Broken Arrow (1996 film)

Broken Arrow is a 1996 American action thriller film directed by John Woo, written by Graham Yost, and starring John Travolta, Christian Slater, and Samantha Mathis. The film's main themes include the theft of two American nuclear weapons, the attempts of U.S. military authorities to recover them, and the feud between Travolta and Slater's characters.

Plot
Major Vic Deakins (John Travolta) and Captain Riley Hale (Christian Slater), pilots in the United States Air Force, are assigned to a secret exercise 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, Deakins attacks Hale and ejects him out of the plane. Deakins then releases the bombs without detonating them and reports that Hale has gone rogue. He then ejects from the plane, leaving it to crash.

A USAF search and rescue team is sent to recover the warheads. Not finding them, they report a "Broken Arrow", a situation wherein nuclear weapons are missing. Next morning the search team locates the warheads in a canyon but is ambushed by mercenaries. Master Sergeant Sam Rhodes (Vondie Curtis-Hall) tries to disable the warhead but is killed by the other survivor, Master Sergeant Kelly (Howie Long), who was actually the mercenaries' mole. Deakins arrives moments later and plots his next move with Pritchett (Bob Gunton), the mercenaries' financier. They plan to blackmail the US government with the threat of detonating the warhead in a populated area.

Hale has survived the ejection and is almost arrested by park ranger Terry Carmichael (Samantha Mathis), who had been investigating the unusual events in the park. He convinces her to help him track down Deakins. Deakins' mercenaries commandeer the USAF search and rescue helicopter to kill Hale, but Hale and Terry manage to bring it down. The loss of the helicopter forces Deakins' men to transport the warheads with Hummer trucks.

Hale and Terry carjack the Hummer with the warheads, escaping to a nearby abandoned copper mine, where Hale unsuccessfully attempts to disable them. They then take the armed warhead down the shaft where the mine is deep enough to contain the nuclear blast. However, before they can bring down the second warhead, Deakins' team arrives and secures it. After a gun battle deep in the mines, Deakins shortens the countdown of the armed warhead while leaving Hale and Terry trapped, but they escape via an underground river just before the bomb detonates. The bomb's nuclear electromagnetic pulse disables the NEST helicopter, allowing Deakins to escape. Terry and Hale track the mercenaries to a motorboat used for transporting the warhead down the river. While trying to steal the boat, Terry is forced to hide onboard and military forces rescue Hale.

Hale deduces that Deakins intends to use a train to transport the warhead. Stowing on the train, Terry tries to sabotage the warhead but is caught by Deakins and is forced to enter the arming code. Catching up on a USAF helicopter, Hale saves Terry before Deakins can throw her off the train. A gunfight ensues and the USAF helicopter crashes, killing most of the mercenaries. Deakins has prepared a remote control that can either disarm or detonate the warhead and gets ready to depart the train on his own getaway helicopter; however, Hale's sabotage of the helicopter's fuel pump causes it to explode, leaving Deakins and Kelly without the means to get clear of the nuclear blast. With his plan falling apart, Deakins decides to arm the warhead regardless with a short countdown timer. Not wanting to die, Kelly holds Deakins at gunpoint and orders him to disarm the weapon. Hale sneaks up on them during their bickering and kicks Kelly out of the boxcar to his death, then engages in a gun battle with Deakins.

Terry detaches the section of the train with the bomb but gets into a shootout with the engineer. The latter is shot and falls on the train brakes, causing the detached boxcars to coast uncontrollably at high speed. Meanwhile, Deakins still has the remote detonator, so he forces Hale to drop his gun and challenges him to a fight. Hale eventually overpowers Deakins, acquires the remote 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.

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

Cast and crew

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

Music
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 Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell.

Production
Principal photography began on April 26, 1995. Some filming took place in and around the mountain areas of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Kane County, Utah. The lake scene with Hale and Terry was filmed at Lake Powell. The desert sequences were shot in the Mojave Desert near Barstow, California, and in Coconino County near Page, Arizona. The final climax scenes with Deakins and his men on the train, including the action sequence with Deakins and Hale fighting in the train car, were filmed on the privately-owned Central Montana Rail, Inc. (CM) in Fergus County between Lewistown, Montana and Denton, Montana. In July, a number of elaborate train cars were sent to the location in Lewiston, including several custom-built cars. Six weeks of filming on the forty mile track were required to capture all the stunts, helicopter action, gun battles, high falls, and special effects sequences. Production was completed on August 28, 1995.

Release
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.

Reception
Based on 32 reviews collected by the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 53% of critics gave Broken Arrow a positive review (17 "Fresh"; 15 "Rotten"), with an average rating of 5.8 out of 10. Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 61, "generally favorable reviews" based on 21 reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

The review of this movie on Siskel & Ebert & the Movies represents the only time that Roger Ebert convinced Gene Siskel to change his mind about his final judgment of a film. Siskel initially gave the film a marginal "thumbs up" but changed it to a "thumbs down" after hearing Ebert's criticisms, and it was considered to be the worst movie of the year, calling it "cliched" and "over the top". Ebert summed up the film saying that it all "comes down to two guys fighting on a burning train for a channel-surfer".