Armageddon Review
by John Strelow (mbjs AT pacbell DOT net)July 15th, 1998
Armageddon (written by Jonathan Hensleigh and J.J. Abrams, directed by Michael Bay, 1998)
When you look up "guilty pleasure" in the cinema encyclopedia, there is a still from ARMAGEDDON. You probably won't recognize the still, however; Michael Bay and his editors cut images together so quickly that this film may have more individual shots than any other feature ever made (it's 2 1/2 hour running time adds to that). ARMAGEDDON is essentially a cross between the spectacle/disaster film made popular from THE ROBE to THE TOWERING INFERNO to INDEPENDENCE DAY and the over-baked melodrama of TITANIC, only without the former's stodginess and latter's damning pretentiousness. It's the type of film where most plot twists don't make any sense (machine guns in space? Hello?), where characters are likely to say dumb things as much as possible, and everything blows up real good.
Adding to the guilt for some and to the pleasure for others is the unabashed right-wing tendencies of your typical Jerry Bruckheimer production. Go back to CRIMSON TIDE (Tony Scott, 1995), THE ROCK (Bay, 1996), and CON AIR (Simon West, 1997). It's all there: respect for the military, the necessity of family (notice how the Nic Cage character in THE ROCK cannot get married until he has become a "man" by learning to kill people to get the job done), and the occasional blatant homosexual stereotype (thankfully left out of ARMAGEDDON). Add in a twist of self-sacrifice, a squeeze of loyalty, and two pinches of patriotism, and you have your Jerry Bruckheimer production. Bruce Willis even has a delicious moment where he declares his crew should have a night with their families, an "order" he gives while standing in front of the Stars and Stripes. The Family is America, and you better believe it.
Bruckheimer has employed once again Michael Bay, who is very good at blowing things up on camera. Mix in excellent effects work, and you have an action event movie that has some fun. The first ten minutes of the movie are worth the price of admission alone. You've seen bits of it in the trailer, but cut in with the film the scene is amazing, ending with NASA's response, a cameo by the director, and Billy Bob Thornton.
Aside from the special effects, the film's strength, and what makes the film enjoyable, is the fact that the cast is on the whole overqualified, and transcends a screenplay hindered by more than a few cliches. (Example: the red wire or blue wire conundrum. At the first screening I saw of the film, a few weeks before release, some members of the audience applauded after this conundrum's all-too predictable conclusion. Perhaps these people had never before seen a movie.) Billy Bob Thornton makes the commander cliches come off beautifully. Bruce Willis is by no means a Great Actor, but he is very good at what he does, and nails the role of Harry Stamper. Steve Buscemi gets to make wisecracks. Will Patton, meanwhile, easily gives the best performance in the movie. The ad campaign tells you that Patton's Chick is "doing it for adventure", but he's really doing it for loyalty. Patton surpasses often clumsy dialogue, and his truest expressions of loyalty and humanity are not expressed though spoken lines but through delicate subtleties and nuances. He shines in a beautiful scene in which he visits his estranged wife and son, a scene which must have been the work of uncredited script-doctor Robert Towne.
The case works because it is well cast. Bruce Willis is the action hero. Billy Bob Thornton is the credible actor in charge. And what else is Ben Affleck than the young hot shot who will one day be the star? And Liv Tyler than the overbred daughter? Or Steve Buscemi than the independent soul? And is Chick any more loyal to Harry than Will Patton was to Kevin Costner when he labored as a villain in the latter's THE POSTMAN?
The supporting members of the cast are not as well-filled out as they have been in previous Bruckheimer productions (where are George Dzundza, Michael Biehn, and Danny Trejo when we really need them?). The dialogue is often clunky and unoriginal; Thornton and Buscemi can make these lines come off well, but when you have Liv Tyler, who makes good lines sound bad, you know an underwritten script puts you in trouble.
There is an ode to TITANIC in the overplayed romance between the Affleck and Tyler characters. Fortunately, the film does not suffer from TITANIC's delusion that it is a Great Movie. The cartoonish aspects of TITANIC bring the film down from its intended pedestal to the level of hackneyed melodrama with awesome ship-sinking spectacle. ARMAGEDDON wants nothing more than to be a hackneyed melodrama (in which the cartoonish characters and dialogue belong) against which is set the awesome spectacle where the entire planet is on the sinking ship.
And spectacle is truly what ARMAGEDDON is about. There is no room for originality or daring thoughts, and no time for Great Cinema. There is time, 2 1/2 hours of time, for sheer spectacle, the brand of which believes that big is good, bigger is better, and too much is best of all. The music, imagery, and effects are designed to be bigger than life. It's okay to take an afternoon or evening to see a movie that doesn't make you think. Every now and then, we need a movie that makes us see and hear, and attach ourselves to archetypes instead of real people, because real people can hurt too much. Which means that every now and then, we should take some time out for ARMAGEDDON.
Copyright John Strelow 1998
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
