ARMAGEDDON
A Film Review by Brian Takeshita
Rating: ** out of ****
Naturally, there are a lot of expectations surrounding a film starring Bruce Willis, directed by Michael Bay, and produced by Gale Anne Hurd and Jerry Bruckheimer, because it has "summer action blockbuster" written all over it. ARMAGEDDON is the second movie this year to feature a plot involving a big rock hurtling through space to destroy the earth, and a plan to land on the rock, drill into it, and blow it up with nuclear weapons before it hits. The first film, DEEP IMPACT, was disappointing enough that expectations for ARMAGEDDON have run even higher.
We start out when NASA, under the direction of Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton), discovers an asteroid the size of Texas which will impact the earth in only 16 days. Briefing the president, Truman explains that the asteroid is what they call a "planet killer" which would destroy all life; not even bacteria would survive. To divert the oncoming menace, NASA decides to send a bunch of oil drillers, led by Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), into space to blow the asteroid into two pieces. Scientists calculate the pieces would miss the planet, and life could continue.
Stamper's oil drillers are not your average astronaut material, since they are your average movie stereotype roughnecks. Not much discipline, trouble with the law, that sort of thing, and ARMAGEDDON plays the "fish out of water" angle like you would expect. There are the scenes where they go through testing, training, and meet the "real" astronauts. It's all pretty amusing, especially a sequence showing how each of them react to one of those Rorschach ink blot tests. They don't disappoint in delivery of humorous quips, either. When they finally blast off, one of them says how incredible it is, and another replies, "And this is only the beginning of space. We haven't even gotten into OUTER space yet!" The problem is, it's not very original. The group reminded me somewhat of the band of veterans Gene Hackman assembles in UNCOMMON VALOR. A few of the cast members even look like them.
Willis has played the tough guy for a long time now, so this role isn't too much of a stretch for him. The hardest part in playing Stamper is trying to keep a Texas accent, which seems to move in and out of Willis's vocal range. A little different, though, is that Stamper is the father of a full grown daughter, Grace (Liv Tyler), who is love with A.J. Frost (Ben Affleck), one of the best drillers on the team. This gives Willis a lot of "I'm your father"-type lines, in addition to the "I'm out here to save the world" lines.
I'm sure the scenes Affleck shares with Tyler will be appealing to most women. He's a handsome guy, and the movie does a lot to show him doing those romantic things women love, like taking Grace on a picnic in the middle of nowhere, and singing to her in front of a volume of people. Guys will probably think he's a schmuck. Combined with his action sequences, Affleck proves himself a versatile actor, but there just isn't enough to his character to make him really likable. If he were to disappear three-quarters of the way through the movie, he probably wouldn't be missed.
Whereas Affleck may be versatile, Liv Tyler has only two faces: Pouty and pensive. She's nice on the eyes, but her acting is relatively flat, and that look like she's going to bite her lip anytime now gets old real fast. There's also a couple of scenes where she just wigs out, and I can't characterize them as anything less than annoying.
Perhaps the best performance is given by Billy Bob Thornton, whose acting is solid. The scriptwriters also deserve credit for making Truman a character with depth, considering it could have easily been a very thankless role.
The special effects work about half the time. When the drilling crew takes off in two newly designed space shuttles, the launch sequence is very gripping. Just getting it to look like there is a second launchpad at Kennedy Space Center was good enough for me, but the power and dazzle of the boosters igniting has to be seen. Scenes where much smaller asteroid fragments strike the earth also look extremely realistic. Anything involving the asteroid, however, is throwaway. It's too dark, vague, cluttered, and amorphous, and since we don't have any concept of scale, it ends up being relatively unimpressive. When the biggest menace in your summer action blockbuster looks like something the cat coughed up, that's bad.
While I wouldn't say the action is non-stop, Bay keeps the movie going at a good pace and continuously gives us something to look at, be it the asteroid, the space shuttles, or Liv Tyler. Unfortunately, the action itself is often undermined by not being able to fully see what's going on in a shot (most of the scenes on the asteroid are in darkness), or by the ambiguity of why something is supposed to be dangerous. "Drilling is an art form," a character says. Apparently, like art, it is not easily explained. Half the time I didn't know what was going on, and therefore didn't know why the drill started shaking, and therefore didn't know why everyone was getting so excited. When the action in you summer action blockbuster is too confusing, that's bad.
Many parts of ARMAGEDDON were apparently photographed to produce what I call "The Bruckheimer Look". Graduated filters are used to make the skies more blue, or bluish-purple, while everything under it is shaded with similar enhancing colors. You see it in just about all the Bruckheimer-produced films, like TOP GUN and THE ROCK. There are also a lot of scenes meant to show the beauty and variations of humanity: Kids running, old men looking out of windows, Hindu masses bowing in the courtyard of a temple - all in slow motion. It looks a lot like a credit card or soft drink commercial, or perhaps a music video. Not surprisingly, Michael Bay directed a lot of both of those before coming to film. My suggestion: Learn new techniques. When your summer action blockbuster looks like a commercial, that's bad.
Action movies are usually notorious for their lack of logic, and this film is no exception. Our heroes have to drill only 800 feet so a nuclear warhead can split the Texas-sized asteroid in two? I don't think the physics work out. How convenient is it, that NASA just happens to have two (not one, but two) secret prototype space shuttles ready just in time? Why were they secret, anyway? When the main characters go into space, they take large auto-cannons with them. Just whom, may I ask, are they expecting to use them on?
Okay, the 16 days to impact thing? I have to give them credit for this one. When asked why they didn't detect the asteroid sooner, NASA's response is that the pathetic funding for astromonitoring is only enough to cover about three percent of space. Take that, balanced budget.
Although the film isn't as engaging as expected, we are thrown a couple of treats. One of the mission control technicians Truman depends upon to make a key transmission is named Vossler. The radio technician aboard the USS Alabama in CRIMSON TIDE, another movie produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, was also named Vossler. One of the astronauts on Stamper's shuttle is named Gruber. The villains in two of the DIE HARD movies, starring Bruce Willis, were also named Gruber. You've got to watch for these things, folks. They happen a lot more often than you think.
Oh, one more: The two main characters are named Harry S. Stamper, and Dan Truman. Harry S. and Truman. Neat, huh?
Review posted July 10, 1998
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