ARMAGEDDON (PG-13)
Harry S. Stamper: Bruce Willis Dan Truman: Billy Bob Thornton A.J. Frost: Ben Affleck Grace Stamper: Liv Tyler ``Chick'' Chapple: Will Patton
Directed by Michael Bay. Written by Jonathan Hensleigh and J.J. Abrams. Running time: 150 minutes. Classified PG-13 (for sci-fi disaster action, sensuality and brief moments of vulgar language).
By Drew McElligott
If space is the final frontier, I wouldn't mind Armageddon being Jerry Bruckheimer's final frontier into the final frontier, or for that matter anywhere into the skies above. Long before falling asteroids and con men raising all hell in a cargo plane, there was a young buck named Maverick who had a knack for going mach-10. With a hot, charismatic lead, a near perfect supporting cast, and a good enough balance of both spectacle and substance, Top Gun achieved top flight status as a box-office blast, ground-breaking in the soon-to-be commonplace (but certainly not cost-effective) action genre.
Since those days, WAY back in the 80s, Bruckheimer's films have lost some of the luster as action films with both spectacle and substance. Perhaps the loss of Simpson is too obvious, certainly too easy of an answer. This is not to say that the newest Bruckheimer films have not held their own in the area of special effects and spectacle, these films will always have that. But the substance is gone, or at least deteriorating from what once was. The substance I'm talking about here relates to everything that makes a story great, making it in all respects a story worth making into a film. And I'd submit that without this blanket term called substance, Bruckheimer's airborne projects will do nothing more than shoot up to the stars and quickly fizzle down in the eyes of many viewers.
Of course YOU will love it, and this is directed to those who go to the movies sheerly for the spectacle, and that's fine. These films will always have that appeal. Like many, I am often conflicted in my opinions about a movie such as Armageddon. I enjoy the action. But imagine if Bruckheimer and Michael Bay got together to make Apollo 13 - add a big rock and you pretty much have Armageddon. Any further plot description really isn't necessary because the plot is so thin that we can figure it out from the previews and promos.
Armageddon does have the charismatic lead in Bruce Willis who does an admirable, even likable and believable role as Harry S. Stamper, the leader of the mining crew sent up to save the world. Armageddon also has a near perfect supporting cast in Will Patton, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Steve Buscemi, and Billy Bob Thornton. In fact, all of these actors do such a good job, one could conclude that with a great cast alone, you could almost have a good movie. Thornton as Dan Truman, head of Mission Control, does an especially good job of making the entire fagade seem believable and it is really from his character and Liv Tyler's character as Stamper's daughter that we feel any real, believable sense of urgency. They are our only real emotional contacts throughout the ordeal.
Interestingly, the only other sentiment in the film (besides the charming yet thin love story between Tyler and Affleck) is that of patriotism, which is quite strong. Of course, we see no real hints at the deeper questions of armageddon, the absolute repercussions of such an ordeal on our country or the world at large. Rather, we get sound bytes of Islamic prayer, montage of a few cultures across the globe looking mildly perturbed. But it all works in this sense: there is so much action, we don't worry about repercussions, because, after all, Bruce Willis et all will save the world, they must, they are American heroes. And they don't disappoint. The movie as a whole, however...
Unlike a film like Top Gun, however, what's missing, among other things, is context. When we meet Maverick, he's just saved a fellow pilot who's lost it, mentally unable just as Maverick himself will be later in the film after Goose's death. Tom Skerritt's character, playing a superior and a friend of Maverick's deceased father, provides more context. In Top Gun, we have enough context from the characters' lives that we feel like we know these people and more importantly, we feel like we know them enough to care about them.
Granted, there is some good, emotional interaction within the love triangle of the Willis, Affleck, and Tyler characters, but those three cannot carry the film, especially when they must compete with the action and fx sequences that really overplay the story and characters. So much action that it is in actuality often illegible. In space, things can get pretty dicey, that much is clear. But that doesn't excuse the screen time that's wasted showing us how things go wrong over and over again in the same way: a character yells, "It's gonna blow," followed by flying debris and bodies flying and bouncing around. It gets tired, and so much is flying around so frequently it's difficult to even follow.
Perhaps the biggest dilemma with a film like Armageddon is asking yourself if you should spend big money to see this in the theater or wait to rent it and see it on the small screen? Often we base this decision on the merits of the movie: did it get two thumbs up? Did Uncle Cecil like it? But in the case of Armageddon and every mega-fx-action blockbuster like it, the dilemma is further complicated by the fact that no matter how bad this film may be, you can bet it's gonna be even worse on TV. The effects, the action, the quick-cutting, the SOUNDS, they will all be quite worthless on the tube. See it in the theater or don't see it at all, and certainly don't think that this is a movie event of the summer that you must see. Two genres that, for full effect, really require a large screen are horror and science fiction. This is definitely science fiction, with more fiction than science. But then do we expect a film titled ARMAGEDDON to be Oscar material? I don't think so...
**/****
On the Bruckheimer scale, while not nearly as good as The Rock, I actually preferred this to Con Air, which is very similar, but worse and could have been called, "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From- WAIT, There Are No Women".
Copyright 1998 Drew McElligott e-mail: drucipher@yahoo.com
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