BROKEN ARROW (1996) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1997 Ted Prigge
Director: John Woo Writer: Graham Yost Starring: John Travolta, Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Delroy Lindo, Frank Whaley, Bob Gunton, Howie Long, Kurtwood Smith, French Stewart
If you know me, you know that I think of John Woo as a God. His action films are probably the best in the world - filled with stylistic, balletic, and visceral bloodbaths; plots motivated by characters; and a strong, multi-leveled opposition between characters. Indeed, his "Face/Off" was probably the best film of the summer, and one of the most entertaining of the year. But every great director has their little slip-ups. Danny Boyle, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Robert Altman, Woody Allen...everyone.
"Broken Arrow" isn't BAD, really, but it's not very good either. It's horrible compared to Woo's other films (you'd hardly believe the guy who directed this directed "The Killer," or even "Face/Off"). But I try not to review from that particular stand-point (example: "The Frighteners" sucked compared to Peter Jackson's other films, but was still a good film overall and received a 3-star review from me), so basically all this film needed to do was be fun. Well, it really wasn't.
But anyway, this is the little premise: two pilots (Travolta and Slater) are ordered to fly some nuclear weapons on a new jet thingy, but Travolta goes nuts, sends Slater out on a parachute, and steals the weapons as a tool of ransom. Slater teams with annoying-park ranger chick (Samantha Mathis, teaming them up after "Pump Up the Volume"), and they go on to stop Travolta from ripping off the government, and perhaps setting one or two of those nukes off.
There's a lot of action, yet the film is never really exciting. "Prepare to o ballistic" was one of the little promotional mantras this had when advertised, but when I saw it (even in a surround sound home theatre system thingy), I wasn't really all that moved. I mean, this is the guy who got adrenalized watching Dustin Hoffman beat up a bunch of cockney thugs in "Straw Dogs," and I was damn near limp with this one. I think Woo's other films are damn near orgasmic, but this was pretty tepid, even with some cool stuff in it (Travolta's exit is pretty cool).
Why weren't these action scenes as adrenalin-pumping-exciting enough for me? I'm not really sure. He has some slow-mo shots of people dying, but of course they're not as poignant without the gallons of blood escaping their body (a cliche, but I love it). And there's some really cool little action sight-gags in it (a shot with a helicopter wing almost slicing Mathis into thirds is pretty cool).
But I think the problem lies within the characters. In earlier John Woo flicks (and "Face/Off"), he creates strong characters (in that they're pretty well-developed, although not all the time); people who we care about. When Chow Yun-Fat and Danny Lee are in the church fighting off the huge gang of their opponents, I was excited. Because I didn't really care if Slater and Mathis were shot up or something, I was never really in any tense situation. When you have a character you care about in a life-threatening situation, things get tense. When you actually would prefer Mathis to be shot by Travolta so she would stop being annoying, you have a bit of a tension problem.
John Woo also has a great trademark of creating character opposition between two of the characters. In "A Better Tomorrow," the fractured relationship between the two brothers was pretty moving. In "Face/Off," there was also a parallelism between Sean and Castor, setting up a lot of irony, and made us care about both of them, even if one was a raving maniac (actually, it actually asks us whether or not we like the villain or the hero). Here, Travolta is likeable JUST because he's funny. But Slater is only likable because Slater does a good job with the role, and because the script has ordered us to like him. The extent of the opposition between the two seems to be that they box, and Slater keeps loosing. I was not thrilled at all by their relationship, and it causes the film to suffer.
There are some plusses, though. The two leads (Travolta and Slater) both do good jobs. I mean, I usually don't like Slater a lot, but he was good here. And Travolta certainly knows how to make a good old campy villain. With his cool-ass cigarette smoking, striking visage, and...well, everything, he just does a great job of making us like him. In later scenes, he seems to show some human qualities to his role, even if they're not even in there, which actually seems to help the relationship between the two, even if very minimally. But at least he tried where the writers would not.
"Broken Arrow" is not a horrible film, but it's very disappointing for a great filmmaker like John Woo. If he and the writers had spent more time on it, they probably would have been able to make an amazing film, but alas, they failed. But at least he came back with the jaw-dropping amazing "Face/Off."
MY RATING (out of 4): **
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