Peppy, bustling, highly mobile action film — all over the Southwest desert on the trail of a couple of purloined nuclear weapons. Hong-Kong-to-Hollywood émigré John Woo, if not quite the master that his cult followers would have us believe, is at least a tireless laborer, and his movie is abuzz with directorial activity, even when the actual action is taking a brief breather. And there are without question some astonishing sights: a Stealth bomber skimming within haircutting distance over the head of a park ranger in the still of a desert night; a helicopter nosediving into the ground and toppling onto its back, with its tail propeller tomahawking down on a distressed damsel; the rippling earth, a sort of surf-in-sand, in the immediate aftermath of an underground nuclear blast; many more. Christian Slater, poor lad, seems well out of his depth in the Seagal/Stallone role: it can serve no good purpose to stress the runtiness and vulnerability of an invincible cartoon character. John Travolta, meantime, adds star power, if not a lot else, to the standard wisecracking style of the villains of such pieces (searching his soul after committing the first face-to-face homicide of his life: "I don't see what the big deal is, I really don't"); and Howie (Neck-of-Oak) Long, former football player and current football commentator, is simply and acceptably Dolph Lundgren without the accent; and Samantha Mathis gamely upholds the rights of women to equal illogic and inhumanity. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd