A Cornwall Council Cabinet member compared the crisis of care homes failing and closing with a Hollywood movie.

Andrew Mitchell, Cabinet member for housing, mentioned 1996 blockbuster Broken Arrow in a debate about care homes at County Hall yesterday.

The Cabinet was discussing plans to develop a policy which would allow the council to intervene when care homes are failing to take them over if necessary.

Plans to create the policy were put forward after a number of care home closures and failures led to almost 300 care home beds being lost in Cornwall in 2018.

Cllr Mitchell said: “I am saddened that we are even having to discuss this and the action to take. It reminds me of the film Broken Arrow about a nuclear bomb and what happens when it goes wrong.

“That shouldn’t be able to happen and we have got a policy in place to sort it out when it does.”

However it would seem that Cllr Mitchell’s recollection of the John Woo-directed blockbuster is slightly askew.

Broken Arrow is a term used to describe a nuclear device that has been lost. In the movie the plot revolves around the theft of American nuclear missiles by a rogue pilot (John Travolta) working for terrorists who is then pursued by his co-pilot (Christian Slater) and a park ranger (Samantha Mathis) who try and recover the weapons.

The movie was a commercial success taking $150m at the box office.

But whether it is a good comparison to the current care home crisis is debatable.