Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-02-16 (Sunday)

On 2/17/2025 9:44 AM, BTR1701 wrote:

On Feb 17, 2025 at 8:53:34 AM PST, "Arthur Lipscomb"
<arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

Broken Arrow (blu-ray) 1996 movie directed by John Woo (I had *no* idea
Woo directed this when I put the disc in) starring John Travolta as a US
Air Force pilot who steals his plane's nuclear weapons during a training
flight

 Can I ask the obvious here?
 Why in the name of Red Hulk are there live nukes attached to a plane during a
training exercise?
 

Because then there wouldn't have been a movie!  LOL.
Here's one fore you.  Slater specifically says that if the wrong code is entered 3 times, it renders the nuke useless.  But instead of immediately entering the codes the first chance he gets, Slater takes time to monologue this to Travolta.  Then as it turns out Travolta was able to swap out the hard wired guts of the nuke with a different internal panel that would cause the nuke to go to a timer if the wrong code was entered 3 times.  Now, let's think about that for minute.  When exactly did Travolta have time and access to the nuclear bomb so he could do this?  Why is there a convenient countdown timer and screen on the bomb, which was designed to be dropped from a plane?  Do the nuclear missiles in silos have this feature too?  And upon realizing this, why didn't Slater dispose of the bomb without the timer first or just, set the time on that other bomb as well, rendering it equally useless to Travolta?  Or is it all the same answer as above?

  with Christian Slater as his determined copilot out to get the
nukes back.  And hey it's Samantha Mathis from Super Mario Bros. as the
love interest.  I don't think I've watched this since around the time of
the original release.  It was better than I was expecting.  Although one
annoyance was the way Travolta was constantly giving exposition to the
guy who financed the operation.  I know movies need exposition, but if I
was financing stealing a pair of nuclear weapons, you best believe I
would have already been fully briefed on the plan and all contingencies
well before it began!  Who are the co-conspirators, how are the bombs
being transported, and transported to where, are really not the types of
information you should be learning the day of!  LOL

 The show SWAT is especially bad about this. Almost every episode has a scene
where Shemar is briefing the team about their imminent op *as* they're racing
toward it in their armored truck. Not back at the station before they leave,
where they can all see diagrams and blueprints of the building they're about
to hit and mugshots of the suspects they're after. Nope. Shemar yelling over
police sirens is how they're introduced to the raid they're minutes away from
conducting.