History Film / BrokenArrow1996

* AdaptationalBadass: Giles Prentice the press secretary mentions in passing in he movie he did ROTC in Yale and got pretty far as a military man. In the movie nothing comes from it except as a HiddenDepths moment, but in the novelization he comes along in the helicopter during the climax and handles a machine gun when Wilkins is injured.

-->"You probably thought I was some science nerd! I was a Navy [=SEAL=], lady! You should see what I can do with just my thumb!"

* UnderestimatingBadassery: Deak spends most of movie thinking that Hale is a spineless wimp. Hale proves him wrong by foiling his plans.

-->'''Vic Deakins:''' I just realized something. I never actually killed anyone before. I mean, I dropped bombs on Baghdad, but, uh... never face to face. [{{Beat}}] I don't know what the big deal is. I really don't.

* InformedFlaw: Deakins gripes about Boone being an idiot, but nothing that Boone does supports that. Then again, Boone doesn't get too much screentime, so any idiocy of his goes unexplored.

-->"''Aviation Week'' has been following the development of the B-3 for years. They have stringers -- guys camping in lawn chairs -- by the Whiteman perimeter fence watching for one of thes things to take off. They're gonna know that one took off last night and they're gonna know...that it didn't come back. When our press release says a C-141 went down in Utah, they'll put two and two together. ''Aviation Week'' will run a story. Everyone will know what really happened, and we're all gonna look extremely stupid."

* ClusterFBomb: In the novelization, after Giles Prentice reveals his HiddenDepths as having undergone ROTC and, in a case of AdaptationalBadass, is part of the team on the chopper intercepting Deakins' train, he goes off "muttering through his teeth, like WesternAnimation/The LittleEngineThatCould, 'I want those fucks!'."

* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: Two military pilots would not be permitted to pummel each other in a boxing match, just before a flight or at any other time. The military invests far too much money in training pilots to have them grounded either temporarily or permanently due to a concussion. Any pilot stupid enough to try something like this would find themselves with far more to worry about than losing a boxing match.

''Broken Arrow'' is about two stealth bomber pilots: Hale (Creator/{{Christian Slater}}) and Deakins (Creator/{{John Travolta}}) on a test flight while carrying a pair of live nuclear warheads. Deakins loses his marbles and attempts to hijack the nukes to ransom back to the U.S., but ends up crashing their plane in the middle of a national park. Undeterred, Deakins continues to carry through with the plan, leaving Hale to try and stop him with the help of Terry (Creator/SamanthaMathis), a sexy park ranger.

This film was western cinema's second proper introduction to Creator/JohnWoo's HeroicBloodshed genre of film, the popularity of which is cemented (by RuleOfThree) one year later in 1997 by ''Film/FaceOff'', also by John Woo and starring John Travolta.

* GunshipRescue: Averted. Twice.

* MadeOfIron: Almost the entire cast, with one exception. Kelly hurts his hand hitting the side of a tunnel while shooting at a helicopter, and clearly gives a shout of pain. Kinda surprising, considering that Kelly is played by [[UsefulNotes/NFLDefensiveAndSpecialTeamsPlayers Howie Long]], who played pro football for over 10 years and would be the cast member with the highest tolerance to pain.

** Averted: Chief Rhodes says that he is going to destroy one of the bombs by opening up the access panel and dropping a couple of grenades in there. That is a prudent action since it is an intended safety philosophy that nuclear weapons will be rendered harmless if they are tampered with. This also makes this an example of AluminumChristmasTrees.

* SpottingTheThread: When Hale and Terry reach the abandoned mine, Hale notices that the rusted old gate has a new lock. He then realizes that Deakins has been here and is using the mine in his plan.

** Also a [[UpToEleven with a helicopter]] near the end.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler:Wilkins and the pilot of the chopper that help Hale get to the train at the climax are still shot but the chopper doesn't crashes and kills them. Instead they spend the whole part of the climax where Hale and Terry have to fight the bad guys on their own fixing the chopper after a crash landing and coming back in a GunshipRescue after Deakins is killed]].

* BaldBlackLeaderGuy: Colonel Wilkins, the bald black CO of [=McMurren=] Base.

* IdiotBall: Colonel Wilkins' ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight moment degradesinto this, as he, after being the ReasonableAuthorityFigure and knowing how Deakins dealt with Pararescue team and NEST operatives, decided to assist Hale with nothing but unarmed helicopter and one assault rifle. No wonder that he got himself killed.

** Played Straight: And even assuming that acute radiation sickness is an instant killer, then the team -- specialized in the recovery of nuclear weapons and equipped with Geiger counters -- would have detected such a leak and never approached in the first place. No-one would be fooled by the deception because such behaviour would be incompetence of the highest order.

** Averted: The villain tells his team not to shoot at the warheads. Even if he knows that they will not detonate from this, the admonition is warranted because if the weapons are damaged they will go from being valuable assets to useless junk (that might now be leaking radiation - maybe not enough to be immediately dangerous, but who wants to be exposed to more than they need to?).

* WhatAnIdiot: Deakins' henchman, that flew stolen helicopter as a co-pilot didn't even tried to take the controls or jump out when Novacek (the pilot) was shoot by Hale.
** Pilot of the Wilkins' helicopter flew straight into the mountain without any notion to change direction.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/broken_arrow_poster.jpg]]

* MadeOfIron: Almost the entire cast, with one exception. Kelly hurts his hand hitting the side of a tunnel while shooting at a helicopter, and clearly gives a shout of pain. Kinda surprising, considering that Kelly is played by [[UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeagueNamesToKnow Howie Long]], who played pro football for over 10 years and would be the cast member with the highest tolerance to pain.