Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

spot the errors

I’m fortunate to live in a city where so many movies and television series are set. For one thing, it affords me frequent opportunities to play a favorite game: How’d They Get D.C. Wrong?

I’m talking about things like Robert Redford going from Georgetown to CIA headquarters by way of Memorial Bridge and the 14th Street Bridge in the beginning of the movie Spygame.

This weekend offered another opportunity, with the opening of the FBI spy movie Breach. (Decent movie, by the way. Chris Cooper does a great job — and is appropriately creepy — as FBI traitor Robert Hanssen. I was less impressed with Ryan Phillippe.)

Things that stood out to me:

1. In one nighttime scene, Laura Linney’s character exits what’s labelled the Archives / Navy Memorial Metro station … but despite the filmmakers’ “updates” to the signage, it’s clearly Federal Triangle.
2. In another scene, Phillippe’s character drives Cooper out to a meeting with some IT types at the Defense Intelligence Agency. I think DIA’s main offices are at the Pentagon and at D.C.’s Bolling Air Force Base. But when the two drive back to D.C., they’re clearly coming from a part of Arlington that’s several miles west of the Pentagon.
3. During that same drive from Arlington to D.C., Dennis Haysbert’s character informs someone that Phillippe and Cooper are driving down Wilson Boulevard — when they’re clearly shown on U.S. Highway 50 / Arlington Boulevard. (As if to underscore the point, their mondo SUV passes Highway 50’s distinctive left exit to Courthouse Road — the same exit that Rob, Dari and I had taken not two hours before to get to the movie theatre.) They take Highway 50 across the Roosevelt Bridge, then the Independence Avenue exit.
4. Phillippe’s character refers to Rock Creek Parkway as “the parkway.” This seriously confused me, up until he gets to the slice of Rock Creek Parkway that runs past the volleyball courts near the Lincoln Memorial. Maybe it’s just me, but in my common parlance, “the parkway” refers to George Washington Parkway in Virginia, while D.C.’s Rock Creek Parkway is simply “Rock Creek.”
5. Speaking of that stretch of Rock Creek Parkway … I’m pretty sure you can’t take that into town, as Phillippe’s character is trying to do. You’ll just be spit out onto Memorial Bridge and sent back across the river to Virignia.