Review of Broken Arrow (1996) by Jennifer T — 12 Jul 2009

This is my all-time favorite movie, which may sound crazy to most people. But it has everything I love about action movies (and most genre movies) and almost nothing I hate to see in any film. There were only two small problems I had with Broken Arrow, but they were so minor that they don't really intrude on the awesomeness of the whole.

Obviously the big draw here is John Travolta as the antagonist. I really enjoy bad guys that are played by actors who have fun with the role and don't take themselves too seriously (I think Gary Oldman is the master of this when he plays a bad guy). Travolta gives a really fun, campy, hammy performance that he obviously had a lot of fun playing, and it shows in his speech, actions, and body language. He never really gets too serious about things, even when they start to go wrong. This is probably my second favorite Travolta performance after Pulp Fiction, and it's a big reason this movie works so well for me.

Broken Arrow was probably the peak of Christian Slater's career as a leading actor, before he started beating up women and taking on any number of direct-to-DVD features with Val Kilmer and other actors on the downside of their careers. I couldn't really see any other actor taking on this protagonist role knowing he'd be upstaged at every turn by the bad guy and still give a descent performance. Slater has more of an everyman quality that most other action stars just don't have, such as guys who are so big they probably don't feel pain; guys who are dubiously proficient in martial arts; guys who draw on religion and mysticism to exude some otherworldly quality that can't be beat; and so on. Slater has none of these qualities, and he doesn't here either. He's just a guy who can only rely on his military training (and living in Trenton, New Jersey) to survive at all costs (which is much more believable than what most action stars use in their movies). The only otherworldly quality that Slater shows in the movie is the ability to outrun a Humvee while simultaneously catching up to another Humvee that doesn't appear to slow down for him. It's really easy to root for Slater, even when we probably wouldn't mind seeing Travolta win based on his sheer charisma.

I really loved the choice of Samantha Mathis as the park ranger who gets caught up in the middle of all this. She's attractive, but doesn't do anything to throw the protagonist off his mission through the entire movie. She's concerned first with survival (her's and Slater's), and not anything close to being attracted to Slater. This is probably one of the biggest dynamics that I love about this movie. Mathis and Slater show absolutely no physical attraction to each other until the end of the movie (the movie Commando also does this very well). One of the things I hate about most normal action movies is there is always a woman to screw things up for the protagonist when things would go so much more smoothly without the complications involved. She's either a nag, a slut, or a needy leech that distracts the protagonist from his goals. I'm not one who NEEDS a romantic connection in my movie to enjoy it. I really hate forced sex scenes and deep-throat kissing in some vain attempt to attract horny teenagers and college students, or even more romantic scenes in an attempt to draw women. There are only a few examples of sex scenes that are absolutely essential to a story (A History of Violence and Eastern Promises both have very important sex scenes, for example). In Broken Arrow, there's none of this because it's not essential, and John Woo (the director) realizes this and forces nothing. Mathis and Slater focus first on surviving. They let their guard down only when they think they are about to die, or when they know they are 100% safe and the mission is done. I loved the chemistry and Slater and Mathis pull this off beautifully.

Now, the supporting cast is quite strong as well. Even Howie Long is great as the dumb sidekick (and he has the coolest death scene of anyone in the movie). But we've also got a great Bob Gunton as the constantly-worried businessman who can't help himself, an overly-serious Delroy Lindo, and a cast of White House cabinet members who have played these parts before in Steven Seagal movies successfully. My only casting complaint (and one of the minor things I didn't like about the movie) was the part of the young cabinet staff member (played by Frank Whaley) who seems to be smarter than all of the older, more experienced cabinet members, but he really knows nothing, and for some reason Woo kept inserting him into the movie for no other reason than a medium to explain some of the plot lines. He does this unintentionally comically, and his looks of despair or worry are grating to watch.

The action in the movie of course has a lot of John Woo's hands in it. There are a few sloppy parts where you've really got to suspend your disbelief to avoid screaming WTF at the TV (like the Humvee chase with Slater in the middle, running, apparently, at 35 mph; and one part where Travolta JUST BARELY somehow avoids being blown up by a grenade when it goes off literally a foot or two away from him), but for the most part the action is crisp and fun while being mostly believable (at least in action movie terms). There are a lot of inventive death scenes for the various bad guys that keep the movie at a good balance of humor and seriousness. Another convention that also strikes that balance is the number of vehicles that blow up in this movie. A B-3 (basically a B-2), a truck (and off screen, presumably another truck), FOUR helicopters, an elevator, and an entire freight train. It's immensely entertaining and eventually becomes pretty tongue-in-cheek, which adds to the enjoyment if you aren't sitting there taking this all so seriously (like most people might who did NOT enjoy this movie).

I said there were two minor things I didn't like, one was Frank Whaley's character (and acting skills), and the other is how much time is devoted to the White House staff deliberating over what they should do. I'm fine with that, and it works in most action movies (Under Siege, for example), but there's no pay-off here. At some point in the story it's like the government workers stop caring once they think a nuclear bomb may actually go off. We get no reaction from them when the bomb doesn't go off. No delirious cheers at the end or reaction of any kind. I'm fine with that as well. The problem is why go to the trouble of introducing all these guys and then not finishing the plot line? If they were to be treated like an afterthought, I would think that with the attention to detail Woo shows throughout most of the movie, there would be something at the end to resolve that aspect of the story. Weirdly, Woo doesn't even try and there's just a strange, abrupt cut-off well before the end.

That and Whaley's character aside, this movie has everything I love and almost nothing I hate in a good action movie, and it remains and will likely remain my favorite movie of all time, one that I can and do watch repeatedly ever since I first saw it 14 years ago.