Broken Arrow (1996)

This and FACE/OFF regularly compete for my "favourite John Woo movie once he sold out and got all America'd up" and this regularly comes out on top. One of the big dissapointments with a lot of Woo's American movies, for me, is that it never gets the feel of his shoot outs right. This film eschews standard gunplay for what are essentially ever expanding chase scenes. The vehicular natures of the film, and John Woo's apparent hatred of helicopters, keeps things really interesting on the action side.

Slater and Travolta are the goods as the two friends turned into enemies and that's a good thing because there's no-one else in the cast who is a standout. In these sort of films you expect there to be some great bit players, but most of Travolta's goons are one note and goofy. Even his right-hand man is barely there. But Slater and Travolta are both amazingly likeable and have great chemistry on screen. Travolta is probably turning it up a bit too much at times, but I quite like how demented and 'cool' he is.

Zimmer's score is Zimmer at his most Hans Zimmer but it's really fucking effective. It's also part of my 1990s, US Soldiers go rogue and use terrorists action as a way to get money' trilogy of films which includes The Rock and Die Hard 2

It doesn't have an actual supporting cast, which doesn't help it but I'm way more of a fan of chase sequences than shoot outs which is why I like it. I think the finale on the train is actually really kind of cool.

Then again in Face/Off you have Nicholas Cage and John Travolta going completely balls out nuts and the awesome opening sequence and boat chase. But I think for all of its manic energy Face/Off suffers from some terribly languid pacing.

Hard Target is possibly the worst paced movie of ALL TIME though.

I like the mine shoot-out, I just think the stuff with the cars and the train is some of the more interesting American stuff Woo's done.

Also gotta say that on Blu-Ray the film looks stunning, the final section in particular has the greenesy grass I've seen in a film.

Which is all well and good apart from the fact the hour before it is just Van Damme moping around like a cajun hobo. No amount of Lance Hendriksen murdering people with single shot pistols can rectify that.

I love that scream, it's like someone put Wilhelm's balls into a blender.

I think I've worked out why I like this so much. We did a mini-Chud watch of this last night and we were discussing how action films feel like they're 90% CGI today.  This film has four 'real' Helicopters getting destroyed and a final action sequence built around a real train, moving through a real countryside, and being rocked by real explosions. There's a real sense of verisimilitude to the entire thing and it helps to make all of the action sequences feel unique and interesting. I still really like Travolta in this, but as Nooj points out one of the funniest things about his performance is how he acts like his right hand is completely detached from the rest of him. It's like a roving evil hand, completely undermining what the rest of him is doing at all times. 

I haven't seen Die Hard 4 yet, but the first three Die Hard films are great examples of how late 80s and 90s action movies created a sense of place and space. I think Michael Bay was one of the people who moved towards a general lack of geography in his action films. I love The Rock and Bad Boys 2 but those are films where you never get a sense of space or place, compared to something like the Skyscraper in Die Hard or the boat in Undersiege.