BROKEN ARROW (1996)
A film review by Steve Kong Copyright 1997 Steve Kong
If you know me well enough, you know that I'm a big John Woo fan. And this makes it hard for me to review his films. I'll try to put this bias aside for this review of his second US film.
Two Air Force officers take up a B-3 experimental bomber with two nuclear bombs in the bomb bay. They are going to be flying over the Utah while being tracked by a ground station to see if they can be caught. Riley Hale (Christian Slater) slyly says before take-off, "When the time comes that we have to go to war against Utah, we are really going to kick ass, you know?" During mid-flight Vic Deakins (John Travolta) tries to kill his co-pilot Riley Hale in order to jettison the nuclear bombs. We find out later that Deakins is working with a businessman, Mr. Pritchett (Bob Gunton), and they plan to make a load of cash with these nuclear devices.
Something goes wrong during the mid-flight fight and Hale is ejected while Deakins jettisons the bombs and also ejects. Hale meets up with a park ranger (Samantha Mathis) and together they try to stop Deakins and his band of military men from taking off with the nuclear weapons.
The script is by Graham Yost, whose last script was Speed. Yost, who as we've seen with Speed and now with Broken Arrow, is not a great writer. His scripts need the help of a good director to come out on top, and with both Speed (directed by Jan De Bont) and now Broken Arrow, he got what he needed, and the films come out on top. Yost needs to work on writing more believable and less silly dialogue (while running down a hill to catch some Humvees carrying the nukes, Mathis' character says to herself, "This isn't a good idea." Duh..) What we don't see in Broken Arrow, as we do in Woo's previous Hong Kong releases and in Face/Off, is the blurred difference between the good and bad characters. In Broken Arrow the characters are either good or bad.
Woo looks to have gotten more freedom on this project he did in his debut US film Hard Target. He pulls out his bag of tricks and uses them to the fullest. These included the-endless-gun-magazine, the slow-mo, and the double-fisted gunfights. These all make for incredibly fun action that is visually inspiring.
Worth mentioning is Hans Zimmer's score for the film. He knows how to create themes for characters, and he shows this with his very memorable theme for John Travolta's character Vic Deakins.
Broken Arrow is a loud, sometimes dumb, movie about two dueling Air Force pilots, which is basically a long chase movie. Suspension of disbelief is a necessity for this film, but if you can suspend your disbelief, Broken Arrow can be enjoyed for its amazing and visually stunning action.
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steve kong reviews@boiled.sbay.org
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