Hooo, boy. It's a really average film, but I'm pretty sure the following nits are in there...

* In the mine section, watch the timer as Travolta comes back and decides to set the bomb to explode early, the bounder. In the POV shot it's suddenly got more time remaining than it did in a close up a minute earlier! (Wouldn't mind, but it's in the centre of the screen. You're actually supposed to be looking at the bomb!)

* The NEST team. What's their reaction to the EMP wave? "Oh no!"... "What's happening?"... "We're going to crash!" This... from a NEST team? The nuclear bomb experts? The people who'd know more about EMP than anybody else in the film? Hmm.

*Pretty sure that the EMP would still fry the HumVee's electronics, even if Travolta switched the ignition off. But, hey, it's a HumVee, maybe it's hardened against EMP.

*Watch that Huey pilot at the end of the film. The hill rushes towards him. He stares forwards blankly. The hillside comes ever closer. He pulls back on the controls ever so slightly. The Huey is on the verge of colliding with the hill. He looks pretty calm under the circumstances, and pulls back just a little bit more. The Huey crumples and explodes. (If that was me, I'd have swung the chopper round to the side a bit. But then we wouldn't have had that nice, gratifying explosion would we?)

I have a couple problems...
How did Travolta manage to change the bomb's configuration? Instead of shutting down after three incorrect codes, it activated.

Onboard the train, Travolta and the Evil Henchman take cover behind the thin walls of the boxcar. Wouldn't the assault rifle go through the wooden sides, since the shotgun made holes in the side.

It looked like the assault rifle had a grenade launcher attached to it. Why not fire a grenade into the boxcar and take out the bomb? It shouldn't go nuclear unless the bomb's detonate fires. Unless Travolta changed that as well.

When the chopper pilot takes out the guy on the train by hitting him with the rotar blades, it would have been better and safer to just shoot the guy instead of risking the entire aircraft.

Finally, the chopper could have flown backwards instead of running into the mountain. I guess the pilot was asleep at the stick.

Travolta said that he used "un-coded circuit boards" I take this to mean that he had a man on the ground crew who switched the bomb's usual circuit board (the one that needs a specific code to arm) with a board that will register any 6 digit code as the right one.

The pilot was bulling back on the stick but the chopper had been hit and was smoking near the blades. Perhaps the damage prevented him from having enough control to change the direction of the thrust.

BTW - I was reading that director John Woo wanted both characters to die at the end of the film. But the studio over-ruled him because the hero has to live in big Hollywood movies.

Vinnie Barbarino/Vince Vega/Tony Manero at the control of a nuclear missile? Ain't it cool? But...the movie stank big time.

Great line: "Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?"

So nice, he said it twice.

yes ScottN, it is a great line, but like I posted in "The Generals Daughter" it sounds like he saying "woojoo mind not shooting at duh thermonuclear weopontch" !

I guess I'm in the minority here. I liked this film! I liked the motiff of Deak taunting Riley for his inability to go for the kill, and the payoff of how you think that's what's happening at the end when Riley's about to hit Deak with a tire iron at the end of the movie but pauses. You think he's ambiguous again, but he just drops the tire iron because he wants to use his fists instead. I really enjoyed the way Riley jumped out of the box car, turning in mid jump with the remote control to deactivate the bomb, and the way the train bunched up, causing the nuke to smash Riley right out the back of the boxcar.

The one thing that I suspected was bogus, and confirmed later in an article about the movie: There's no way Riley and Terry would've survived an underground blast, copper mine or not. As the article stated, they'd be turning five shades of green, not watching butterflies.

The "Would you MIND not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?!" was nice, but I found it interesting, however. that one of the generals in the beginning of the film said the nuke was designed to lie in a pool of burning jet fuel for hours without going off. (And I may also be thinking of that line in The Peacemaker where someone said some nukes whose detonators aren't armed won't go off even if you fire a bullet at it).

Luigi, you're right about nukes not going off accientally (if shot, bumped, etc...). Heck, they're designed to withstand a nuclear first strike if they stay in their silos. But you have to admit, it was a great line.

I liked the movie a lot. I loved the interaction between the two characters and the fact that it had style out the wazoo.

The "Would you MIND not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?!" was nice, but I found it interesting, however. that one of the generals in the beginning of the film said the nuke was designed to lie in a pool of burning jet fuel for hours without going off.

Shooting it would not cause it to go off but if they damage the controls they won't be able to set it off. Also the warheads were inside of a case that Howie Long took them out of earlier. That could have been what could survive the burning jetfuel. BTW Jetfuel does not burn in a liqued state. Only as a gas can it combust, you'd think an airforce general would know that.

And btw, it's Deak (John Travolta) who gets smashed out the back of the boxcar, not Riley (Christian Slater).

Well, the nukes were out of their cases at the time, and a bullet might not set it off, but it may damage something so it won't go off.

And a dead nuke is little more than a paperweight (of DOOM!)

>>BTW Jetfuel does not burn in a liqued state. Only as a gas can it combust, you'd think an airforce general would know that.

Maybe like with gasoline, the vapors above the "pool of jet fuel" would be what's actually burning.

Something I never quite understood... We have a few facts to put together here:

1) With uncoded circuit boards, there's no way to lock the controls. Anyone can walk up, hit "clear," and re-set the timer.

2) Smashing the controls makes it impossible to set the timer.

3) Christian Slater never set a time when he first tried to deactivate the bomb outside the mine.

So, why couldn't Slater (sorry; I don't remember the character's name) just hit "clear," *not* set a new time, and smash the controls? Was this covered in the movie? I've watched it many times (but never recently) and never understood if they meant to explain this.

Oh yeah here's something I thought of a long time ago but forgot about-Travolta's hangun ??? Trivia sources say it's a Baretta 92F. However it had some kind of custom extended magazine and when he would fire it, it would fire fully automatic at a rate as fast or faster than than the worlds most sophisticated small arms machine guns. One problem-he would keep pulling the trigger at different times and it would simply never run out bullets ! Even if the modified clip held 20 to 30 rounds they would all be spent in 1 to 2 full seconds or less.

Good eye but it's actually a Beretta 93 machine pistol, and yes there is such a thing irl. It has an extended magazine, a hinged handle in front of the trigger guard, and a longer barrel with flash suppressor. You can get clips with various capacities but yes, due to its high rate of fire, the magazine would be empty within a few seconds, but this isn't a rare occurance in movies. Glock also makes a machine pistol, model number 18, and I believe the first full-auto pistol is the Russian-made Stechkin(?), also used by Travolta in "Face Off".