Starring: Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Keith David, Steve Buscemi
Director: Michael Bay
Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Rating: C+
This is not a good movie - few Michael Bay films really are. It's lame and cheesy and ridiculous and I absolutely love it. Unlike the similarly themed Deep Impact, Armageddon is pretty much entirely about the attempt to save the planet and not really at all about the people left behind, facing the end of the Earth. Sure there are some brief moments showing the latter half, but they're not what's important. That's typical of a Michael Bay film though; they're not about the little people, they're about the great men doing great things and the women who love them.
Armageddon opens with the discovery of an asteroid the size of Texas that is going to hit the planet and wipe out all life on it - even bacteria - in less than a month. NASA scientists, lead by Dan Truman (Thorton) try to devise a way to save the planet, the best plan of which involves sending a group of astronauts up to it, drill a big hole into the asteroid (named Dottie), drop a nuke into it, resulting in an explosion that will divide the asteroid into two halves - if done before passing the magic line, Dottie will fly past Earth, but if done too late then both halves will still collide. In order to do this, NASA needs drillers, specifically Harry Stamper (Willis) and his crew, considered to be the best deep-sea drillers on the planet. This group of ragtag drillers are sent into space with NASA's best, all hoping to blow up the asteroid before its too late. Oh, and there's a love story - Harry's daughter, Grace (Tyler), is in love with reckless driller A.J. Frost (Affleck), a fact that Harry is not happy about.
Where to start... So, it being a Michael Bay film, the science isn't exactly... well, science-y. Bay depends on one-liners, flashiness, and things going boom, not intelligence. There are no real good moments of solitude and reflection, something is happening every moment of the film. When the people on the earth are reflecting about the impending doom it's always in this moment of passion and anger, there's no calms or moments of sorrow. When things go wrong its huge and disastrous - such as the explosion of the Russian space station. A lot of this creates confusion, it's hard to tell just what it is that's going on at points in the movie. It's also rather messed up that Armageddon doesn't do anything to show any contingency plans and what not - in Deep Impact there's the Noah's Ark style backup plan, but there's nothing of the sort mentioned in Armageddon.
Actually, I do want to take back part of an earlier statement. This film does take little people and makes them into great people. In the end it's really the same result, but it's not entirely the same intent. There are some great moments of Liv Tyler's that are really moving, as well as a few with the crew themselves. For the most part though, it's all just silliness. Armageddon doesn't really address the issue of the impending doom so much as the issue of how to stop it. No one's caring about what happens after the team fails, just about ensuring that the team doesn't fail. As such there's this huge gap to the film, this thing that's missing. Despite that, though, I still love it. Its an old favourite and I suspect it always will be for me. Definitely not the best action film out there, or the best Armageddon movie, but still a good one.
No comments:
Post a Comment