In a way, the mission to make the movie is a bit like the mission in the movie: costs a fortune, small chance of success, lot of people depending on the result and only one man can do it - BRUCE ! Any of you who have seen Deep Impact are already familiar with the plot (doesn't anyone copyright scripts these days ?). A large meteor is detected heading for Earth. If it hits the planet, it will wipe out all life, though it's just the human life that is doing anything about it. As a taste of what's in store, smaller bits of the meteor are already landing on Earth, causing lots of damage. NASA decide to send up a crew of astronauts to plant a nuclear weapon on the rock and blow it up.
Bruce plays Harry Stamper, the best deep-sea oil-driller on the planet. His drilling team, including Steve Buscemi (playing his usual wide-eyed lunatic) and Ben Affleck, are a bunch of rugged but lovablemisfits. To complicate matters, his daughter Grace (played by Liv Tyler) has fallen in love with one of the riggers, A.J. (Affleck). Stamper had intended that Grace would lead a different life that he had. Considering that she looks every inch a supermodel, life on a succession of oilrigs with Harry and his crew doesn't seem to have done her any harm. Stamper isn't happy with A.J. and chases after him on the oilrig, shooting at him with a shotgun.
Meanwhile, NASA have just noticed that a rock the size of Texas is about to intersect with Earth. With extreme predjudice. They only realise this after small chunks of the meteor shower down on New York , destroying a Space Shuttle mission in the process and removing quite a few landmarks from the Big Apple. The bad news is that the meteor is only 18 days away from impact. NASA's top boffin, Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) hastily puts together a plan. The meteor is too big to vaporize or deflect, but if a nuke is planted 800 feet inside the rock, it will split in two and a chunk will pass either side of the Earth safely.
This plan involves sending two teams of astronauts to the meteor to drill the hole and plant the bomb. Obviously, such a mission requires no ordinary drill. Of course not. You see, while Harry was busy drilling for oil around the world, bringing up a daughter and raising hell with the guys, he still managed to find time to design a radically new drilling system. The drilling world never excepted it, and Harry abandoned the design. But now it turns out that NASA have secretly used the design for their space drill. But they're having a few problems, so they decide to get Harry to train their teams.
Back on the rig, the guys are oblivious to the demise of Manhatten (they probably only watch MTV). When Harry sees his drill design in operation, he tells Truman that the astronauts will never be ready for the mission in time, but that he knows just the guys who can do it (I guess astronaut training is just a doddle compared to oil drilling). Everyone else is against the idea but Truman decides to take the risk. Needless to say, the riggers don't impress anyone in training, least of all the astronauts who will fly the two shuttles and detonate the bomb. Before the launch of what is probably a suicide mission, Stamper promises to return and A.J. proposes to Grace...
This is one expensive movie- every scene flaunts the cash that was lavished upon it. The initial meteor shower demolished dozens of buildings and the camera shows each one of them. However, despite all the money, this movie tries a little too hard. The action sequences come thick and fast once the shuttles are launched. A stop-over at a decrepit Russian space-station for refuelling just seems to be an excuse for more explosions and mayhem, but it does introduce Lev (Peter Stormare) as a cosmonaut who provides some comic moments during the climax of the movie. Unfortunately the climax drags on for about twenty minutes and the ending isn't exactly an unusual twist.
Most of the comic moments in the first half of the movie are centred on the drillers attempting to train to be astranauts in the space of a week. Once the mission begins, it is mainly Rockhound and Lev's cynicism that provide the laughs. Example - as they sit in the shuttle waiting for lift-off, Rockhound comments to Harry " Hey Harry, you know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good doesn't it?" Or when Lev is vainly trying to repair some equipment on one of the shuttles, he exclaims "American components, Russian components. They are all made in Taiwan!"
Unfortunately, it is just as easy for the audience to be cynical too. Once the action switches to the meteor, the plot and action quickly become ludicrous. Small issues such as gravity are conveniently forgotten and one of the characters becomes afflicted with a condition known as 'space dementia'. Yeah, right. It's probably listed in Gray's Anatomy right beside 'saggy butt syndrome' and 'bad hair dysfunction'.
Armageddon alludes to a number of other movies, such as The Right Stuff and Dr. Strangelove, but it most reminded me of The Abyss (particularly the latter half of the movie) - the high-tech feel, the roughneck crew, the conflict between the military (NASA) and the civilian crew, and unfortunately, the sense of an opportunity missed. No surprise, I guess, as Gale Ann Hurd produced both Armageddon and The Abyss.
The movie suffers most from the fact that Deep Impact covers much the
same story - key scenes are identical in both movies.
One scene in both movies deals with the discovery and subsequent naming
of the meteor by a backyard astronomer. In Deep Impact, a kid discovers
the meteor, and it is named after him. In Armageddon, Truman speaks to
the old-timer, called Karl, who discovered the meteor.
Karl: The person who finds her gets to name her, right?
Truman: Yes, yes that's right.
Karl: Well, I'd like to name her Dottie, after my wife. She's a vicious,
life-sucking bitch from which there's no
escape.
A bit like this movie, really.
Directed by Michael Bay. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Gale Ann Hurd & Michael Bay.
| ****** Excellent - An outstanding movie
***** V. Good - Very enjoyable or engrossing **** Good - Entertaining *** Mediocre - Nothing special ** Poor - A waste of time * Terrible - Complete rubbish |
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