People who try to fill the plot holes make a big mistake...

Everyone now agrees this film has a lot of plot holes, some big, some small, but a LOT of plot holes anyway, which is the problem.

Another poster tried to sum them up, he's done a great job, I won't comment on them, see here:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408790/board/thread/142190530

Some people reply that almost all of these plot holes can be explained in some way. Hence that this movie makes sense.

The problem is that at every step, the plotters have one chance out of two to stumble. Having 20 or so "unknown data" to rely on, that leaves them with a plan which has one chance out of millions to succeed. Who would go for such a plan?

A huge accumulation of implausibilities lead to impossibility. That's not an opinion, that's mathematics.

But OK, let's assume that a succession of implausibilities nevertheless may just lead to implausibility too. Which bad guy one Earth would build a plan who is so doomed from the start? At no time in this film it is suggested even remotely that the Marshall is nut, so...?

Which leads me to my second point.

Some posters here make a confusion between two things:
- the sequence of events which actually happens - which is highly implausible, but OK let's admit it's NOT IMPOSSIBLE (although I think it is)
- the sequence of events schemed in the mind of the plotters - which is a sequence of events NO PLOTTER ON EARTH would rely on.

These posters are so dazzled by what they see (the movie is visually good-looking and the acting quite convincing), by what they're shown OBJECTIVELY, that they don't take into account the fact that it also has to make sense SUBJECTIVELY in the characters' mind.

In short, it's not what you see which must make sense, it's what the bad guys had in mind.

As another poster wrote, a heist may succeed if the cops are busy with a Martian invasion at the same time - but what plotter would rely on a Martian invasion to plan a heist?

In this movie, we have audience manipulation at a very high dose, but not a very well done one. But it seems there are a lot of viewers who don't mind.