A Gong (Get It On)," first released in September 1971. But it is only in the soundtrack, and the characters in the scene do not hear it.
When Terry begins to peel the tiles from the floor of the boutique, the glue used to hold them has a "fresh and liquid" appearance. Tiling-adhesive dries to a very hard and dry state making a "clean removal" next to impossible.
When testing the thermic lance for the first time the machine that was used to flip the table is clearly visible in the final shot of the scene.
Although the film is set in 1971, signs on various shop doors seen in the film advertise that credit cards "Visa" and "Mastercard" are accepted. The name "Visa" was not used for the charge card before 1977 (replacing Barclaycard in the UK); "Mastercard" was "Master Charge" until 1979.
Terry (Jason Statham) wears a TAG Heuer Monaco watch. The watch was already produced, but the brands name was Heuer then. The TAG-Group and Heuer consolidated in 1985.
The white police car (Jaguar) has orange stripes down the side. These were not introduced until the late 1970s.
The Underground train used in the film would not yet have existed in 1971 since it is a 1972 Tube Stock train (based on the earlier 1967 Victoria Line trains) and did not enter service on the Northern Line until 26th June 1972. In 1971, the Northern Line (Tottenham Court Road) would have had the red-painted 1938 Tube Stock, as would the the Bakerloo Line (Edgware Road to Paddington)
While at the cocktail party Anthony Johnson's Gunshot is playing in the background, this song didn't exist until 1981.
Since they did not know about the catacombs before starting their tunnel, there would have been no way for them to be able to use the thermal lance as depicted in the film. The length of the steel rod used on the lance was quite long (8 feet or more) which meant that they would have had to dig another hole straight down beneath the vault just to be able to use it properly. There wasn't enough time in the plan for the extra excavation.
Martine reads from a newspaper and comments: "police last night were trying to home in on a £300,000 bank raid, they still don't know what bank it was". The amount of money stolen could not be known or even estimated until the bank from which it had been stolen was known.
Martine (Saffron Burrows) reads from a newspaper and comments: "police last night were trying to hone in on a £300,000 bank raid, they still don't know what bank it was". The amount of money stolen could not be known or even estimated until the bank from which it had been stolen was known.
Michael X is from Trinidad but has a Jamaican accent.
It is strongly implied that the nude woman who is secretly photographed while engaged in sexual activity is Princess Margaret. However, the woman is much younger than Princess Margaret would have been at the time.
In the newspaper which reports the robbery, "Sergeant" is misspelled "Sargeant."
When they reach an open space under the bank, we see a stone which bears the inscription "AGNVS DEI MISERERE NOBIS MDCLXV" and Guy Singer erroneously quotes it as saying "LAMB OF GOD, FORGIVE OUR SINS." It actually translates "LAMB OF GOD, HAVE MERCY ON US 1665." 1665 is a reference to the time of the Great Plague of London, the last major epidemic of bubonic plague in England, which lasted from 1665 to 1666.