Save your money and time for something better

Rating: 5/10 (27 July 2000)

`Armageddon'. **. (1998, USA, 144, PG-13. Directed by Michael Bay starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck). After about 45 minutes of `Armageddon' I was really enjoying this movie. The earth was about to be smashed to smithereens by a meteor the size of Texas. To illustrate that this collision is going to be really bad, the director and special effects crew started the movie with a fantastic meteor shower that almost takes out New York City. Following the shower, NASA rolls out its secret nuclear stockpile. A stockpile that's been designed to blow up earth killing rocks from outer space. The only problem is the President's Chief Science Advisor got a C- in Astrophysics. Dropping a nuke on the meteor won't help. First you have to drill an 800-foot hole in the meteor, drop the bomb in the hole and then blow up the meteor from the inside out. NASA forgot to train the astronauts in the art of drilling.
Not to worry, Harry S. Stamper (Willis) is the best driller in the world. He and his crew of misfits can be trained as astronauts in 12 days, fly up to the asteroid, drill the hole, set off the bomb and save the earth. So far so good, I'm not kidding I liked `Armageddon' up to this point. I knew some of the guys had to die on this mission. One of the crew is black (Michael Duncan). Will Hollywood once again kill the brother or have they been listening to Roger Ebert? (Ebert exposed this dirty little Hollywood trick of always killing the black guy in several of his reviews.) Anyway, the training is complete, the personal situations are set up for a three-hanky ending and Freedom and Independence are ready to blast into space. Unfortunately, the story breaks down into one explosion after another (gas leak during refueling, BOOM; meteor shower on landing; CRASH; broken drill rig, gas leak, meteor quakes, etc., etc., etc.). The ending is all too predictable. But in the end, oops I don't want to spoil it for you. But do yourself a favor and find a friend that's seen the movie and ask them to tell you how it ends. Save your money and time for something better.