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 Frank Whaley Bob Gunton Howie Long
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 (1996-02-09)
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 Deakins (John Travolta) and Captain Riley Hale (Christian Slater) are pilots in the United States Air Force. After a sparring match, they are assigned to a top secret evening exercise over Utah, flying a B-3 Stealth Bomber (a fictional iteration of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber) with two B83 nuclear bombs on board.

After successfully evading Air Force radar during the exercise, Deakins distracts and shoots Hale. A struggle ensues, ending when Deakins ejects Hale. Deakins then releases the bombs from the plane without detonating them, and reports that Hale's gone rogue. He then ejects himself off the bomber, leaving it 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 and report a "Broken Arrow", a situation wherein nuclear weapons are missing. The team later locates the warheads in a canyon but are killed 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. They plan to blackmail the government with the threat of detonating the warhead in a civilian area.

Hale survives the ejection and is found by Park Ranger Terry Carmichael (Samantha Mathis). 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. However, Deakins had anticipated this scenario, and rigged the device. As a result, Hale's action instead arms the warhead, setting the detonation timer for 30 minutes.

Unable to disarm the warhead, Hale hides the unarmed one deep in an abandoned mine. Deakins arrives, secures the unarmed warhead and resets the detonation timer from 30 to 13 minutes, then leaves Hale and Terry to die. A NEST team helicopter chases Deakins' team. During the chase, fed up with Pritchett's attitude, Deakens kills him. Hale and Terry escape from the mine via an underground river just before the bomb detonates. The bomb's EMP destroys the NEST team, allowing Deakins to escape. Terry and Hale track him to a motorboat to be used for transporting the 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 use a train to transport the warhead. Travelling on helicopter with Colonel Wilkins (Delroy Lindo), Hale locates and infiltrates the train, and finds Terry. A gunfight ensues and the helicopter is destroyed, 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 holds Deakins at gunpoint and forces him to disarm the weapon. Hale takes advantage of the distraction and kicks Kelly out of the train to his death.

Terry detaches the rear section of the train (with the bomb) from the front, but gets into a shootout with the engineer. The shot engineer falls on the train brakes, causing the train to stop. 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 close-quarters combat. Hale eventually overpowers Deakins, acquires the detonator, disarms the warhead and leaps out of the train. As the detached boxcars slam into the halted front half, the warhead flies into Deakins, and the entire train derails and explodes, incinerating him.

Hale finds Terry and the damaged nuclear warhead. The two formally introduce themselves to each other amidst the wreckage.

Cast and crew

• John Travolta as USAF Major Vic "Deak" Deakins
• Christian Slater as USAF Captain Riley Hale
• Samantha Mathis as US Park Ranger Terry Carmichael
• Delroy Lindo as USAF Colonel Max Wilkins
• Frank Whaley as Giles Prentice
• Bob Gunton as Pritchett
• Howie Long as USAF Master Sergeant Kelly
• Casey Biggs as Novacek
• Shaun Toub as Max
• Vyto Ruginis as Johnson
• Vondie Curtis-Hall as USAF Chief Master Sergeant Sam Rhodes
• Kurtwood Smith as Secretary of Defense Baird
• Carmen Argenziano as USAF Brigadier General Boone
• Jack Thompson as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Daniel von Bargen as USAF General Creely
• Raymond Cruz as USAF Lieutenant Colonel (uncredited)

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. 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.

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

The review of this movie on Siskel & Ebert & the Movies represents the only time in history where Roger Ebert convinced Gene Siskel to change his mind about his final judgment of a film. Siskel initially giving the film a "thumbs up" but changed it to a "thumbs down" after hearing Ebert's criticisms.

See also

• 1996 in film
• Cinema of the United States
• List of American films of 1996

External links

• Broken Arrow at IMDb
• Broken Arrow at Rotten Tomatoes
• Broken Arrow at AllMovie
• Broken Arrow at Box Office Mojo
• Film stills