Broken Arrow (1996) Biography, Plot, Production, Box office, Trailer

Broken Arrow (1996)

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. The film was a commercial success despite mixed reviews.

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Plot.

Major Vic “Deak” Deakins and Captain Riley Hale, pilots in the United States Air Force (USAF), are assigned to a secret exercise flying a stealth bomber with two B83 nuclear bombs. After successfully evading Air Force radar, Deakins suddenly attacks Hale and ejects him from the plane. Deakins releases the bombs without activating them, then reports that Hale has gone rogue. He ejects from the plane, leaving it to crash in a Utah state park. A USAF team led by Lt. Colonel Rhodes is sent to find the missing warheads, declared as a “Broken Arrow” situation. The search team eventually locates the warheads in a canyon, but is ambushed by mercenaries.

Rhodes tries to disable the warheads but is killed by the other search team survivor, Master Sergeant Kelly, who is serving as a mole for Deakins. Deakins arrives and plots his next move with Pritchett, the mercenaries’ financier. They plan to blackmail the US government with the threat of detonating the warhead in a populated area. Hale, who survived the ejection, is arrested by park ranger Terry Carmichael, who had been investigating the unusual events in the park. He instead convinces her to help him track down Deakins. Deakins’ mercenaries commandeer a 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 continue in Humvees. Hale and Terry carjack the Humvee with the warheads, escaping to a nearby abandoned copper mine, where Hale starts to disable one, only for Deakins to reveal via radio that he has programmed it so that Hale’s attempts to disarm it will cause the bomb to activate. Hale and Terry take the armed warhead down the shaft, where the mine is deep enough to contain the nuclear blast. 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.

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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 Carmichael 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 1995, a number of elaborate train cars were sent to the location in Lewistown, 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 photography was completed on August 28, 1995. John Travolta was originally the choice to portray Riley Hale (finally played by Christian Slater), but was chosen instead to portray Major Vic Deakins.

Box office.

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 35 reviews collected by the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 54% of critics gave Broken Arrow a positive review (19 “Fresh”; 16 “Rotten”), with an average rating of 5.7 out of 10. The site’s consensus states: “John Woo adds pyrotechnic glaze to John Travolta’s hammy performance, but fans may find Broken Arrow to be a dispiritingly disposable English-language entry for the action auteur.” 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.