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Reviewed by Bob Banka
March 25, 1999
BROKEN ARROW
by Bob Banka
FOX
Widescreen, 2.35 : 1
Dolby Digital, 5.1
Color
108 Minutes
Rated R 1996
COMMENTS
Before his outstanding, tension-saturated feature, FACE/OFF, director John Woo teamed with John Travolta to make the action thriller, BROKEN ARROW. This was Woo's first opportunity to work in Hollywood with fewer producers' hands in the pie. His first go 'round in Tinseltown had been HARD TARGET, which starred Jean Claude Van I-can't-act-worth-a-Dam, a disappointing, run-of-the-mill action flic - a product which Woo fans recognized as being well below the level of work the director had been turning out for years in Hong Kong. Too many reins on Woo precipitated a substandard product. The leash was let out a bit for the production of BROKEN ARROW, and a better flic resulted. Having Travolta's name on the project helped beef up the budget as well as fill more seats in the theater. FACE/OFF, Woo's most recent release, is his best since he hit American soil.
BROKEN ARROW is a reasonably well-paced action piece, and a decent popcorn flic, despite its minimal devotion to character development. This is so because Woo is a master of action sequences. They're well over the top, and nearly always implausible, but they're so visually stunning, perfectly choreographed, and superbly edited, we easily forget their high register on the bull shit meter.
JOHN TRAVOLTA as VIC DEACONS in JOHN WOO'S
BROKEN ARROW
Woo has a love affair with close-up shots of weaponry, and slow motion dive rolls, accompanied by twin-gun fire power. These are trademarks which are laced through his Hong Kong pics, and BROKEN ARROW has its share. But with an inflated Hollywood budget, Woo has a much bigger canvas on which to paint, and he can incorporate more complex, multi-element set pieces on which to hang a script. This is a budget he could've only dreamed about over seas. Bigger isn't always better, and an experienced director like the Woo-ster knows the importance of proper pacing, and providing quiet down time between more bombastic sequences. He knows not to numb his audience with mayhem overload. There are some quieter moments in BROKEN ARROW, but perhaps not enough. With FACE/OFF, a substantially larger piece off work with a running time of 140 minutes, the director was able to include more. We know and understand the characters better. A master like Woo always does action sequences well - if you allow him some elbow room. But he must also be afforded sufficient running time to include snippets of down time which bring us closer to his characters. Woo knows this, and hopefully his producers in the future will continue to allow him to direct his way, so he can turn out more films as good as FACE/OFF.
CHRISTIAN SLATER as RILEY HALE in JOHN WOO'S
BROKEN ARROW
PLOT SYNOPSIS
While, Deacons and Hale (John Travolta and Christian Slater), a pair of hotshot Air Force pilots, are up on a B-2 bomber flight test with a pair of live nukes, the commanding officer, Deacons, viscously beats Hale and ejects him from the cockpit. His plan is to drop the unarmed bombs for later retrieval with a crew waiting on the ground, but during the struggle for control of the craft, he overshoots the rendezvous, and they must backtrack to locate them.
Meanwhile, Hale gains consciousness after parachuting down to the Utah desert, and is greeted by an armed, over-zealous park ranger named Terry Carmichael (Samantha Mathis). After a brief struggle, Hale introduces himself and explains a bit of his situation. Before they can radio in for help from the ranger's pick up, two of Deacons' commandos in a chopper destroy the vehicle and leave them stranded. Deacons realizes that Hale is still alive, but decides that he won't be a problem. The bombs are retrieved after a brief shootout with a rescue squad. They're loaded on a Humvee, and taken for a quick ride to an abandoned copper mine, where Deacons plans to detonate one to get Washington's attention. They'll know he's serious, and not hesitate to meet his demands for ransom.
Hale is persistent, and has beaten his ex-commander to the mine to foil the plan. Later, the two meet again for a final showdown aboard a fright train headed for Denver. Deacons plans to detonate a bomb and wipe out hundreds of thousands of civilians.
DIRECTOR JOHN WOO
IMAGE
This is a fine transfer from FOX. Though we'll welcome the day when they release anamorphic titles, we're occasionally very pleased at how well they master regular widescreen images. Though we've noted in the past that a number of their transfers have overly bright images during some exterior shots, and that flesh tones look unnaturally orange and red, this disc demonstrates none of these problems - despite the fact that much of BROKEN ARROW is in the glaring hot sun of the Utah desert.
The picture is very sharp and detailed, with excellent brightness and contrast levels. The darker sequences with which the film opens are awash in deep blues, purples, grays, and black. These are the shots within the bomber's cockpit, and on the dark desert floor. Blacks are true and solid, and the darker colors look natural, with no 'grain' or image breakup. The multi-colored displays on the cockpit console are bright reds, greens, blues and yellows. These are lit brightly, but remain distinct, with no color bleeding into surrounding darker fields. Flesh tones in these darker scenes look very good.
The much brighter scenes the next morning out in the desert, are glaringly lit by the sun and awash in reds, yellows, browns and oranges. The landscape is wide open beneath big blue skies, and again there's no grain to been seen in the image. Flesh tones look excellent here as well. The scene in the mine - composed of rapidly cut together shots in dark tunnels, dimly-lit by small lanterns, have well-rendered colors, and excellent shadow delineation. The clouds of smoke and dust kicked up by gunfire and commotion are smooth and whispy, with no sign of image breakup.
The numerous explosions erupting during the action sequences have natural looking colors as well. These are vivid, fully saturated reds and oranges. They're very bright, but not overly so, and no 'blooming' was noticed.
The print used by Fox is nearly pristine with no distracting, nics, scars, or other blemishes. No, it's not anamorphic, but we call 'em as we see 'em - and this is an excellent transfer. High marks.
AUDIO
This is a full Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. The forward soundstage is very deep and wide, with excellent imaging. Panning effects and sound effects placement are smooth and accurate. Sound reaches around to merge with the split surrounds and produce a large spherical soundstage. Our only complaint was the relatively unimpressive punch on the lower end of the dynamic range. Those who have seen BROKEN ARROW are aware that there are numerous bombastic scenes with terribly powerful explosions - including a nuclear detonation. One would expect substantial butt-kickage from not only the .1 FX channel, but also from the speakers in the corners. We're not saying there's NO bass, but what is there, doesn't quite rumble the rafters and shiver the timbers. Fox's recent release of VOLCANO had more substantial bass - on the level we would have liked to have heard here.
The surround channels receive a great deal of true split effects - for example during the shootout in the mine, and during the opening, when the B-2 bomber is screaming so close to the desert floor. Very high pitched sounds from the jet engines squeal at a piercing volume as the jet streaks over head. The sounds of automatic gunfire, echoes, and ricochets bounce back and forth over the shoulders, as well as between the forward stage and back. After the various explosions, falling debris can be heard in all directions about the surroundstage - with proper placement to match the action on the screen.
There are a number of scenes which incorporate the sounds of helicopter rotors thumping away, and there is a fair amount of bass here, but again - not at the level we would expect from a film of such recent vintage. Dialogue is well recorded, and nicely integrated. Voices sound clear and natural - never distorted or compressed. Hans Zimmer's score, with its primary tune plucked out on guitar, and a secondary tune rung out on chimes, is somewhat reminiscent of spaghetti western music. It's also very well recorded and expansive - rising up from all positions to envelope the viewer. This is a very good mix, but somewhat lacking in bass.
SPECIAL FEATURES
Scene access menu with links to 22 chapters in the film
Theatrical trailer
Alternate French language track (Dolby Surround)
English and Spanish subtitles
English closed captions
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