Mutant Reviewers from Hell do
"When the day comes we have to go to war against Utah, we're really going to kick ass, y'know?"

1996 R / Action Adventure Directed by: John Woo Starring: John Travolta, Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis

Tagline

Prepare to Go Ballistic

Summary Capsule

Human giant John Travolta goes mano-a-mano with human smurf Christian Slater over a couple of nuclear warheads.

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Justin's Rating: So THIS is why Slater turned to the dark side!
Justin's Review: For his second American motion picture, John Woo hunkered down and went, "Hm, why not rope together a couple of washed-up has-been actors, and give them one of the silliest plots of all time? Let's call it, Die Hard In A Utah National Park. Sweet!"

"They just wing the situation at the audience and the hero, expect all of us to take it on faith, and then let the pygmy Christian Slater go to town like a rabid chuhuahua."

With all due respect to the man who cornered the market on men shooting not one, but two entirely separate guns at the same time, they were not the boldest first steps onto our shores. The end result of Broken Arrow was a movie that you not only had to switch off your brain to enjoy, but also to pluck it from your skull and toss it behind the couch for a good couple of hours.

Speaking of Die Hard, there's an action movie I can respect, and I'll tell you why. The filmmakers actually put serious thought into the setup of the bad guy's plan, taking us step by step through it until we accepted that it could possibly be done. They built the evil plan up, threw in a good guy, and had him tear it down while the bad guys raced to see if they could keep their scheme going.

This falls in stark contrast to action jetsam like Broken Arrow, which don't even bother to explain or think out the bad guy's setup. They just wing the situation at the audience and the hero, expect all of us to take it on faith, and then let the pygmy Christian Slater go to town like a rabid chuhuahua. It may look cool and spiffy on the surface, but like a cult that poisons its snack beverages at the weekly hoedowns, you get into a lot of trouble asking the "why?" and "how?" questions.

The thought of a villain making off with a couple of nukes and then holding the country for ransom is, if not original, something we can grasp as "bad" and run with. However, the setup here is so completely ludicrous as to make you blink in astonishment when nobody bothers to try to hold it up on shaky exposition - really, there's none at all. We're supposed to blindly swallow that a rogue air force pilot has planned in advance (somehow) the hijacking of two nuclear bombs off a $2 billion bomber. Nevermind that there's no way (at least explained on screen) that he could've known he was going to be carrying nukes that day; nevermind that a $2 billion bomber with stealth capabilities is worth a lot more than the ransom from a couple nukes - and they could just stealth it wherever they pleased, WITH the bombs; nevermind that the whole plan boils down to "I'm going to try to shoot my co-pilot, throw out the missiles in the middle of the Utah Badlands, and hope I don't overshoot my comrades by 300 miles. Then, I'll eject, hope I don't die in a gully somewhere, scoop up my nukes, evade the military - which had the whole crash on radar - and smuggle the warheads to Denver on a train. In the bright light of day, no less."

I just couldn't take anything from this movie seriously - after all, we're expected to find Howie Long meanacing instead of a guy who'd start crying if we stepped down hard on his big toe. I'll leave you to peruse the Didja Notice? section for other egregious sins. I think it's no coincidence that this was the last time that Christian Slater got a serious starring role (and, no, Alone in the Dark doesn't count).

"Yup, I was Mr. Saturday Night Fever. Too bad that fever turned dangerous and now I have to overact like hell." That is NO way to get a tan, people! "Howie, this is a nuke. A nuuuuke. Not a football. Stop tossing it around."

Didja Notice? [some sources: IMDb]

• She parks her truck about a half mile away from where she finds the pilot. Why couldn't she just drive up to him?
• If you're a park ranger and you witness a plane crashing and a pilot ejecting, would your first reaction be "Oh, gee, I better draw my gun on him and place him under arrest?" Because, if so, you need your freakin' head examined.
• Butterflies are NEVER a good anti-radiation indicator. For all you know, they're flapping around in their death throes, screaming little butterfly screams.
• "Oh, I don't trust you!" "But you should! There's a guy stealing nuclear weapons!" "Oh my. Guess I trust you now!"
• How'd Travolta ever know that far in advance that he'd be piloting a plane with two nukes when Slater only found out about it on the day of?
• Even though nuclear warheads supposedly can't go off unless armed, I'd still think everyone would be a bit more careful slamming them around like that.
• So the nuke goes off in a mine shaft about a hundred feet underground. Slater's confident that "no radiation leaked" because the blast would fuse all the metal together to make, quote, a "giant copper bowl". I have to ask whether Slater is the world's best expert on what will, and will not, contain a nuclear explosion. I might follow that up asking him if he realizes that not all of the mine is evenly sprinkled with copper - a lot of it's been mined, and the metal only exists in veins, not consistently spread out in all of the rock and earth. Finally, the movie even shows part of the blast coming up and out of the mine's entrance.
• If I were a bad guy on Travolta's team, I'd seriously think about defecting the second or third time I saw him completely callous about the demise of another member of his crew.
• Howie Long?
• Seriously?
• What park ranger, anywhere, would keep throwing herself into the middle of lethal situations like this girl? For that matter, how dumb was it that she wouldn't go to a phone and call the authorities instead of lending her action expertise to Slater?
• What function does the character of Giles serve? Someone, please tell me! The boy is supposed to be super-smart for something or another, but all he does is go from point A to B so that the military types can deliver exposition to him (and to us). He never DOES anything, nor gets a final moment of resolution in the movie. Maybe I answered my own question, there.
• If I'm a military commander and I think that a nuclear warhead's core is exposed/leaking/whatever, my first instinct isn't to pull completely out of the area because it's scary. I'd be calling in craploads of helicopters and planes to survey the area while staying well outside of any dangerous leakage.
• How bad does this movie want to be The Rock? Or The Rock want to be this movie? It's like they studied at the same action college, and one went on to get a B+, and one a solid C.
• Slow-mo shots GALORE.
• Finally, Slater is a midget compared to Travolta. Did they think that pairing them off in fisticuffs no less than two times would be anything other than a colossal joke? Also, when they boxed at the beginning, neither man wore headgear or mouthpieces. Even Rocky wasn't that stupid.
• During the final few blows of the last fist fight, as Hale is punching and kicking, growls and roars of large cats (i.e. lions, tigers, etc.) can be heard.

Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits?

No.

Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]

John Travolta was given the choice of playing either Deakins or Hale in the film. He chose the villain Deakins.

The phrase "broken arrow" is not actually used to refer to the theft, loss or seizure of nuclear weapons or components from the U.S.; that's known as an "empty quiver". A "broken arrow" is when a warhead has been accidentally detonated or jettisoned that does not risk nuclear war.

This is the second movie where Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis are teamed up as love interests.

Groovy Quotes

Riley Hale: You know - these exercises are fantastic. When the day comes we have to go to war against Utah, we're really going to kick ass, y'know?

Vic Deakins: You're bleeding. That's good. Let's see if we can get any more out of you.

Vic Deakins: Battle is a highly fluid situation. You plan on your contingencies, and I have. You keep your initiatives, and I will. One thing you don't do is share command. It's never a good idea.

Giles Prentice: I don't know what's scarier, losing a nuclear weapon or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it.

Terry: Clyde, what exactly does a suspicious truck look like?

Riley Hale: Endangered dirt. That's a new one.

Vic Deakins: Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?

If you liked this movie, try these:

• The Rock
• Face/Off
• Die Hard