Broken Arrow

In his "TV Movies and Video Guide," Leonard Maltin asks, "Why was this movie made?" The answer is simple: To entertain the people. I was certainly entertained by this far-fetched action thriller, due in no small part to John Woo's imaginative direction of the action sequences. John Travolta overdoes the psycho routine, hamming it up when some restraint would have made for a more believable performance, but his considerable charm sees him through. Christian Slater, an actor who hasn't impressed me as anything more than a Jack Nicholson wannabe, makes a surprisingly commendable hero. This movie is junk food, of course, but it's very tasty indeed.

John Woo's continued attempt to translate his foreign success into Hollywood gold sees him take on bigger stars than Van Damme in Christian Slater and the resurrected star of Travolta. Slater and Travolta play pilots testing a new bomber, when one of them decides to steal the missiles on board the other must begin a personal fight to stop him.

As with Hard Target this is a solid enough action movie but it really could have been made by anyone, Woo's style only really comes through in a few scenes (the birds eye view of the opening boxing match, double handed gun play). This is a shame because the action scenes only occasionally get better than average.

The plot is weak and relies a lot on coincident and luck to keep things moving. This is quite insulting to an audience because it just shows that the script writers couldn't fix the plot as a workable story and decided to try and get this past. Travolta overplays the villain well, but perhaps overdoes the ticks and the madness a bit too much to be believable. Slater clearly wants to be like Keanu was in Speed but doesn't convince as an action hero, Mathis is cute but that doesn't make her performance good - she pretty much a non-entity and doesn't really have much chemistry with Slater.

Again a solid action movie that is OK for a Saturday night, but with the stars, the budget and a director of this calibre you can't help but feel this was a missed opportunity.

John Travolta stars in this mindless thriller in which he steals a nuclear weapon and its up to Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis to save the world.. Overall a good action flick with a leave your brain at home plot..Travolta goes slightly over the top with his character but is still good..Slater is ok and Mathis does what she can with what little the script gives her.. on a scale of one to ten... 6

"Broken Arrow" is a good action film about a Stealth pilot (John Travolta) who steals nuclear weapons one night during a practice mission. His goal is to sell the weapons back to the United States government by blackmailing them. Old partner Christian Slater is willing to stop Travolta at all costs with the help of ranger Samantha Mathis. Howie Long makes an impressive film debut as Travolta's evil henchman. The screenplay is smart enough to work and the direction is fast and furious. A film that is about as good as it can be. 4 stars out of 5.

Well. What can I say? This film is rather typical and has the same amount of violence as many other action-thrillers. (But perhaps a little more?) Despite this, it was very enjoyable and in my opinion deserves 6.5 stars-slightly more than it actually got. I never realized that Travolta was such a good "bad guy" actor and almost deserved an Oscar! But Christian Slater was just as good as the out and out good guy, along with Terry Carmichael as his side-kick. The ending was short but effective, because of the pleasing lack of sentimentality and sexism. Keep up the good films, because I certainly enjoyed this one.