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My ass remains unkicked

Really, is this the work of a true genius? Is this the film of a greatest action movie director in this planet? It is, but unfortunately it doesn't show. This is the 2nd Hollywood flick masterful John Woo, my man from the east directed and I admit it's lots of better than the poor "Hard target" (1993) - his American debut with Van Damme. Of course that's not much.Final sequence is great fun, Slater is...well, himself and Travolta is just as cool as he always is but really, it's not my point. When I first saw "Broken arrow" I liked it very much but I wasn't aware of what John Woo had already done in his Hong Kong years. Now when I know, this flick seems so dull and lame. How can a guy who directed some of the best action films known to man do something as basic as this? It's a big mystery to me."Face/off" was a proper masterpiece (at last) and kicked ass as hard and naturally as an action film from Hollywood can do it but "Broken arrow" didn't succeed in the effort of kicking mine. It's not all that bad but the fact that it's Woo's work doesn't make it a good either. The man has created certain expectations by directing the finest action movies of the world and every time he makes a film that's not actually a masterpiece, he fails. Sad but true. I guess I have to look "Broken arrow" as a tiny little practice, Woo's attempt to adapt himself into the ways of Hollywood.

A sinematic masterwork

Broken arrow has been critisized by some as being corny, boring and stupid. In order to understand a deep and compelling movie like this, you have to be aseasoned movie viewer and a consumate film guru. This film does not havecheesy special effects: it is merely shot like an old fashioned opera - where the effects on stage are clearly not meant to be realistic in any way. What thisprovides is a chance to savor the acting talents of Travolta and Slater. Their development in this movie is a fine example of a pair of actors who havereached their peak. One could easily compare this masterpiece to one of thehighest rated movies of all time...The Battleship Potemkin. I've seen this movie several times, but each time I am still brought to tears at the end of the movie. Such a heroic ending to such a sadistic plot. Being in the military for most of my life, I can appreciate the inner struggles that Travolta and Slater no doubt had to go through to play their roles effectively in this masterpiece. The score adds to the tension and drama in this movie as well. If you want a good action flick, throw away Saving Private Ryan and all those other duds, pick up a DVD ofBroken Arrow and prepare to go on an emotional and physical rollercoaster ride that if your're not careful, could leave you in a fiery, catatonic state. Wow!! 10 out of 10 for Travolta/Slater, 9 out of 10 for the flick. Bravo !

Fast-Paced and Suspenseful

This is a pretty good action flick. John Travolta plays an Air Force pilot who becomes a madman when he hijacks a nuclear missile to sell. Christian Slater is the good guy, also a pilot, who tries to stop him. This has plenty of action, fight scenes, explosions. They use trucks, planes, trains, etc. The desert and canyon settings are beautiful. Samantha Mathis plays a very likeable Park Ranger caught up in all of this and helper to the Slater character. It is a fairly short movie which helps it move along. Not a bad storyline either, kept me interested.

Great action flick!

John Travolta is "Deak", a rogue USAF nuclear warrior who steals two weapons as part of a massive extortion plot in "Broken Arrow". Though a riff on the Bond flick "Thunderball", "Arrow" is so distinctively a John Woo flick, you never think of it as anything but original. Christian Slater is Riley Hale, Deak's unknowing co-pilot, and the one man who consistently hampers Deak's attempts to make off with the stolen nukes. When the movie starts, we see Deak clobbering Hale across a boxing ring over a $20 wager that Hale has no chance of winning, mostly because, as Deak notes, Hale has no will to win. That's why Deak never invites Hale to join his little nuke-blackmail scheme - he fears the little loser might actually say "yes". But Hale has a bit of a dark side himself - one hinted to Deak when Hale tries to pay off the wager. Deak refuses his winnings because Hale didn't fight hard enough for it to matter, but Hale is insistent - mostly because he stole the $20 from Deak's locker. Once in the air, Deak commandeers control over the plane and, when he fails to kill Hale, ejects him instead, then drops off the nukes for retrieval in the Utah desert before pointing the plane at a mountain and ejecting. On the ground, Deak meets up with his crew, culled from various special forces and well trained to cover every conceivable step the government may take to retrieve or destroy the nukes. Unfortunately for Deak, Hale survives ejection and links up in the desert with a feisty ranger (Samantha Mathis) and works to secure the nukes.

Most of the movie is a chain of action scenes - guns and kickboxing, but the plot stays confined and never loses sight of its focus. What makes this film really work is that everybody is a bad guy, and you almost find yourself cheering for Travolta and his gang when Deak dishes such potables as "I'm the man!, I'm the Man", "I've never killed anybody in person before...I don't see what the big deal is" and, when Hale tells Deak that he's out of his mind, and Deak replies "Yeah, ain't it cool?" Everything about this movie is meant to give you an impression, then dash it with a few shots to your head (like when Samantha Mathis's character confronts a seemingly nerdish nuclear-weapons engineer working for Deak). Even Hale offers some surprises - you half expect him to walk away with the ransom money. In the end, it's a lot fun, though you may come out at the end feeling a tad punch drunk.

my start.....

Okay, so I've seen a lot of rated R movies before this and well before I turned 18. But I remember seeing the previews on TV, but not being able to see it in theaters because I was too young, so when it came out on video, I would ride my bike down to the video store to rent it countless times a month. Surprisingly, the folks liked it too and didn't mind me watching it over and over. At first I thought it was over the top, but I really liked the soundtrack(by Hans Zimmer, one of my favorite composers), and as I watched it more for the soundtrack, the over all experience of the movie grew on me. The theme for Travolta's character just made him the badass his character needed to be. Slaters unlikely role as the scrawny hero worked out for the betterment of the film and his character. Long's only good film appearance as the muscular right hand man fit him to the T. John Woo's affinity for action movies is exemplified in this film. Mathis's role as the female element was believable(she didn't come off as a dit and one could see her has a park ranger because her proportions weren't medically exaggerated). The shootout in the mine, the Humvee chase, the Helicopter pursuit of slater and Mathis, the opening scene with a fight in the cockpit of the stealth bomber, and the climatic train sequence made this a cool movie. So what if it wasn't Oscar material, not every movie is, and the ones that aren't are the most entertaining. I now attribute this movie as my start into movie loving and becoming a connoisseur.

JOHN TRAVOLTA AT HIS EVILEST

in this film john travolta was being totally evil and very sexy, but christine slater was too busy being annoying and polishing his goody-two-shoes to make a really good hero. he should have died right at the start. john should have just killed him in that boxing match. i would have.

FUN AND FAST

FUN,LOADS OF ACTION .VERY FAST AND QUICK MOVING MOVIE . IT NEVER HAS A DULL MOMENT. I LOVE THIS MOVIE THE STARS IN IT ARE ALL GREAT IN THEIR ROLES ESPECIALLY TRAVOLTA!!!

Much better than John Woo's first attempt in the US, but not much.

This film was much better in that it had a better cast but suffered in the storyline department.For one, how can Vic Deakins (John Travolta) a US pliot have access to nuclear weapons? What's the deal with 'uncoded circuitboards'? Don't EMPs (Electro-magnetic pulse) travel at instant speed. They certainly didn't in the movie. Though the script had many flaws. It is John Woo's direction that saves the movie. The gunfight in the abandoned copper mine was an example of what John Woo can do.This is certainly much better than John Woo's previous movie, Hard Target. But is still below par, compared to his works in Hong Kong.Overall, it's an above average film. 'nuff said

If it's broken, fix it!

What a boring and insipid action film this was! If John Woo is a brilliant action director, he wasn't brilliant here. John Travolta, in a fit of post-comeback arrogance, evidently thought that he could fart and it would tickle the audience, and a fart is just about what his performance is.

Broken Arrow

Travolta electrified the screen. The sound effects were incredible, especially in scenes such as the stealth bombers. Magnificent directing by John Woo. A must have for anyone who enjoys pure action.

It put me to sleep involuntarily.

I really, really wanted to remain awake for the final 15 minutes of this craptacular flick, but I couldn't do it. I just couldn't handle it. I guess the explosions and plot incredibilities just desensitized me to sleep. Slater tosses a can of gas on the hood of Travolta's humvee and that slows him down for, what, 15 minutes? 20 minutes? Not probable. Not remotely. About the only intriguing thing about the movie was waiting to see how Howie Long would handle his lines, but he didn't really have any. Thank God for small favors.

Phenomenally bad

I imagine that Travolta really stole three nuclear bombs and used one to blow some enormous holes in the plot. This is possibly the most ludicrous, badly written, unbelievable and totally predictable piece of crap that is currently masquerading as a movie. As soon as you hear "You're going on a test run with two live nuclear weapons", you can turn it off. It usually irks me when people can't suspend their disbelief for a movie, but there are limits. Of course, they never explain why the pilots are going on a routine test flight with two nukes, as that would require some scriptwriting ability , and it is clear that that was more conspicuously missing than the two nukes were.

Cheese with the occasional "Woo-isms" popping up once in a while.

* 1/2 out of ****Broken Arrow has an okay action movie premise: John Travolta is Air Force Marjo Vic Deakins, who decides to betray his own country when he's passed up for a promotion, so he goes about stealing a nuclear weapon during a stealth flight with his partner, Captain Riley Haley (Christian Slater). Not unexpected, the rest of the movie is about Haley and a park ranger (Samantha Mathis) trying to foil Deakins' mad-man plot.Broken Arrow is helmed by one of action cinema's most acclaimed directors, John Woo, and with a lavish budget and big stars on hand, you'd think he'd have created an action masterpiece. But unfortunately, Broken Arrow is anything but, it's a routine thriller with a few good setpieces, but is awkwardly plotted, poorly acted, and directed without much of a sense of momentum or ebb and flow.The movie's not entirely without merit, there is a nice chase sequence in the desert that's actually quite exhilarating and a few signature Woo touches lend a nice sense of familiarity. But this is overshadowed by everything else that's wrong, namely the cast. I'm not sure who's idea it was to cast Broken Arrow, but Christian Slater is simply not action hero material. He's also not much of an actor. Samantha Mathis is also bland and totally unengaging as the would-be perky park ranger. Then there's John Travolta, who clearly relishes the role of psycho villain. It's a hammy performance for an actor who's made a career of going over-the-top, but for some reason, even he isn't much fun to watch.Broken Arrow's biggest problem is its lack of consistent momentum. The action sequences don't really seem to build up, they're just sort of inserted here and there at any given opportunity. Even the climactic sequence, set on board a train, doesn't deliver any genuine thrills. And maybe it's just me, but the idea of Travolta suddenly and willingly deciding on a fistfight to finish things up struck me as pretty stupid, and yet again another example of this movie's tendency to interfere with its own building momentum.John Woo's previous films have been fairly pretentious (lots of slow-motion, lots of doves), but Broken Arrow desires to be nothing more than pure escapist entertainment. While I absolutely realize this film should be taken as nothing more than a shallow experience, it still doesn't work as such, marred by completely uninteresting characters, silly dialogue, and mostly unexciting action. This is one of John Woo's worst American films to date.

When John Woo directs, it's gotta be a kick-ass movie.

For those of you that think this movie sucks, you haven't seen either Hard-boiled or The killer or both...and you should check out Bullet in the Head and A Better Tomorrow...all directed by John Woo!

pretty damn good

A favorite of mine when i was a kid. here i am 10 years later still watching it. Back when Travolta was still popular, and Christian Slator wasn't a wife beater, this movie rocked. hell, it still rocks. I still remember seeing this one in the theatres... ahh memories

If ever a villain was "Mr. Cool", John Travolta is the one in this flick.
The sfx were a little over the top for me, and the plot was choppy and far from believable, but JT made Broken Arrow worthwhile. There is one problem with this, however. Who are viewers supposed to root for, Hale or Deakins? Slater's goody-two-shoes attitude was disgusting, but as in all true action films, the bad guy always loses.

Broken Arrow

Good Movie.Two military airforce pilots Vic Deakins(Travolta)and Riley Hale(Slater)are assigned a stealth training mission carrying two nuclear warheads.it's supposed to be a routine mission until Deakins tries to kill Hale and steals the two nukes.

A typical action movie, but certainly one of the better in the genre.

Broken Arrow is a typical action movie, but it is a nice one. The movie starts with John Travolta and Christian Slater in a boxing ring. I didn't know what kind of movie this was, so I thought I was going to see a movie like Rocky or perhaps Raging Bull. But I was wrong, this movie isn't about boxing at all... It's about the air force pilot Major Vic Deakins, played by John Travolta, on a test mission with a stealth bomber. He has two nuclear bombs on board which he wants to steel. He only has one problem: his co-pilot and friend Captain Riley Hale (Christian Slater). He betrays him, but Hale survives the plane crash. With the help of a park ranger Hale will have to save the nukes before everything is blown away.I know, it all has been done many times before and yes it is all very Hollywood, but it is till nice to watch thanks to the actors' performances (especially Travolta), the nice special effects and stunts. I'm sure that the fans will love all the action scenes which take place really everywhere: on a train, with helicopters, car chases in the desert, a lot of shooting... everything you can imagine. Even though I'm not a fan of action movies I still give it a 6.5/10. I'm sure a lot of people will hate it, but the fans of action movies certainly should watch this one.

Definitely a Grabber !

Broken Arrow is all that you want from an action movie and what more if you have John Woo as the director. Travolta's cool 'n composed character is really impressive and you'll really like the background score for Travolta. In all, a damn good action movie !

An action-packed adventure

Normally I can't stand John Travolta, but Broken Arrow was an exception. I think he is a better villain than he is a hero. I saw this movie twice in row and taped it as well. The comic one liners and the characters played by Samantha Mathis and Christian Slater are funny and brave. The only element I think this film lacked was character development. Throughout the movie you know hardly anything about the three main characters, not even their first names. In fact two of the characters don't actually introduce themselves until the end. But don't let this get you down, Broken Arrow is still an excellent Friday night flick.