SUMMARY: John Travolta is a rouge Air Force pilot with a psychotic streak a mile wide, and a team of highly trained soldiers ready to steal nukes at his command. The only man who can stop him? Well, Christian Slater is available, so I guess he’ll do.
...Are we sure we can’t find someone else? Okay, fine.
[Note from the author: This was originally going to be a recap of Hard Target, but due to technical difficulties, we’re going with a different John Woo movie. If I were the superstitious type, I’d swear it just wasn’t my destiny to recap a Jean-Claude van Damme movie. Oh well, that’s what the blog is for, I guess.]
Broken Arrow marks John Woo’s second attempt at making an action film in America. His first was Hard Target, which had the advantage of a really cool climax and a great villainous turn by Lance Henriksen. It also had the slight disadvantage of starring Jean-Claude van Damme and being quite underwhelming, especially compared to Woo’s Hong Kong stuff. The film was decent in spite of all this, and made enough money to justify giving Woo another shot at the gold.
The resulting movie has maybe the sparsest screenplay you could ever hope to find. After the first fifteen minutes or so, Broken Arrow is basically a ninety minute-long, non-stop action fest. It’s got a great villainous turn from John Travolta, still hot off his Pulp Fiction comeback, and some amazing action sequences throughout. Unfortunately, it’s all undercut by the casting of Christian Slater as the good guy.
To put it in more modern terms, imagine if you had an action movie pitting a bad guy played by Mickey Rourke against the male lead from the Twilight movies. Sure, it might be entertaining, but the sheer silliness of it all would only drag the whole thing down.
Accordingly, Broken Arrow is a big hunk of stupid action entertainment, with gunfights, explosions, loads of recognizable character actors, and plenty of unintentional humor. It’s a great film, though not always for the right reasons.
Actually, the funniest thing about the movie might be when Siskel and Ebert reviewed it, and Gene Siskel, in what I think was a first for the show, changed his “Thumbs Up” to a “Thumbs Down” after hearing Roger’s arguments against the film.
But I give it 7 out of 10 oversized nukes. Let’s check it out.
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We begin with Hans Zimmer’s score playing over our opening credits, which are interspersed with a stylishly shot sparring match between two Air Force pilots, Maj. Vic Deakins (Travolta) and Capt. Riley Hale (Slater). Actually, it’s more of a one-sided ass kicking, with lots of slow motion shots showing us that Deakins is a considerably better fighter than his opponent.
“Wanna bring up
Perfect again, huh? Come on! I got two words for you, pal:
Hard Rain!”
As they fight, Deakins is giving Hale boxing tips, and making references to Ali vs. Foreman and the rope-a-dope. Hale makes a bit of a comeback, but Deakins prevails in the end.
The fight ends, as do the credits, with Deakins knocking the shit out of Hale with one last punch. The music gets all angelic, with a shot of Deakins looking down at Hale. They knock their gloves together, ending the scene.
No, no, John. You play an angel
later in the year! Later!
Cut to the locker room, where the movie lays on the symbolism with a trowel. Not only do we get Deakins yakking about how Hale lacks the will to win, but we also get a rather obvious bit with a twenty dollar bill that I’m sure will in no way, shape, or form be referenced later. I’m guessing Woo included this bit because given the location of the film, there was no logical way to fit in his usual dove motif.
“Go get some steroids or something, man. The audience will never buy you as an action hero otherwise.”
Next, our duo is assigned to fly a mission in a B-3 stealth bomber. Their objective is essentially to test the radar systems of a nearby base while carrying live nuclear warheads, but what I want to focus on is just how comical Travolta is here, as well as in the rest of the movie. He’s just hilariously cool in this role, putting a cigarette out with his fingers, and not letting anything bother him (at least for now). It’s hammy, but in a good way. You know, unlike his other big hammy performance covered on this site.
Cut to the stealth bomber, which is given an amazingly loving intro, with a camera pan that you just know some sad, lonely aviation enthusiast spanked the monkey to.
Hale and Deakins enter in slow motion, saluting (complete with loud whooshing sound effects over their salutes) and getting into the plane. They start preflight procedures, and the nuclear weapons are loaded. I wasn’t aware the military did simple test runs with live ordnance, especially ordnance of the nuclear kind, but I guess in this movie...
...Actually, this is pretty goddamn stupid, regardless of its factuality. I’d like to think that in the real world, they have safer ways of testing radar. On the other hand, at least you know what to expect from this movie less than ten minutes in: pure silliness.
