John Travolta was given the choice of playing either Deakins or Hale in the film. He chose the villain Deakins.
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Director
John Woo originally wanted Hale to die during the film.
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The phrase "broken arrow" is not actually used to refer to the theft, loss or seizure of nuclear weapons or components from the U.S.;that's known as an "empty quiver". A "broken arrow" is defined by CJCSI 3150.03B, Joint Reporting Structure Event and Incident Reports, as a US nuclear weapon accident that does not create the risk of a nuclear war.
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In an interview on Parkinson (1971), Halle Berry recalled that the producers turned her down for the role of Terry Carmichael and told her "there are no black park rangers". (putain les cons!!)
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Oliver Wood was considered to be the film's director of photography, but he was unable to take the job, due to the broken ankle he sustained while shooting
L'île aux pirates (1995). He was replaced by
Peter Levy (who had also replaced him on Cutthroat Island). Director
John Woo later picked Wood to shoot his next film,
Volte/face (1997).
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To promote the film, the publicity unit sent sunglasses resembling the ones worn by John Travolta to media outlets. The sunglasses had the Broken Arrow logo printed on the lower left lens.
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The main characters in the film are wearing Breitling Aerospace watches with quartz movement and titanium casing.
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The deep reverberant guitar solo in the recurring musical cue was performed by Grammy Award winner
Duane Eddy.
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The review of this movie on 'Siskel and Ebert' represents the only time in history where Ebert convinced Siskel to change his mind about his final judgment of a film. Siskel originally gave this movie thumbs-up, but after Ebert gave the movie thumbs-down and explained his reasoning, Siskel decided to change his judgment to thumbs-down. Siskel, on the other hand, had never successfully convinced Ebert to change his mind about a movie during an episode of their show, although Ebert had occasionally changed his own mind in print reviews.
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Jennifer Aniston was considered for the role of park ranger Terry Carmichael.
(pas black mais joue comme une couille!)
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During the final few blows of the last fist fight, as Hale is punching and kicking, growls and roars of large cats (i.e. lions, tigers, etc.) can be heard.
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According to "Trains" Magazine, the train chase scene was actually filmed on the Shortline Montana Western, which of course is not in Utah or Colorado. There is no real rail company called "National Regional."
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The pistol used by Vic Deakins is a Beretta 93R 3rd Generation model
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In the mine, the weapon that Deakins uses is a Ruger AC556K.
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Helen Hunt was offered the role of Terry Carmichael but turned it down in favor of
Twister (1996).
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Just like director's John Woo's first US movie Hard Target (1993), Broken Arrow also suffered from similar problems with re-cuts forced by studio interference and ratings problems caused by MPAA. According to some sources, studio interference on this movie was even bigger than the one on Hard Target.
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Lauren Holly was considered for the role of Terry Carmichael
.(doit pas être black...mais cé ki Terry machin?)
John Travolta and Delroy Lindo appeared together in Get Shorty the previous year.
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Both John Travolta and Christian Slater previously starred in Quentin Tarantino films: Slater in True Romance (1993) and Travolta in Pulp Fiction (1994). Tarantino did not direct True Romance, but he wrote both.
John Travolta and Frank Whaley both appeared together in Pulp Fiction in the famous "Big Kahuna Burger" scene.
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After getting an updated report on heat signatures from one of the crewman, Delroy Lindo's character, Colonel Wilkins, responds with "Good man frenchy, I like that." The crewman is played by French Stewart.
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