Oil Drillers In Space? WHY?

Rating: 5/10 (13 February 2005)

File this movie under "they put the entire budget into the special effects, not the story" category. The special effects looks great. It is easy to mess up asteroids slamming into Earth, but Armegeddon takes care of that side of the equation well. Now, if only they put as much effort into the story, we'd have a good movie. As it is, it's a nice movie to look at, but a terrible movie to have to sit through. Who's bright idea was it to make deep-sea oil drillers the men who will save the world? I like Bruce Willis, but if our lives were in Hudson Hawke's hands, I'd immediately invest some time in parachute-less skydiving, I think I'd have a better shot of seeing the next day. Ben Affleck, I like him in certain roles, but again, I'm not looking to him to be the hero, especially one as emotionally dopey as he is in this film. Now Billy Bob Thornton, if he's running the mission, I'd feel a little better, though it was his idea to send oil drillers who have had no training in working in space on the mission, so maybe his decision making is questionable. I had problems with the movie's logic, which can be covered up with awe-inspiring effects, but the relentlessness of the stupefying plot was difficult to ignore. The ending is cliché in every sense of the word, and maybe one day we'll actually see a movie where the world ends because they sent a team of oil drillers into space! Ugh... what were they thinking? Why not send lawyers into space? At least, that would be a good start.