Like watching the tip of a spinning propeller blade

Rating: 4/10 (18 November 2000)

Armageddon is just one dilemma after another, and you can sense the desperation with which each new obstacle/problem was added to the film. I still don't understand what causes the Russian space station to explode, other than the movie's general need to have something blow up every few minutes regardless of cause or effect. Later in the film there is a retread of the always dependable which-wire-do-I-pull-to-defuse-this-bomb routine, which works in many movies but just doesn't make sense here. It's not a terrorist bomb--the astronauts work for the organization that made it, NASA, who in any acceptable circumstance would have thoroughly briefed everyone about the bomb and told them exactly what wire to pull should such an emergency arise (or, even better, put a STOP DETONATION SEQUENCE button somewhere on it). And then Steve Buscemi just starts randomly shooting stuff because apparently he didn't think they were in enough trouble yet. That's how this movie works--bad things happen for these astronauts, and it doesn't matter how or why they happen as long as they happen. The film would have been much, much better if it had just taken a couple of these dilemmas and developed them more, but the story ended up being a constant barrage of obstacles and setbacks that just end up canceling each other out. You know these guys are always going to be in trouble but then just barely scrape through, and what should be exciting becomes an onslaught of boredom.

But it's the editing that really derails this movie. It's impossible to tell what's going on in the action sequences because they're edited so quickly. You see something for less than a second and, while you're still trying to figure out what you just saw, you see something else, and then something else, and after a while you just give up and let the movie take off without you. There's no reason for it. Braveheart and Gladiator used hyper-editing to convey the chaos and randomness of battle; this film uses it to dull us into believing we're watching something exciting or stylish or interesting, even though we're not. Or maybe it's so we can't see how fake the special effects are, I'm not sure. Armageddon is a brainless event movie that actually forces a high degree of effort on the part of the viewer, and that's something that should never exist. You go to a movie like this to relieve stress, not increase it.
Have fun with this movie if you can.