5. Come At Me, Bro - Broken Arrow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De2qscGlWX4 John Travolta may have rehabilitated his career with Pulp Fiction in 1994, but he wasnt out of the woods just yet. In 1996, he faced off against Christian Slater in John Woos Broken Arrow, where he got to practice the Im a witty psychopath act that landed him better films like Face/Off and well, thats probably it. Broken Arrow is, of course, the film famous for reuniting Slater and his Pump Up The Volume co-star Samantha Mathis, who were your favourite on-screen couple in the world if you were fifteen years old in 1990. The other thing its famous for is the scene where Travolta faces off against a nuclear warhead in a slugfest for the ages: a death match where there can be only one survivor. Really? No, not really. He gets football-tackled out of the train car by the speeding missile, and the train explodes. Its the look on his face and his body language that does it, though: yes, John Woo is a stylist when it comes to action direction, but apparently after the warhead is flung towards him from the other end of the carriage, Travolta has enough time to stand to face it, slip over, stand to face it again, square his shoulders, and grin a bloody-nosed pub psychos challenge before it hits him. This must be the longest train carriage in recorded history.
Jack Morrell
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Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
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