Broken Arrow Is Your Weekend Cheesy Movie

Cheesy movies are a special joy. Despite an earnest attempt to create compelling stories, filmmakers often miss the mark. Some movies turn out simply mediocre. Others become entertaining in spite of their flaws or authorial intent. And yet others thrive on a tone not easily marketed in Hollywood. They become cheesy. In Your Weekend Cheesy Movie, we’ll examine some of these films for what they get wrong — when they get it wrong — and what they right do in spite of the wishes of the studio or the director.

This week: Broken Arrow

Believe it or not, we’re been taking a look at various cheesy movies for the last two years. Our first, The Boy In the Plastic Bubble, was posted on July 1st, 2017. And as traditions naturally occur with any long endeavor, films featuring John Travolta seemed to be saved for these anniversary weeks. Well, except for Face/Off, which we did before the tradition took hold last year with Staying Alive. But you might wonder how, with the Nicholas Cages and Sylvester Stallones in the world, Travolta became the epitome of cheesy actors. On the one hand, he appears in a surprising number of cheesy films. But he also often gives those films its loudest, silliest, and yet most mesmerizing performance. Which brings us to this weekend’s cheesy movie: Broken Arrow.

The plot concerns Major Vic Deakins (Travolta), a frustrated Air Force pilot who has hit a career dead end. His eccentricities and tendency to butt heads with the brass means he will never be promoted to colonel. Nonetheless, he is a very capable officer who gets results even as his methods also chafe many people in the unit, including his partner, Captain Riley Hale (Christian Slater). The two often spare in the air base’s boxing gym, where Deakins’ attempts to teach Hale about his tells always end in failure. One such sparing match at the beginning of the film feels like the set-up for a lot of the proceeding 90 minutes.

Soon, the pair are suiting up for their latest missions: aiding a radar station in Utah in detecting stealth aircraft. But to make the stakes higher, Deakins and Hale’s bomber is being equipped with two nuclear bombs. Considering that the inactive nuclear material will not give off a heat signature or a radiation spike the Utah facility can detect, it is unclear why the bombs are being included on the flight. For plot purposes, however, they are there so Deakins can steal them because he’s gone rogue. His plan: extort money from the government by planting one of the bombs. Well, that’s at least the end goal. His plan also includes killing Hale, crashing the stealth bomber, and recovering the bombs before the Air Force can dispatch recovery teams to the crash site.

Unfortunately for Deakins, Hale manages to escape alive and teams up with park ranger Terry Carmichael (Samantha Manthis) to undo all of the precise planning.

And if the plot sounds a little uninspired, that’s actually part of the charm. In many ways, Broken Arrow is a very pedestrian summer action movie. Well, at least for the mid-1990s. Before the superheroes and franchise pictures dominated the season, actioners like Broken Arrow had us running to air-conditioned multiplexes to see Travolta and other actors dodging explosions. But here, the stakes, even with their nuclear implications, never feel big and the characters, despite being written by Justified executive producer Graham Yost, never quite come together. Nonetheless, there is something magical in this paint-by-numbers story: it allows Woo and Travolta to do their thing.

Though Woo chaffed against studio control while making the movie, a number of his trademarks are on display — like the use of slow motion and characters flipping through the air while firing a gun from each hand. Also, he uses a very showy crash-zoom technique in a number of scenes which do not age well. All of the flourishes, thanks to the passage of time, make the film slightly more silly than it already is. But as we discussed with Face/Off, Woo’s Hong Kong crime movies also feature a certain amount of silliness in them. That tone is more acceptable in Asia, where characters can be completely cartoonish and still resonate emotionally when they die protecting a hospital full of orphans or allowing themselves to die so their blind girlfriend can receive their eyes. And in coming to the US, Woo expected his preferred tone would be embraced. Sadly, studios hate cheese because they cannot market it. It is too subtle and nuanced to put on a poster or explain to film press people like myself. And because of this, both Hard Target and Broken Arrow were reshaped without Woo’s involvement. Nonetheless, much of the goofy charm of The Killer shines through here; a testament to Woo’s talents as a director.

But one person absolutely at ease with the Woo sensibility was Travolta himself, who hams it up throughout the picture. Most of his lines are delivered through clinched teeth. He clings to his cigarettes like they are the character. And his reactions to set-backs can only be described as delight. He also obsessively scratches at his face. It is a special performance and it is hard to say which moment is the best. It could be when he kills an associate and continues to shush him for a few seconds or the moment when Hale says he’s crazy and Deakin’s responds with the infamous, “Yeah, ain’t it cool?” Although, his shear enthusiasm during an underground nuclear explosion would also be in the running.

It is unclear how much Woo and Travolta discussed these choices with the character. Based on Q&A I saw with John Cassavetes sometime after Face/Off — at which he recounted Woo’s amusement while Cage filmed the “I want to take his face … off!” scene — I’m inclined to believe Travolta’s version of Deakins came as a pleasant surprise to the director every day. Also, knowing Yost’s writing better these days, it is possible to see Deakins as a less amused character played straighter by a different actor. At the same time, Travolta’s decisions create a number of the film’s highlights while adding to the overall cheesy feel Woo no doubted wanted in the first place. Aiding this effect is a spectacular piece of music composed by Hans Zimmer. It is meant to be Deakins’ theme, but to me, it is the sonic distillation of cheese.

Meanwhile, the film does feature someone woefully unprepared for the silliness: Christian Slater. While dependable actors like Delroy Lindo, Frank Whaley, and Vondie Curtis-Hall all modulate their performances to the right tone, Slater — and to a lesser extent, Mathis — tries to hold on to that air of disaffected cool he had back in his Heathers days. It makes his presence thinner and it turns Hale into the least interesting character in the film. And he is supposed to be the hero.

Nonetheless, Broken Arrow is one of the most fun cheesy movies we’ve profiled yet. Yost script, while pedestrian, almost works. Woo’s direction, while restrained, still manages to produce some fun action. And Travolta brings it home with one of the goofiest performances he’s ever offered to an action movie. Also, at a breezy 97 minutes, it never overstays its welcome. All of that adds up to cheese worthy of our 2nd anniversary.

Broken Arrow is available for rent on the usual steaming platforms.