7 / 10
Official trailer
Broken Arrow is corny as fuck, and that’s part of the fun. John Woo’s second American film has John Travolta stealing two nuclear warheads from a stealth bomber, Christian Slater chasing him through the desert, and dialogue nobody could deliver straight. Travolta plays Major Vic Deakins, who decides after years of being passed over that he’d rather sell the bombs. Slater plays Hale, his co-pilot and sparring partner. Samantha Mathis plays the park ranger who gets pulled into it. Delroy Lindo and Howie Long round out the soldiers on both sides.
It cost about $65 million and made roughly $150 million. It’s a 7: a loud, silly, well-made action film that knows exactly what it is.
The Setup
The film opens with Deakins and Hale boxing in a gym, and that tells you the whole story in three minutes. Deakins wins because he cheats, and he resents that the younger man keeps coming back.
They fly a B-3 stealth bomber on an exercise carrying two live nuclear weapons. Deakins ejects his partner over the Utah desert, crashes the plane, and takes the warheads. A broken arrow is the military term for a lost nuclear weapon, and the film explains that twice. Hale survives, finds park ranger Terry Carmichael, and the two of them spend the rest of the film trying to get the bombs back while a government task force arrives too slowly to help.
Travolta Having Fun
This is Travolta two years after Pulp Fiction, in the middle of his comeback, and he’s clearly enjoying himself. Deakins grins through the whole film, kills his own men without breaking stride, and keeps up a running commentary on how clever he’s being.
His best moment is in a mine shaft when a subordinate points out that they’re shooting at a thermonuclear weapon. Travolta’s reaction to that is the film in one shot: a man delighted by his own recklessness.
Travolta is the best thing about this movie, and I think he knew it. I grin right along with him in that mine shaft, and I’d take his gleeful, unhinged Deakins over a dozen brooding action villains.
It’s not a performance with any depth, and it doesn’t need one. Deakins is a villain built for an action film, and Travolta plays him at exactly the right volume.
John Woo in Hollywood
Woo came from Hong Kong, where he’d made The Killer and Hard Boiled, and Hollywood spent a decade trying to fit him into American action films. Broken Arrow came between Hard Target and Face/Off, and it’s the most conventional of the three.
His signatures are all here: slow motion, standoffs with guns at arm’s length, men who mirror each other, and violence staged like choreography. What’s missing is the emotional weight his Hong Kong films had underneath the shooting, and that’s my real reservation about this one. Whenever the bullets start flying, I miss the heart that The Killer had.
The action is still excellent. The Humvee chase, the fight on the train, the helicopter sequence and the mine shaft detonation are all clean, legible and physically staged. Woo never loses the audience’s sense of where people are.
For Writers
Woo stages every fight so the audience always knows who’s where and what they want, so the action holds up even when the script doesn’t. Clarity survives weak writing; confusion ruins good writing. When you write action, treat geography and intent as non-negotiable, and let style sit on top of them. Sketch the space before you write the scene, and name what each character is trying to do in it. If either is vague to you, it’ll be incomprehensible to the reader, and no amount of description fixes it afterward.
The Corn
The dialogue is something else. Everybody has a one-liner, most of them land with a thud, and the film keeps stopping to explain its own title. The romance between Hale and Carmichael is signaled and then dropped.
The plot leans on a series of conveniences: the right vehicle appears, the right person survives, the government response is exactly as useless as the story requires. None of it sinks the film. The film is completely sincere about being ridiculous, and I enjoy it because it never winks at the audience or apologizes for what it is. The dialogue makes me groan and laugh in the same breath.
Slater and Mathis
Christian Slater spends the film reacting, because that’s the job the script gives him. Hale is decent, competent and outmatched, and Slater plays him without the smirk he’d built a career on, the right call opposite Travolta.
Samantha Mathis gets the better part. Terry Carmichael is a park ranger who knows the terrain, stays useful throughout and never becomes a hostage for the third act. That wasn’t the standard treatment for a woman in a mid-1990s action film.
Delroy Lindo brings weight to a thankless role as the officer running the search, and Howie Long, a former defensive end, makes a decent henchman. The film is cast better than its dialogue deserves.
For Writers
The park ranger in Broken Arrow has real skills, and the film keeps her useful to the last scene, instead of turning her into a hostage when the finale needs stakes. A capable secondary character raises the whole story. When you write, check whether anyone in your cast exists only to be rescued, and give them a competence the plot needs. Look at your supporting characters and ask what each one contributes that nobody else could. If the answer is nothing, either give them a skill or cut them.
Hans Zimmer
Zimmer’s score is one of the better things in the film: electric guitars and desert percussion, a western soundtrack dropped onto an action picture. It’s the most memorable element besides Travolta.
That guitar sound is the first thing I’d hum if you mentioned this film, and I think Zimmer understood the movie better than the script did. That choice tells you what Woo was making. The Utah setting, the two men who used to be partners, the final showdown on a train: it’s a western with helicopters.
Once you see it as a western the corny dialogue stops being a problem. Westerns have always talked like that.
For Writers
Zimmer scored a nuclear thriller like a western, and the film’s shape, two former partners circling toward a showdown, suddenly makes sense. Naming the genre underneath your story tells you what its scenes should feel like. When a book isn’t working, ask what it would be if you moved it to a different genre. Write down the oldest story shape your plot resembles. Then structure your scenes the way that genre does, and see whether the material stops fighting you. Most stuck books are the right story in the wrong shape.
Where It Sits
It’s the weakest of Woo’s American films and the easiest to rewatch. Face/Off is better and much stranger, Hard Target is rougher, and Mission: Impossible 2 is the one where the style ate the film. Slater is the flattest part of it. He’s fine, and he’s a reactive hero against a villain having the time of his life, so the film belongs to Travolta from the first scene. A 7 from me. Turn your brain off, enjoy the stunts, and don’t think too hard about the physics of a nuclear detonation in a copper mine.
Craft Note
What makes Broken Arrow work is that it never apologizes for being silly. The dialogue is corny, the plot runs on coincidence, and every action sequence is staged with total conviction. Commit to your genre’s conventions instead of signaling that you’re above them, and the reader will meet you where you are.
Is Broken Arrow worth watching?
Yes, if you want a mid-1990s action film with a villain enjoying himself and a director who knows how to stage a chase. Travolta is the reason to watch, and Zimmer’s score is the second reason. It’s a 7 from me, and the corn is exactly why it works. It stops short of an 8 because Slater gives Travolta so little to push against and Woo’s heart seems to have stayed in Hong Kong, but I’d put it on any night I want a movie that’s pure fun.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Broken Arrow (1996), The Numbers
- Broken Arrow (1996 film), Wikipedia
- Montana Movies: The Runaway Train of Broken Arrow, Distinctly Montana
- Broken Arrow (1996), IMDb
