Broken Arrow

Dear readers, welcome to the moment you have all been waiting for. Everything you've seen on my blog has been building up to this. So strap yourself in, grab a beer, put on your sunglasses, kick back, and prepare your minds for an orgy of excessivness. You thought 'Schwarzenegger Month' was the final word in non-stop action, you ain't seen nothing yet. Ladies & Gentlemen, get ready for John Woo month!

Yep, you all know him, and you all love him. You may act like you don't, but when you want an action film that blows each and every one of your senses, there is no one quite like Woo. So to celebrate this Cinematic icon, I'm going to look at 4 of his films this month, beginning with Broken Arrow.

Released in 1996, and starring John Travolta (pre-Battlefield Earth), Christian Slater (pre-Alone In The Dark) and Samantha Mathis (post-Super Mario Brothers), the movie follows an attempt by an Air Force Pilot to steal 2 nuclear weapons in order to blackmail the Government. It's everything you'd expect from Mr Woo. Plenty of action, plenty of explosions, plenty of gunfights. Sanity or rationale plays little part in this flick, and that's exactly what we want. Let's dive right in.

The movie opens with a boxing match between our 2 main characters, Victor Deakins (Travolta), and Riley Hale (Slater), 2 American Air Force Pilots who are assigned a highly confidential mission: Fly a new-model Stealth Bomber with 2 nuclear weapons on board. After some banter, Deakins attempts to shoot Hale, resulting in a struggle. Deakins jettisons the warheads, ejects from the plane, and leaves Hale for dead.

This situation results in a 'Broken Arrow', wherein nuclear weapons are reported missing. As you would expect, a crack team is sent in to retrieve them. But, as you also would expect, they are all killed by Deacon and his group of cronies, who are hoping to use the threat of a nuclear explosive to extort money from the Government.

Hale meanwhile, very much alive, is discovered by Park Ranger Terry Carmichael (Mathis), and convinces her to help find recover the warhead before Deakins can carry out his evil plans.

Yep, pretty basic set-up. Bad guy wants to perpetrate carnage, good guy has to stop him. But as usual, Woo takes full advantage of it, ensuring that not a single second of the film is dull or uninteresting. If there's one thing Woo is good with, it's generously filling his movies with gratuity. Our 2 leads share some enjoyable dialogue, Travolta is likeably over the top as the villain, and while it's light on coherence, it's heavy on action, & as I said earlier, that's exactly what we want to see here.

More John Woo movies on the way.