Subject: Review: Armageddon (1998)

From: [email-masked] (Bob Bloom)
Date: 4 Feb 1999 18:14:20 GMT

Armageddon (1998) 2 1/2 stars out of 4. Starring Bruce Willis, Ben
Affleck, Liv Tyler, Billy Bob Thornton and Steve Buscemi.

 Armageddon is a loud and dumb movie. Be assured that doesn't necessarily
equate into bad.

 On the contrary, Armageddon offers an adrenaline rush of thrills, narrow
escapes and explosions.

 To really enjoy it, though, it's best to leave your brain at the box office.

 Unlike this summer's other end-of-the-Earth disaster flick, Deep Impact,
which at least made an attempt at a modicum of intelligence and scientific
accuracy, Armageddon is pure amusement park fun.

 If the two movies were compared to talk shows, Deep Impact would be Oprah
and Armageddon would be Jerry Springer.

 It's a paradox that the best science fiction films make the audience
believe that their premises, no matter how improbable, could be rooted in
fact.

 To stand out from the rest of the herd, a good science fiction movie must
have a foot - or at least a big toe - in the sea of plausibility.

 Armageddon forgets this precept from the outset.

 As in Deep Impact, a body from deep space - in this case an asteroid about
"the size of Texas" - is on a collision course with Earth.

 The difference, though, is significant. In Deep Impact, the threat was
discovered more than a year before the fatal encounter. In Armageddon,
impact will take place in 18 days.

 Hello! Anyone at Touchstone Pictures or in producer Jerry Bruckheimer's
office ever hear of the Hubble Telescope? You know, that big eye circling
our planet that in the past couple of years has discovered objects billions
and trillions of miles away. And what about all the observatories on Earth,
not to mention all the amateur astronomers who peer at the skies nightly.
Think they would miss something this big?

 Even real events have shown how foolish this concept is. A few months ago, a
scientist panicked the world for a day when he announced the discovery of
an asteroid that he predicted could hit Earth about the year 2038. Luckily,
his calculations were off and the asteroid will merely whiz by at a
neighborly 350,000 miles. So, Armageddon's very foundation is weak.

 In Deep Impact, a joint U.S.-Russian team of astronauts attempt to save
the world by landing on the comet, planting a nuclear device and detonating
it.

 Armageddon uses the same scenario, but instead of professional astronauts,
who does NASA select?

 A motley crew of blue-collar oil drillers, roughnecks, led by
super-driller Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis).

 By now, you may realize that Armageddon has as much in common with science
as The X-Files does with civics.

 So, with less than three weeks before doomsday, NASA trains these guys,
who include Ben Affleck, Will Patton and Steve Buscemi, for space flight.

 Training takes long enough to leave the drill team only about 12 hours to
land on the big rock, drill its 800-foot-deep hole, plant the nuke and fly
away home.

 This isn't science fiction, it's "The Dirty Dozen Saves the Planet."

 Armageddon is a visceral, pulse-pounding, exciting movie, no doubt about
it. And it's all so familiar that you can sit back and just watch, knowing
what will come next.

 The characters are stock. Willis' Harry is the pragmatic, get-the-job done
leader-father figure; Affleck's A.J. is the hot-head,
thinks-he's-smarter-than-anyone, son-Harry-never-had romantic lead.

 Billy Bob Thornton as Truman, the NASA director, is the guy who keeps
reminding everyone of the clock; Liv Tyler is Harry's independent-minded
daughter who's in love with A.J., much to Harry's disapproval; and Buscemi
is Rockhound, the wacky, smart-mouth, wise-cracking genius who has lost a
couple of his marbles.

 So there you have it. The outcome is obvious. During the 144-minute
running time, you don't need a scorecard to figure out who survives and who
doesn't.

 Armageddon features some dynamite special effects, but on the whole, it's
an empty, almost cynical movie in the way it manipulates its audience.

 It's also rather jingoistic. The rest of the world merely watches and
prays, leaving it up to the good, old U.S.A. to save the planet.

 That seems like the most improbable aspect of this seat-of-your-pants fantasy.

 Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Ind.
He can be reached by e-mail at [email-masked] or at
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