Has impressive moments, but insists on being shamelessly corny rather too much of the time.

Rating: 5/10 (22 December 2004)

"Armageddon" in its biblical sense refers to the final battle to decide the fate of the world. And this 1998 action movie wastes no time in placing the world in grave danger as an asteroid the size of Texas heads towards the planet, threatening to wipe out life as we know it. Armageddon is undeniably exciting in parts, but it frequently undermines itself with set pieces that are too over-the-top for the film's own good, and some embarrassingly corny dialogue and situations.
NASA scientists learn that an asteroid is on collision course with earth. Their only option is to destroy the rock before it hits, but in order to do that they need experienced drillers who can burrow to a depth of 800ft, plant a nuclear bomb in the hole they've made, and blow up the offending asteroid. The only team who have the expertise to carry out the required drilling work are a bunch of misfit oil-drillers led by Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis). The top brass at NASA aren't exactly thrilled at the prospect of placing the fate of the planet in the hands of these unrefined, blue-collar layabouts. But since no-one else can do the job, Stamper and his cronies are put through rigorous space training before being sent to intercept the asteroid and save mankind.
Where Armageddon comes unstuck is in its insistence on overcooking its ingredients at almost every possible point. For instance when the heroes dock at the Russian space station to refuel, what's the point of the big action sequence in which the routine refuelling procedure goes wrong and the station ends up blowing up? It's not a genuinely exciting scene - just an artificially contrived sequence shoved in there purely so that the audience can be subjected to more explosions and last-gasp escapes. There are many similarly exaggerated scenes which lose impact due to overkill - Buscemi's bout of space dementia; the dumb scene in which a trio of men drive across a gravity-less canyon; Willis's absurdly noble and polished final speech just minutes after he's elected to sacrifice himself to detonate the bomb; the TV-commercial-style scenes of kids running around with toy space shuttles celebrating the destruction of the asteroid; etc. These scenes really grate on the viewer, because they are overdone to such a degree that they insult our intelligence. That's not to say Armageddon is all bad. It's done with its tongue in its cheek and so manages some occasional flashes of self-deprecating humour. Also, occasional sequences are quite exciting, with good editing and photography, and in a few scenes the action is suitably exciting because it isn't bled dry of all credibility. The performances vary in quality, but Patton is good as one of the drillers and Stormare has a nice role as an eccentric Russian cosmonaut. Armageddon is an OK popcorn picture for the undemanding, but its identically-plotted 1998 rival Deep Impact is unquestionably better.