Review: Armageddon (1998)

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Armageddon

Rating

Director

Michael Bay

Screenplay

Jonathan Hensleigh, J.J. Abrams, Tony Gilroy, Shane Salerno, Robert Roy Pool

Length

2h 31m

Starring

Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Will Patton, Steve Buscemi, William Fichtner, Owen Wilson, Michael Clarke Duncan, Peter Stormare, Ken Campbell

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Basic Plot

An asteroid the size of Texas threatens to destroy the earth. NASA puts our lives in the hands of oil drillers?

Review

Do we really need another two and a half-hour action adventure disaster film?

After seeing the drawn-out “Armageddon,” I have to say no.

The film opens with a narration by Charlton Heston discussing the global killer that wiped out dinosaur and plant life on Earth several millennia ago. His monotone voice echoes boredom that would be only the first of many pointless moments in the film.

Then we find ourselves in modern day New York where a black man is riding his bicycle around the city discussing how he’s going to make it big one day…to his dog. When his dog spots and large rubber Godzilla, the film tries to make itself look like its going to trounce that other summer blockbuster and only does a marginally better job.

Just then, some large rocks start plummeting through New York City destroying everything in their wake, going through buildings, crashing into cars and even toppling the top of the Chrysler Building.

After several long and needless bouts with NASA scientists trying to discover what is causing it and then deciding what they can do about the asteroid (“It’s the size of Texas, Mr. President,” says the leading NASA researcher Dan Truman), we change scenes to meet a family oil drilling operation run by Harry S. Stamper (Bruce Willis).

His family business has been past down to generations and he even has his daughter, Grace (Liv Tyler), working as a secretary. When he discovers that she’s been sleeping with one of his drillers, A.J. Frost (Ben Affleck), he runs around the large oil rig, firing his shotgun at him. When this painfully pathetic sequence wraps up, a military chopper lands to take Harry and daughter to NASA.

After they find out about the asteroid, Truman asks that Stamper lead part of the drilling expedition to land on the asteroid and bore 800 feet into it and deposit a nuclear warhead, which will blow the asteroid apart and the two pieces will fly past the earth thus saving it.

Stamper insists that only his own men be used to operate the drills and that they be completely reworked from his stolen copyright design.

From there, the most interesting part of the film begins. While trying to round up the various members of his team, we are taken on a comedic ride. One, “Bear” Kurleenbear (Michael Duncan) runs from the hordes of Feds following him and others are involved in various intriguing exploits when they are first approached.

After they are rounded up, informed of the decision we have one more useless scene where Stamper asks if everyone is willing and each one has to respond before the sequence can move on. They read their demands to Truman who says he’ll see what he can do and then they’re sent into accelerated training for the mission.

From there, the film still has about an hour and a half to go. Once we finally get into the actual mission to get to the asteroid, it takes so long to get through the Mir space station that when the actual asteroid comes, we’ve had to wait 45 minutes. Then even though we’ve waited this long, the film’s end feels so much farther away that when the undeniable predictabilities creep in, you’ve already realized you should have waited until it went to the cheap shows.

The film suffers from long blurry shots and several sets of five-minute segments that are completely unnecessary. If it had been edited a bit more cleverly, it would have come in under two hours.

To compare this and the other “thing in the sky” movie of the year, “Deep Impact,” would be like saying, one was the human element story and one was the testosterone story. “Impact” clearly displayed itself as deceiving. We thought we’d get a special effects disaster movie, but we got one similar to the 70s disaster films. One that focused on the lives of the people involved instead of the special effects. “Armageddon” appeals to the testosterone-driven crowd that made “Independence Day” a success.

In a cross between “Independence Day” and “Apollo 13,” “Armageddon” leans more heavily toward the former. Piles of visual effects with a weak plot to keep it all tied together and give them the excuse to make the film.