Written by Old Bluffer 27th Mar 2006

John Travolta spends the entire film thoroughly enjoying his role as an ace pilot, uber-jock, comic book villain. To fully emphasise the sheer size of his testicles he even has his own catchy guitar riff each time he "fonzies" into a scene.
His character, "Deak", is somewhat bitter that his talents haven't been fully recognised by the American Airforce and he decides to take revenge and become filthy rich at the same time by flying his 50 billion dollar stealth bomber over a Utah wilderness in order to drop a pair of nuclear missiles for retrieval by his minions on the ground. The only obstacle to this plan is his shorter, less cool, less tough sidekick, Christian Slater who is also in the plane. After a token struggle in the cockpit, the diminuitive co-pilot is forcibly ejected, and at this point Deak follows suit, and lets the stealth bomber crash into a mountain.
Yes, you read this correctly, his plan is to steal a plane that any world leader would personally sell their soul to L Ron Hubbard just to sniff the upholstery on the seats, and then destroy it.
As an alternative, he could have dropped the missiles anyway, left his minions to carry out the incredibly risky ransom mission and flown on to a nation that is unsympathetic to the US, such as Cuba, Iraq, North Korea, Canada or (long list deleted). Not only would this be far safer, as it has already been established that the yanks can't detect their own stealth plane, but it would also be far more profitable - if the terrorist deal fell through he could easily auction the bomber on eBay.
Despite this, Deak is soon having fun securing his "Broken Arrows" and upsetting his ex-bosses by issuing cliched ransom demands.

Meanwhile, clean cut do gooder, Christian Slater AKA Riley Hale has parachuted to safety and is immediately asked to identify himself by the film's token woman, a park ranger called Terry. Showing ironclad bullheadedness in the face of a perfectly resolvable situation, Riley refuses to explain he is part of the airforce (which would probably have been believed, given that he is in a USAF uniform and has just been seen ejecting from a distinctively shaped US stealth bomber) and instead gets involved in an utterly pointless brawl that ends in a ridiculous stalemate, he with a knife to his throat and Token Woman with a gun to her head. After this nonsense the two team up and become America's only hope to prevent a full scale nuclear detonation.

Various action sequences ensue, but the eventual plot destination is never in doubt, as Deak and Riley end up facing off as the final nuke's timer ticks down the seconds to total meltdown. To make the climax of the film even more exciting, all of this takes place on a speeding train, littered with nameless goons that had to be killed before the final fight. Deak has also been shot in the arm by Riley by this point, from a helicopter, but the bullet wound obviously has no effect beyond a momentary grimace of mild annoyance.

Even with this tutorial demonstration, Riley still fails to deactivate the bomb first time!


Deak, has by this time given up on escaping the film alive, and is instead living out his final moments with rabid glee, taunting Riley with the bomb's remote switch and asking him to "come and get it". Helpfully, he also talks us through the complex activation/deactivation procedure, which involves a button labeled "boom" and one labelled "cancel". Unfortunately Riley doesn't pay any attention to this, and instead just charges forwards so that Deak can punch, kick and iron bar him in a prolonged, arcade style beat-em-up scene.


Don't worry about Riley's grimace here - in this fight scene pain only lasts nano seconds, and all damage apart from superficial scrapes is instantly healed.

Eventually, Riley does get his hands on the remote control, but as mentioned, totally fails to decode the complex keypad layout, which extends the fight sequence by several more minutes.
Suddenly, the director gives the go-ahead for Riley to start winning, and all his previous damage is forgotten as he switches from being a beaten wreck of a man to an accomplished martial artist.

All tension thus removed, the scene switches to the train carriages, which Terry, (the female park ranger, in case you'd forgotten this crucial character), has contrived to be on a collision course with the carriages that the main brawl is taking place in (how she achieves this is largely irrelevant, all we need be concerned with is that there is going to be an almighty explosion).


Riley finally grasps the keypad layout, but instead of just pressing "cancel" while he's next to the bomb opts instead to hurl himself out backwards and only press the crucial key at the last possible second.

Events set in motion. Riley is finally able to leap out to safety, whilst pressing the "cancel" button on the remote control. An instant later the carriages smash into Deak's compartment, setting up a "newton's cradle" effect on the extremely heavy nuke, sending it hurtling with sunglasses-buckling force into Travolta's midriff. The camera then cuts to show Deak and the missile flying forwards into the remaining carriages, which are of course piled high with TNT.

The resulting explosion puts an end to Travolta's rakeish grin once and for all.



Deak grins as he realises he's about to meet his maker in a truly spectacular fashion.