Broken Arrow
Starring John Travolta, Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis
Directed by John Woo
Reviewed by Norm Dixon
The scuttlebutt is that the United States Air Force refused all cooperation in the making of Broken Arrow. A good sign I thought, given that the premise of the film is that a pilot of a super-secret Stealth bomber has "gone ballistic", pinching a couple of thermonuclear weapons and threatening to ignite Salt Lake City. Surely, the USAF had decided not to be a party to a film that would make some telling, if over-the-top, points against the dangers of nuclear weapons whizzing around the world in high-tech undetectable aircraft, a latter-day Dr Strangelove. Surely?
Nooo, 'fraid not.
The USAF did not want to be associated with the film because it (not the USAF) is utterly dumb. The plot has as much suspense as overcooked spaghetti, and there are more rote-learned action movie clichés than in three aisles of the weekly hire section at the local video shop. Leave your sense of disbelief in the cloakroom? Try leaving your brain there!
On a routine training mission, ace stealth bomber pilot and Desert Storm veteran Vic Deakins, played by John Travolta, does the dirty on his generation-X partner Riley Hale, played by Christian Slater, and makes off with a couple of nukes. Slater is ejected into the desert.
Then begins the macho contest of wills between the psycho-but-cool Travolta and the daggy-but-patriotic Slater. Along the way, the all-American Slater meets up with park ranger Terry Carmichael, played by Samantha Mathis, and together they enter the battle against evil. Travolta, Slater and Mathis survive crashing planes, exploding helicopters, 60,000 rounds of ammo and a nuclear explosion!
Travolta seems to enjoy his role, although he simply recycles his characters from Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty. Slater is typically annoying as he does his usual poor imitation of Jack Nicholson (although his recent performance in Murder in the First was a welcome exception). Mathis' character is at least not the usual demure female lead. She jumps into the action and causes nearly as much mayhem as the boys — equal opportunity inanity you could say.
Australian acting icon Jack Thompson makes a idiot of himself in a couple of walk on-walk off scenes as the nameless chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with an appalling approximation of a Texan drawl.
Broken Arrow is neither anti-nuclear nor anti-militarist. It is a long promo about how modern nuclear weapons are virtually indestructible. They survive explosions, bullets, fires, falling off hurtling trains and being dropped from aircraft 100 feet off the ground travelling at 1300 km per hour.
The greatest threat is shown to be a rogue pilot. The White House and the Pentagon, whose fingers are on the triggers of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, are essentially good if a little dopey. This ignores the fact that the US government has used nuclear weapons twice in Japan, and has considered using them in the Soviet Union, China, Korea and Vietnam and as recently as the Gulf War.
File under "Crapola".