ARMAGEDDONÂ (12)
D: Michael Bay
Touchstone/Valhalla (Jerry Bruckheimer, Gale Anne Hurd
& Michael Bay)
USA 🇺🇸 1998
150 mins
Science Fiction/Adventure
W: Jonathan Hensleigh, J. J. Abrams, Robert Roy Pool, Tony
Gilroy & Shane Salerno
DP: John Schwartzmann
Ed: Mark Goldblatt, Chris Lebenzon & Glen
Scantlebury
Mus: Trevor Rabin
PD: Michael White
Bruce Willis (Harry Stamper), Ben Affleck (A. J. Frost),
Billy Bob Thornton (Dan Truman), Liv Tyler (Grace Stamper), Will Patton (Charles Chapple), Steve Buscemi (Rockhound), Peter Stormare (Lev Andropov), Keith David (General Kimsey), Owen Wilson
(Oscar Choi), William Fichtner (Col. William Sharp), Michael Clarke Duncan (Jayotis Kurleenbear), Jason Isaacs (Ronald Quincy)
When NASA executive director Dan Truman discovers that the
Earth has only 18 days before it's obliterated by an asteroid the size of Texas, he has only one option- to assemble a ragtag team of roughneck oil drillers with absolutely no qualifications
or experience of working in outer space, then land this inferior group on the asteroid so they can drop a nuclear warhead deep into it's core.
CRASH! BANG! SMASH!! That's what it takes to save the
world (except New York City, 'somewhere' in China and Paris, which get wiped out by smaller meteors).
Unfortunately, Armageddon is so poorly written that it
makes it almost impossible to care for the characters on show. Â Most of them are arrogant or obnoxious and the rest are merely stupid, so director Michael Bay shows us a bunch of
stereotyped people in slow motion so we remember that it is actually the human race which is in peril. Will Patton is possibly the only realistic character out of all the mob with speaking
parts, but even his back story doesn't get the drama that it deserves.
The rest is all Michael Bay's action movie on cocaine,
with some decent visual effects (the destruction of NYC & Paris were very well done), but the rest is almost impossible to make out, especially the scenes which take place on the meteor
surface. Â Overall, the whole thing is just a series of music videos for Aerosmith songs. Â It goes without saying that in Michael Bay's universe, the laws of physics, timezones and
believable dialogue simply don't exist.
It is slightly more fun to watch than the similar Deep
Impact though, which was released the same year.
5/10
