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Vic Deakins: Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?

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In the gun fight in the mine shaft, Christian Slater pulls the hammer down on his pistol, then seconds later it's back up. See more...

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Broken Arrow (1996) - 26 corrections

Directed by John Woo, starring Christian Slater, John Travolta, Samantha Mathis (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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In the scene when Travolta ejects from the Stealth, they are flying "at 400 feet and 800 miles an hour. At that speed without a helmet or face protection, Travolta's face would be mush. [Suspension of belief: Since this scene has to take place to generate the movies plot.]
Edit Corrected by GameBlade
What the hell are uncoded circuit boards? [This is not a mistake, but a question. I would imagine they are circuit boards that they use on the missiles in this movie that have yet to be coded.]
Edit Corrected by poehitman
When Hale and Terry first meet and they're wrestling over the gun, you can see the orange nubby that indicates it is not a real gun. [The orange material on the end of the gun is part of the sight (on top of the barrel, not inside). The coloring provides a distinctive contrast with light/grey or sky/blue backgrounds and aids in aiming.]
Edit
After Hale arms the nuclear weapon (and only has thirty minutes to dispose of it), he and the park ranger decide to lower the weapons into the mine shaft (and potentially get trapped down there with them because bad guys are coming). Instead of using the elevator, why not just drop the bombs into the shaft? If the armed one doesn't explode, fine. If it does, big deal; it's at the bottom of a half-mile deep mine. [If they dropped the bomb down the shaft and it detonated the force of the explosion would travel up the shaft and release radiation into the surrounding area. Their intention was to push it deep into a side tunnel to prevent this. If they dropped it and it failed to explode Deakins could retrieve the bomb and continue his plans.]
Edit Corrected by BocaDavie
Near the end of the film, Hale and Teri are on top of the train engaged in a gun fight with one of the bad guys. At one point the bad guy has the good guys right where he wants them, his gun pointed at them and ready to take them out. But instead of simply firing away at them - as he had just done seconds before - he yells at them to "freeze". This then conveniently allows Hale to do the "fall-down-and-grab-the-gun-out-of-Teri's-pants" trick and shoot the bad guy. The decision by the bad guy to suddenly act like a police officer by having them "freeze" makes absolutely no sense. It can't be characterized as a character mistake since he had just been shooting to kill seconds earlier. It was only done to give the good guys an "out" in this situation. [Definately a character decision; the circumstances have changed from the previous attempt to shoot them. In the event described here the shooter had a clear shot at the subjects and opted not to shoot them in the back (probably wanted to see their faces when he fired; he is quite evil, afterall). In the previous attempt while they were fleeing he did not have a clear shot; he had to keep firing hoping that a round would hit them.]
Edit Corrected by BocaDavie
Why on earth does Teri arrest Hale? In what reality is it illegal to parachute from a crashing aircraft into a National Park? Is the pilot supposed to wait until he has flown out of her jurisdiction before he ejects? She handcuffs him - a man who may be distressed or injured after ejecting from a crashing bomber! What planet is she on? [She has no idea where the plane came from or who was flying it. She asked him to turn around and he knocked the gun from her hand, ran down a hill, grabbed it and put it to her head before he said a single word to her. In addition, his actions pretty much proved that he wasn't too injured to be handcuffed.]
Edit
The military is content to acknowledge a missing B2 because a few people may notice one took off from a base and didn't come back (maybe it was transferred to a different base?). But after the detonation in the mine, they decide to cover it up as an earthquake. Seismologists all over the world can easily tell the difference between a nuclear detonation and an earthquake. In fact, some are dedicated to this task to monitor the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, so the whole world would know that the US violated the treaty and tried to claim it was an earthquake. [The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, was opened for signature on September 26th 1996. This is a 1996 film but it does not say when the movie takes place. The film could have taken place in early 1996. Also, the treaty has not entered into force as the 44 (annex2) countries have not ratified the treaty yet. Although the US has signed the treaty the US has not ratified the treaty. Therefore, no treaty violation could have taken place.]
Edit
Wilkins and the rest of the Air Force team running this exercise are supposedly at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, as stated by Pritchett when he's talking about the reporters in lawn chairs. There is no way they would have felt the tremors from an underground explosion in Utah. [Pritchett states that the "jet" took off from there, and that the lawnchair campers are going to know that it did not come back. Then Pritchett hops on a private jet, and flies to meet the Air Force Team at their underground base in Utah. No one in Missouri is ever shown feeling the tremors at all, it's the base in Utah that is shown after the bomb goes off.]
Edit Corrected by Jazetopher
When the bomber is shown being towed out of the hangar it is being directed by a ground crewman with glow-sticks. While under tow the pilot has no control over the steering of the aircraft and the tractor driver can, presumably, see exactly where he is going and needs no guidance. The ground crewman is not only completely superfluous, he's in the way. [The ground crewman is signaling the pilot as to what is happening so he knows when he has control of the aircraft again. Besides which, at no time is a plane not able to be controlled by a pilot while taxiing. The steering tires are controlled generally by the rudder pedals (except if operated by hand controls like a Russian Yak 18, for example) and can aid the tow motor driver in guiding the plane.]
Edit
The shockwave which moves through the ground is going about 10 mph when it reaches the jeep; it should be much faster, possibly around the speed of sound. [Not so. Earth is a terrific dampener for shockwaves. Films showing shockwaves during nuclear testing show a big difference when detonated underground as opposed to underwater or above ground.]
Edit
In the final fight scene in the train, Christian Slater knocks Travolta down and grabs the remote control. Travolta told him beforehand that he can press one button to detonate the bomb and the other button to disarm. You can hear Slater pressing a button two or three times and nothing happens. But when he gets the remote again in the end, he presses it once and it disarms the bomb. [Travolta lied about the functions of the buttons on the remote. When Slater figured that out, he knew he had to press the other button to disarm the bomb.]
Edit
Heroes enter underground river which carries them to safety, 2000ft up hill. [Some underground streams do in fact go uphill if there is pressure from above or below forcing it up. Geysers and bore holes are extreme examples of this.]
Edit
When Hale is looking at the map for train routes, there is only one big red rail line going across the map. Surely there are 100s of rail routes into Salk Lake City and Denver, and yet the only one on this map is the one Deakins is going to use. [The map he is using shows the routes for one particular rail line, not all of the companies that exist. Furthermore, in mountains it is likely there is going to be only one line through, with spur lines branching off to smaller locations, just due to geography.]
Edit
Near the end, John Travolta is shot in the arm, yet he is still feeling up to boxing with Christian Slater. [He may have felt he shot, but he was running on adrenaline so he might not feel it for a while. Also it just goes to show how tough his character is.]
Edit
Kelly (Howie Long) was supposed to die early on in the film, but Woo rewrote it so he was in it till the end. [Not a mistake. Trivia, maybe, but there's nothing wrong with discrepancies between original script and final movie.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
In the opening boxing scene between Hale and Deakins, they would be wearing mouthguards and helmets. [They chose not to. An infringement of Air Force regulations, perhaps, but not a movie mistake.]
Edit
The EMP that brings down the chopper for some reason has no effect on the circuits of the remaining nuke, nor or Deakins' watch which he continues to use afterwards. It would fry them irrespective of if they were turned off or not; similarly the same effect would prevent their jeep from working afterwards. [If a electronic device is off, and EMP has no effect. John Travolta is shown turning his watch off just before the nuke explodes. As the effects of radioactive material at close range is worse on electronic than an EMP, the nukes electronics are protected from it plus an EMP. (Same issue in space, electronics must be protected from the electrons that are charged and would have the same effect). The Jeep has no real electronic components that would be fried that would prevent it from running, even though John turns the Jeep off too.]
Edit
When they use the helicopter to "give those guys a hair cut" towards the end of the film the rotor blades do some serious damage to one of the guys. However, in reality this would cause serious damage to the blades themselves and would most likely cause them to stall as there would be a sudden force put upon them. [Similar "errors" have been posted for 'The Last Boy Scout' and 'Vertical Limit'. Helicopter rotor blades are made of a steel/titanium alloy and move at several hundred kilometres an hour. A human body has no chance against them. In fact, accidents on helicopter landing decks are not uncommon and usually result in the victim being decapitated or cut in half, with little or no damage to the helicopter's rotor blades.]
Edit
Moments before Travolta attempts to shoot Slater in the B-2 cockpit, Slater says something along the lines of how he enjoys flying a 2 billion dollar plane 800 miles per hour 100 feet off the ground. The problem with this is, that the aircraft would be traveling faster than the speed of sound at 800mph. We know that objects traveling faster than the speed of sound will create a sonic boom. Stealthy aircraft such as the B-2, travel at high subsonic speeds, so as not to create a sonic boom, which would alert enemy forces on the ground to the presence of an aircraft in the vicinity. [This is not necessarily a mistake. 800 mph is rather close to the speed of sound, although it may be faster, it could be that it was easier saying this, than saying 750 mph. Another explanation is that the airplane is capable of flying supersonic speeds, and if they are only 100 ft. of the ground, and in peacetime, maybe they didn't have to worry so much about being stealthy, and maybe they actually did fly 800 mph.]
Edit
Towards the end of the film, the helicopter on the train explodes when the engine is started. Clearly Deakins wanted to use the chopper to get away after activating the bomb...But how many people was he going to take with him off the train. At least nine people were killed or kicked of the train by Hale and Co. Clearly not all of them would have fitted in the chopper, so some of them would have died in the blast. None of them must have been THAT stupid to not figure this out themselves. So some of them must have volunteered to die. Long definitely said at end of movie, right before he was kicked out by Hale HE did not want to die for anyone in the nuclear blast... [Travolta never intended to blow up the nuke. In the mine he told Hale that he was going to buy shares of Volvo with the ransom money - money he would not get if the bomb went off. And he told Howie Long on the train "After the money's in place, I'll shut down that puppy." The helicopter was going to be used to leave the USA. After Hale blew up the chopper Travolta went back to the car with the nuke and, realizing there was no escape, said "F*ck em if they can't take a joke," and started the timer.]
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