When Broken Arrow was released in 1996, I was a teenager and I was taking a real interest in movies. I always liked movies since I was a little kid, but I was now becoming interested in reading about movies and finding out about what movies were being made. In a magazine, I remember reading that the writer of Speed, a movie which I loved, was writing a new movie, and that movie would be Broken Arrow!
Where to Watch Broken Arrow
Broken Arrow was released on February 9, 1996. You can stream the film from a digital platform.
The Movie Review
Not only was Graham Yost (Speed, Silo) writing the movie, but it was also being directed by John Woo! Hard Target is one of my favorite Van Damme movies, and that was the first John Woo (Face/Off, Mission: Impossible 2) film I had seen. Broken Arrow would be John Woo’s second big Western release, so that made me even more excited for this movie!
I am pretty sure that it was when I went to see Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls that I saw the first trailer for Broken Arrow, and I thought it looked awesome. Now, I watched Broken Arrow for the first time in many years recently, and if you asked me before then, I would have told you this movie is awesome and probably said it was like an 8 or even a 9 out of 10. However, this was nowhere near as good as I remembered it being!
Broken Arrow Plot Summary and Cast
Broken Arrow has a great cast. John Travolta plays an Air Force Major called Deak, and Christian Slater plays an Air Force Captain called Hale. Deak and Hale are on a training exercise with a fancy plane that is carrying two nuclear warheads. Well, Deak goes rogue, forces Hale out of the plane, and then calls HQ with a report that it is Hale who has gone rogue and that the plane is going down.
Well, the plane went down, but not before Deak let go of the nukes! Deak plans to blackmail the US government with the threat of a nuclear attack. The thing is, Deak did not count on Hale being a total badass and doing whatever it takes to stop Deak’s plan. Joining Deak is a park ranger called Terry. I liked Terry, she is played by Samantha Mathis, who you may remember as Princess Daisy from the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie.
Action and Pacing
Broken Arrow is not a bad movie at all. I was really hyping it up to my wife before we watched it, and I could tell that she was pretty bored watching it. I would not go as far as to say that the movie is boring. It does have some awesome action scenes, but there is way more unnecessary drawn-out talking scenes than I remembered. John Travolta is just absolutely hamming it up, which I thought was fun, but I could see why this performance could be a bit much for some people. It was good, but not the great movie I remembered it being.
Final Thoughts
If you are looking for a decent 90s movie, you can certainly do way worse than Broken Arrow. I will admit, while I liked watching this again, I was a little disappointed it was not the fast-paced thrill ride I remembered it being. Still, movies like this show what a great and likable actor Christian Slater was, such a shame the personal problems he had in the 90s stopped him from being a superstar. Do not get me wrong, he has been in some great movies, but I always felt he could have been way bigger than he was.
