Broken Arrow (1996 film)

Broken Arrow

Theatrical release poster
Directed by John Woo
Produced by Bill Badalato
Terence Chang
Mark Gordon
Written by Graham Yost
Starring John Travolta
Christian Slater
Samantha Mathis
Delroy Lindo
Music by Hans Zimmer
Cinematography Peter Levy
Edited by Joe Hutshing
Steve Mirkovich
John Wright
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release dates
 February 9, 1996
Running time
 110 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $55 million (estimated)
Box office $150,270,147 (worldwide)

Broken Arrow is a 1996 American action film directed by John Woo, written by Graham Yost, and starring John Travolta and Christian Slater. It deals with the theft of two American nuclear weapons.

Plot

Major Vic "Deak" Deakins (John Travolta) and Captain Riley Hale (Christian Slater) are pilots in the United States Air Force. After a sparring match, the pilots are assigned to a top secret exercise on a B-3 Stealth Bomber (a fictional advanced version of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, see Next-Generation Bomber) with two B83 nuclear bombs on board. Deakins and Hale take off from Whiteman Air Force Base carrying the thermonuclear weapons on an evening exercise over Utah.

After successfully evading Air Force radar during the exercise, Deakins begins a friendly conversation to distract and shoot Hale. A struggle ensues, ending when Deakins ejects Hale. He then releases the bombs from the plane without detonating them. When the Air Force base regains radar contact with the aircraft, Deakins reports, "Hale's lost it. I'm punching out", and ejects, leaving the plane to crash on the mountainside over the Utah canyons.

A search and rescue team is sent to recover the warheads. They do not find the warheads in the plane's payload bay remains and report a "Broken Arrow", a situation wherein nuclear weapons are missing. The team later locates the warheads in a canyon but are killed while recovering them by mercenaries, including Sgt. Kelly (Howie Long), a corrupt member of the team. Deakins arrives moments later and plots his next move with Pritchett (Bob Gunton), the operation's financier. The mercenaries plan to blackmail the government with the threat of detonating the warhead in a civilian area.

Meanwhile, Hale survives the ejection and is found by Park Ranger Terry Carmichael (Samantha Mathis) whom, after a brief stand-off, he convinces to help him track down Deakins and foil his plot. After recovering the weapons from a hijacked Humvee and escaping to a nearby copper mine, Hale attempts to disable them using a safety feature which would render them unusable, by intentionally entering the arming code incorrectly. Deakins, however, had anticipated this scenario, and Hale inadvertently arms the warhead.

Unable to disarm the warhead, Hale decides to place the unarmed weapon deep in the abandoned mine to prevent them from being used elsewhere. Deakins arrives and secures the unarmed warhead, leaving Hale and Terry to die in the upcoming explosion. A NEST team helicopter chases Deakins' team. Pritchett berates him for allowing the helicopter to give chase, and Deakins, fed up with his complaining, kills Pritchett by crushing his throat with a flashlight. Hale and Terry escape from the mine via an underground river just before the bomb detonates. The bomb's EMP destroys the NEST team sent in to recover the warheads. Terry and Hale track Deakins to a motorboat to be used for transporting the remaining warhead. While trying to steal the boat, Terry is forced to hide on board while Deakins moves the warhead. Military forces rescue Hale.

Hale deduces that Deakins intends to move the warhead on board a train and sets off in a helicopter to find the train and hunt down the remaining mercenaries. Aboard the train, Hale finds Terry, whom Deakins has unsuccessfully tried to threaten into arming the weapon. A gunfight ensues in which the helicopter that Hale was on with Colonel Wilkins (Delroy Lindo) is destroyed, and Wilkins and most of Deakins' mercenaries are killed. With his own helicopter sabotaged by Hale and his plan falling apart, Deakins decides to detonate the nuke early. Kelly, realizing they will have no chance to get away in time, holds Deakins at gunpoint and demands he disarm the weapon. As the train passes over a viaduct, Hale leaps into the boxcar and kicks Kelly out to his death below. Terry detaches the rear section of the train (with the bomb) from the front, but gets into a shootout with the engineer, resulting in the engineer falling on the train brakes, causing the train to stop. However, the detached boxcars continue to coast at high speed. Deakins, still in possession of a device that can either disarm or detonate the bomb instantly, forces Hale to drop his gun and challenges him to a hand-to-hand fight. Hale uses his speed to match Deakins' strength, ultimately defeating Deakins. Hale leaps out of the train at the last second with the weapon's remote control and disarms it. As he does so, the detached boxcars slam into the halted front half of the train. The impact propels the warhead into Deakins, and the entire train derails and explodes, incinerating Deakins.

Hale survives and finds a $20 bill fluttering on a twig in the debris - the same $20 bill Deakins had won from him earlier during their boxing practice - plus the nuclear warhead, damaged but intact. He then finds Terry and they formally introduce themselves to each other amidst the wreckage.

Cast and crew

The original music score was composed by Hans Zimmer, and features guitarist Duane Eddy. An expanded double-disc limited set of the music score was released by La-La Land Records in February 2011. Also credited for additional music are Zimmer-regulars Don L. Harper and Harry Gregson-Williams.

Reception

Broken Arrow was No. 1 at the North American box office on its opening weekend grossing $15.6 million.[1] It stayed on top for a second week and ultimately had a domestic gross of $70,770,147 and an international gross of $79,500,000, for a total worldwide gross of $150,270,147.[2]

The film received mixed reviews from critics. Based on 30 reviews collected by the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 53 percent of critics gave Broken Arrow a positive review (16 "Fresh"; 14 "Rotten"), with an average rating of 5.9 out of 10.[3] Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 61, based on 21 reviews.[4]

During his review of the film on Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, Gene Siskel changed his vote for the first and only time, initially giving the film a "thumbs up" but changing it to a "thumbs down" after hearing Roger Ebert's criticisms. [5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Brennan, Judy (February 19, 1996). "Arrow' Flies High as Oscar Nods Boost 'Babe,' 'Sense'; Box office: The action adventure is No. 1, with 'Muppet Treasure Island,' 'Happy Gilmore' dueling for second.". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-12-26.
  2. ↑ "Broken Arrow (1996)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved January 7, 2010.
  3. ↑ "Broken Arrow (1996)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 7, 2010.
  4. ↑ "Broken Arrow Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved January 7, 2010.
  5. ↑ Berardinelli, James (February 22, 1999). "A Thumb Falls Silent: A Short Tribute to Gene Siskel". Reelviews.net. Archived from the original on January 7, 2010. Retrieved January 7, 2010.

External links

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