So dumb that it's laugh-out-loud, unintentionally funny.
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Filmmaking is all about choices. John Travolta had the chance to play either the villain or the hero in "Broken Arrow," and he chose to be the bad guy. Hong Kong action director John Woo thought about having the good guy die during the film, but decided against it. As it turns out, the film would have been better off had both men gone the other way. For most of the film's 108 minutes, we watch Travolta die onscreen in what has to be one of the worst performances of his career.
Travolta received an MTV Award nomination for Best Villain, but if you ask me, he should have gotten a Razzie. He seems lost as the bad guy, trying on expressions and cocking his head nervously this way and that, like a spaniel tasting the air for squirrels. What's worse, he does this during crucial moments when he's supposed to seem menacing. Instead, both my wife and I found ourselves laughing out loud. He was almost as bad as former football star Howie Long, the henchman who made us giggle every time he uttered a line or tried one of Travolta's patented "bad guy" faces (especially his "bug-eyes"). This is not a good thing for an action-thriller.
Then again, we knew what we were in for from the very first sequence, which showed Maj. Vic "Deak" Deakins (Travolta) squaring off against Capt. Riley Hale (Christian Slater) in the boxing ring and beating him to a pulp. The scene quickly and economically signaled three things about this film:
1) Action, baby. Go grab a brewski and get ready to watch fights, crashes, and explosions.
2) Competition. These guys aren't just getting a workout. The scene prepares us for the competition between them that will escalate from the ring to a battle for nuclear warheads out there in the Utah badlands.
3) No helmets, no mouth guards, no broken teeth, no bruises, no hair out of place . . . and no realism. These guys take knockout-style punches and they both act as if they've just gotten off the matt after doing an hour of yoga.
It's that niggling third thing that's problematic, because it sets the stage for even sillier logical inconsistencies. We're told that these two guys, who pilot a Stealth bomber, get off on the fact that the plane costs two billion dollars, travels 800 miles per hour, and comes armed with two nuclear warheads that make them feel like kings of the world. But the film barely gets off the ground before the two are off on a test run and its Deak who goes ballistic, trying to shoot his co-pilot and wrestling with him in the cockpit (in what seems as manly as a slap-fight, by the way). Then this plane, presumably flying 800 m.p.h., crashes into a mountain after Deak drops the bombs via parachute and both pilots jettison before the explosion. The problem is, when small planes flown at much slower speeds fragmentize upon impact, how is it that the fuselage is so complete and unscathed that a military team is able to open the hatch, look inside, and declare that the bombs are missing?
"We have a broken arrow," they radio command central. But that's not the only thing that's broken. The most wooden and unconvincing team of bad guys comes into the frame and starts shooting up the place, killing the soldiers. We learn that the civilian who's leading this band of terrorists is a multi-billionaire who's bankrolling the operation. Trouble is, what multi-billionaire would get his hands dirty like this, rather than just depend on his henchman to deliver the goods? Then you have a female park ranger (engagingly played by Samantha Mathis, actually) who stumbles onto the jettisoned Riley and wants to arrest him. The two tussle, and we get one cute moment when he's got her gun pointed at her head and she's got her ranger Bowie knife at his throat. Now, I could be wrong, but if we're not training our military more rigorously than our park rangers, this country's in trouble. These two wrestle and run away from the bad guys who want to shoot holes in them, tumbling down the mountain in the process. Yet, nobody even comes up limping, and you should see how they careen down the rocky terrain.
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[release]20607[/release]