Back to another older movie starring John Travolta. He is either very good or very bad in movies – there seems to be no in between. Can you guess how he did in this one? Here’s a clue: Travolta played the bad guy and was hammy as all hail.
Here was another harbinger – when a movie starts out with a fight scene so hackneyed it would make even Sylvester Stallone blush, you know you are in for some laughs. I must note, this movie was directed by John Woo – hey John, have you ever seen a boxing match before? When people get punched in the face with boxing gloves, said face gets bruises, cuts and swelling. These guys got hit in the face so many times I lost count, but not a mark on them afterwards. Really?
So what’s the dealio here? It’s an action movie starring John Travolta as Air Force pilot Major “Deak” Deakins and Christian Slater as co-pilot Captain Riley Hale. They were flying a test mission out of Utah in a stealth bomber – loaded with two fully functional nuclear weapons – to see if the Air Force could detect them. More “Woo”ly world nonsense. Believe me, it gets worse.
The bomber took off (with very cheesy special effects) and the trackers could easily spot them. They then went into “stealth mode” and the bomber vanished from radar screens. Now earth to Woo – stealth planes are always stealthy to radar due to their physical design (minimal reflections) and radar absorbing coatings. It cannot be turned on or off, you silly ass! Anywho, moments later, Deak tried to kill Slater with a gun to take over the aircraft. Failing to do so, Riley ejected, Deak released both nuclear weapons, and then ejected himself right before the bomber crashed into the Utah desert. Hey, guess what the US military code name is for lost nuclear weapons – Broken Arrow.
Another Woo absurdity then enfolds. Let’s look at this in the real world – the US loses a stealth bomber loaded with two nuclear weapons and knows exactly where it crashed. How soon would hundreds of soldiers and dozens of aircraft be on the scene – maybe thirty minutes, tops? In Woo’s silly world, one team of less than a dozen soldiers was on the scene a few hours later. And only one nuclear tracking team in a helicopter would arrive another hour later. Seriously? Come on, man! Even Uncle Joe Biden wouldn’t buy this load of happy horseshit.
On the protagonist side, Riley encountered a park ranger Terry (played by Samantha Mathis – I’ve never seen her before or since this flick). At which point she incredibly pulled a gun on the obvious USAF pilot Riley which escalated into a fight. It was truly one of those “what the FUCK?” scene but again, made for more comedy. So the bad guys got the nukes, and it was up to Riley and ranger Terry to save the day. Obviously, the US military was not up to the task…
In any event, we met two more key characters after the crash. The head “bad guy”, Mr. Pritchett (played by Bob Gunton), an incredibly lame and annoying antagonist. And then, of all people, football legend Howie Long as Master Sergeant Kelly, a bad guy in cahoots with Deak to secure the nuclear weapons for Pritchett, to be ransomed for millions by the US government. Jiminy Christmas, Howie was a terrible actor, in fact, he was turrible! Good thing Howie stuck to his football day job and got the acting bug out of his system. His pretend radiation scene was especially cringe worthy.
The good news about all the “Woo”ly world silliness was it was highly amusing and the laughs kept coming unabated between the awful acting, ludicrous lines, Travolta’s mugging and ridiculous explosions. When Riley shot down a helicopter with a pistol – woooo!
Two minor roles were in the government’s response team to this crisis (by the way, where was the President?) – Kurtwood “That 70s Show Dad” Smith played Secretary of Defense Baird and Daniel “Costanza’s Boss Mr. Kruger” von Bargen as General Creely.
At one point, antagonist Mr. Pritchett was so ridiculous he hilariously yelled. “Get him! Get him!!” as the humvee they were in tried to run down Riley. To no avail, obviously.
I would say “Woo”ly world’s silliness came to a laughable crescendo in the scene where one of the nukes was detonated inside a copper mine. It was fun to watch the timer on the nuke count down – then look at my watch to see real time – and see movie time was slowed down by at least twice. In any event, with less than two minutes to detonation, Riley and Terry jumped into an underground river (which looked suspiciously like a theme park flume ride), where they were whisked away out from the bottom of the mountain into a lake, just as the nuke exploded. Of course, they were perfectly safe! Good Lord what a load of crap!
Speaking of crescendos, Travolta fried up one hell of a heap of ham, and served it up with gusto when he finished off Mr. Pritchett – and you knew this was coming a mile away.
I won’t go into any more of the plot, but even a rock could figure out how this would end. The good news was, the laughs continued unabated. What a great comedy!
Of course, the grand finale had to circle back to the opening fight scene. And as a bonus, Travolta went out like his character Beau in the movie Life on the Line – in flames and sailing through the air. Incredibly, his demise in this one was at least plausible.
One final note, I like notice bit actors in movies that turn out to have larger roles in future series – like Shaun Toub the Iranian terrorist Javadi from Homeland and Raymond “Tuco” Cruz from Breaking Bad – see if you can spot him – he wasn’t even credited.
Highly entertaining – 6 slices of Travolta’s best fried ham out of 10