Vic Deakins is a decorated Air Force pilot who decides the best use of two live nuclear warheads is to steal them off his own stealth bomber and sell them to the highest bidder. John Travolta plays him with a wide, unhinged grin that makes clear he's having more fun than anyone else in the movie, which is precisely what a John Woo villain should be doing.
Christian Slater is the co-pilot left to stop him, chasing the warheads through the Utah desert with a park ranger played by Samantha Mathis, and Woo brings his usual eye for balletic, over-the-top action to a plot that's really just an excuse for one enormous set piece after another. Trains explode. Helicopters collide. Nobody involved seems interested in restraint, and the movie is better for it.
Travolta having the time of his life is reason enough to watch Broken Arrow.
It's not deep and it's not trying to be — this is mid-nineties Hollywood spectacle at its most gleefully overblown, propped up entirely by Travolta's commitment to the bit. The plot logic wobbles more than once, but the momentum rarely lets up long enough for it to matter. If you want a villain performance to carry an otherwise formulaic thriller, this is a strong case study.
Broken Arrow was one of director John Woo's early Hollywood productions following his move from Hong Kong action cinema, and it let him bring his signature stylized approach to gunfights and explosions to a big-budget American studio thriller. John Travolta, fresh off his career resurgence in Pulp Fiction, took the villain role after being introduced to Woo's earlier work by Quentin Tarantino, while Christian Slater played the more traditional hero. Composer Hans Zimmer brought in guitarist Duane Eddy for the score, giving the film a twangy, western-tinged sound that stood out from typical action scoring of the time. It performed solidly at the box office on release.
The film helped establish John Woo as a bankable Hollywood action director ahead of his bigger hit Face/Off the following year, and it's often viewed as a transitional work bridging his Hong Kong sensibilities with American studio filmmaking. Reviews were mixed on release, with some critics unconvinced by the plot even while acknowledging the visual craft of the action sequences. For fans of stylish, over-the-top 1990s action cinema, particularly those tracing Woo's Hollywood period, Broken Arrow remains a solid, at times gleefully absurd entry with a memorably hammy Travolta performance.
The train-bound climax that anchors the film's back half wasn't faked on a soundstage — the production spent six weeks filming on the privately owned Central Montana Rail line between Lewistown and Denton, Montana, running custom-built train cars through the gunfights, high falls, and helicopter work that punctuate the finale. Christian Slater has said he performed most of his own stunts on the shoot rather than handing the physical work entirely to doubles. Critics were largely unimpressed on release, dismissing it as formulaic despite the visual craft, but audiences didn't agree: Broken Arrow opened at number one with $15.6 million and went on to gross more than $150 million worldwide, proof that a committed Travolta performance and enough real hardware can carry a thin script a long way.
