Review: Armageddon
"Is [director] Michael Bay the devil?" Entertainment Weekly asked in a recent article. He may well be. The devil, after all, is the ultimate showman and Bay's showmanship is the genuine article. With Bay, it's all about presentation, content be damned. Strangely, the more shallow his films get, the better they are. Armageddon is no exception.
Armageddon begins with some doomsday background: 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid. "It happened before. It will happen again. It's just a question of when," Charlton Heston warns in his best God-like voice (hey, when you've played Moses and Ben-Hur, all that's left is God). Well, folks, it's apocalypse time again and Bay wastes no time in letting the destruction begin.
"Saddam Hussein's bombing us," a taxi driver (Mark Curry) wisecracks as a meteor shower destroys New York City. The Chrysler Building comes crashing down -- you can see the bodies shake out of it. That's preceded by a spectacular shot of Grand Central Station, hallowed then hollowed. Shanghai and Paris get their due as the film progresses. The Paris scene, in particular, is well-crafted: the camera sits beside one of the Notre Dame gargoyles and surveys the impending doom, which resembles nothing less than a tidal wave.
NASA's executive director, Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton, admirably restrained and quietly commanding), attempts to keep the situation under control. The only available remedy to divert this Texas-sized global killer, Truman explains to the President, is to drill a hole inside the asteroid, drop a nuclear warhead inside and blow the mother to kingdom come. He recruits Harry S. Stamper (Bruce Willis), the world's best deep-core driller, who then brings along his ragtag crew: the neurotic but reliable Chick (Will Patton), mystical dude Oscar (Owen Wilson), tough but tender Bear (Michael Clarke Duncan), fat mother's boy (Ken Campbell), perverted genius Rockhound (the man -- Steve Buscemi), and the cocky goofball A.J. (Ben Affleck, a heartthrob both sensitive and humorous). "Talk about the wrong stuff," one of the real astronauts mutters.
The wrong stuff, yes. Recycled stuff would be more to the point. These are stock characters with stock backgrounds. Characterization is not as essential to the action film as it once was. Despite the script's deficiencies, character-wise, the actors manage to flesh out their wafer-thin roles with their individual personalities. Buscemi, in particular, is an indispensable delight. Only Liv Tyler, cast as Willis' daughter and Affleck's love interest, suffers. The pneumatic beauty is relegated to weeping and waiting. Women in Bay's films tend to be decorative. The talented Vanessa Marcil in The Rock went through the same paces that Tyler undergoes in Armageddon. Only Tea Leoni in Bad Boys, Bay's debut, spun gold out of straw.
Bay ups the ante once the crew hits space. A botched fuel transfer kickstarts the numerous unforeseen obstacles that await our intrepid crew. The fuel transfer also heralds the introduction of Russian cosmonaut Lev (Peter Stormare), who delivers most of the second half's one-liners. From that point on, Armageddon becomes a giddy, no-holds-barred, all-out assault on the senses. Yet for all its jittery bluster, it's a single shot that lingers in my mind: Affleck in danger, his face filled with fear, sparks reflected on his helmet. It's the hero shot and you wish for all the world that death does not call at this moment for this young man.
Armageddon
Directed by: Michael Bay
Written by: Jonathan Hensleigh, J.J. Abrams
Starring: Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Will Patton, Steve Buscemi, William Fichtner, Owen Wilson, Michael Clarke Duncan, Peter Stormare, Keith David, Jason Isaacs
